Abstract
Unlike most Huguenot refugee writers in the United Provinces who engaged in internecine polemical disputes with each other to the dismay of the synods of the Walloon Church and to the consternation of the Dutch Reformed Church, Jacques Basnage pledged himself to uphold neutrality in the theological and politial controversies that perpetually troubled his colleagues. His temperament, his ease of communication and rapport with the most divergent factions, and his dedication to pure scholarship mitigated against the aggressive contentiousness of a Jurieu or the devasting irony penned by a Bayle. The one exception to Basnage’s literary magnanimity was his two-volume Traité de la conscience published in Amsterdam in 16961 to allay the quarrel instigated by Pierre Bayle’s assertion of the prerogatives of conscience errante, or erroneous conscience.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Notes
Reissued in an unaltered edition by the same publisher in three volumes in 1697. There is the possibility that the Traité de la conscience, dans lequel on examine sa nature, ses illusions, ses craintes, ses doutes, ses scrupules, sa paix & divers cas de conscience, avec des reflexions sur le Commentaire philosophique may have been subsequently republished, or at least that the author may have contemplated a third edition late in his life (see J. Basnage to A. Court, June 4 [1721], BSHPF, MS 601II, I, fol. 193). The edition utilized in this text is the first edition (hereafter cited as TC).
(St. Omer [Amsterdam], 1685). See the edition introduced and edited by Elisabeth Labrousse in the series Bibliothèque des Textes Philosophiques published by J. Vrin (Paris, 1973).
2 vols. (Canterbury [Amsterdam], 1686); reprinted in Bayle, OD, II, 353-484.
(Hamburg [Amsterdam], 1688); reprinted in Bayle, OD, II, 485-540.
See esp. W. K. Jordan, The Development of Religious Toleration in England, III: From the Convention of the Long Parliament to the Restoration, 1640–1660 (Cambridge, England, 1938), and IV: Attainment of the Theory and Accommodations in Thought and Institutions (1640–1660) (Cambridge, England, 1940); David Masson, The Life of John Milton: Narrated in Connexion with the Political, Ecclesiastical, and Literary History of His Time, 6 vols. (London and New York, 1871-81); Christopher Hill, Milton and the English Revolution (London, 1977); John M. Dunn, The Political Thought of John Locke: An Historical Account of the Argument of the “Two Treatises of Government” (Cambridge, England, 1969); John W. Gough, John Locke’s Political Philosophy: Eight Studies, 2nd ed. (Oxford, 1973). The case of John Locke is interesting because of his forced residence in Holland during 1683–89 and his introduction to Bayle by Benjamin Furly. After an examination of Locke’s notebooks acquired by the Bodleian Library in 1948, Gabriel Bonno concluded that Locke had read Bayle’s Commentaire philosophique for his three letters on toleration, but that “Locke s’inspire surtout des problèmes posés par la situation religieuse en Angleterre et cherche à régler d’une manière pratique les rapports des Eglises et de l’Etat” (Les relations intellectuelles de Locke avec la France, 215). Bayle came to know Locke’s works only after he had written the Commentaire philosophique and the Supplément du Commentaire philosophique. For Bayle’s reaction to each of Locke’s treatises, see Gabriel Bonno, La culture et la civilisation britanniques devant l’opinion française de la paix d’Utrecht aux “Lettres Philosophiques” (1713–1734), in Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, new ser., 38, pt. 1 (1948), 80-89, 92.
Labrousse, Pierre Bayle, II, 532; see also idem, “Note à propose de la conception de la tolérance au XVIIIe siècle,” Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century, LVI (1967), 799-811. The best general treatment of seventeenth-century Huguenot literature on the problem of religious toleration is by Haase, Einführung in die Literatur des Refuge, 261-374. See also Frank Puaux, Les précurseurs français de la tolérance au XVIIe siècle (Paris, 1881); Lucien Dubois, Bayle et la tolérance (Paris, 1902); Gaston Bonet-Maury, La liberté de conscience en France depuis l’édit de Nantes jusqu’à la Séparation (1598–1905) (Paris, 1909). The most cogent analysis of Bayle’s Commentaire philosophique and the Supplément du Commentaire philosophique is by Labrousse, Pierre Bayle, II, 520-91; cf. Rex. Essays on Pierre Bayle, 153-93.
(Rotterdam, 1687); see Knetsch, Pierre Jurieu, 271-75.
(Utrecht, 1697). Saurin actually wrote his work in 1695; but his continuing wrangle with Jurieu, who accused him of being latitudinarian in religious matters, had the effect of postponing publication of his Réflexions for two years. On the relatively obscure but important Elie Saurin, see Haag, FP, IX 174-75.
Whether he recognized it or not at the time, Bayle contributed to the evolution of the idea of autonomous unconscious thought processes in fostering feelings of guilt or innocence which Sigmund Freud developed between 1909–23 to arrive at his formulation of the superego. For the history of this key psychoanalytic concept, as well as its re-evaluation in the light of new clinical evidence, see Rudolph M. Loewenstein, “On the Theory of the Superego: A Discussion,” in Psychoanalysis — A General Psychology: Essays in Honor of Heinz Hartmann, ed. Rudolph M. Loewenstein et al. (New York, 1966), 298-314; cf. Stanley Goodman, “Report on Panel: Current Status of the Theory of the Superego,” Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association, 13 (1965), 172-80. For a non-psychoanalytical philosophical description of conscience and its operations, see J. F. M. Hunter, “Conscience,” Mind, 62 (1963), 309-34.
Labrousse, Pierre Bayle, II, 567.
See Auguste Schaffner, Essai sur la vie et l’oeuvre de Jean de La Placette (Paris, 1885).
First reviewed in HOS (September 1694), art. iii, 28-42.
The Christian Casuist: or, A Treatise of Conscience, trans. B. Kennet (London, 1705).
Einführung in die Literatur des Refuge, 352-61, 366, 373. Cf. Haase’s brief attention to Basnage’s work of the same title (ibid., 356, 360, 363, 369, 373).
P. Bayle to Mr. [J. Bruguière de Naudis], July 18, 1695, in Bayle, OD, I:ii, 176. Bayle’s judgment of Basnage’s Traité de la conscience was that it “sera très bon” (loc. cit.).
Art. xv, 142.
Art. x, 228-45.
Mémoires, IV, 303.
For comparative purposes, it would be instructive to consult Michael G. Baylor, Action and Person: Conscience in Late Scholasticism and the Young Luther (Leiden, 1977); Benjamin Nelson, “Conscience and the Making of Early Modern Cultures: The Protestant Ethic Beyond Max Weber,” Social Research, 36 (1969), 4-21. Less illuminating is Kevin T. Kelly, Conscience: Dictator or Guide? A Study in Seventeenth-Century English Protestant Moral Theology (London, 1967), who treats only Anglican divines who were decidedly Thomists in their casuistry. Two helpful surveys are Léon Brunschvicg, Le progrès de la conscience dans la philosophie occidentale, 2nd ed., 2 vols. (Paris, 1953); Johann Stelzenberger, Syneidesis, Conscientia, und Gewissen (Paderborn, 1963). For Brunschvicg’s interpretation of Pierre Bayle’s concept of moral conscience, see op. cit., I, 219-24.
TC, I, Préface.
Loc. cit.
Ibid., I, 3. This notion originally was derived from Roman Stoic thinkers, principally Seneca, who viewed conscience as a divine guardian within the individual.
Ibid., I, 4.
Ibid., I, 9.
Basnage out spokenly condemned constraint of the liberty of Christian conscience (ibid., I, 40).
Ibid., I, 45.
Ibid., I, 59-70.
Ibid., I, 73. Basnage had a strong sense of religious toleration. But he limited it to Reformed churches in the United Provinces, Switzerland, the Germanies, Scotland, and England; to Lutheranism; and to the Anglicanism exemplified by Bishop Gilbert Burnet.
Ibid., I, 88.
Ibid., I, 98-136.
Gédéon Huet, the Huguenot refugee minister of the Walloon Church in Dordrecht, had earlier reached the same conclusion in his tract against Jurieu, Apologie pour les vrais tolerans où Von fait voir la dernière évidence, & d’une manière à convaincre les plus préocupez, la pureté de leurs intentions, & la vérité de leur Dogme… (Dordrecht, 1690), 129.
Basnage noted: “La bonne intention est un des grands pièges que le Démon ait tendus à l’homme” (TC, I, 133).
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 1987 Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, Dordrecht.
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Cerny, G. (1987). Toward a Redefinition of Calvinist Theology and Society? The Problem of Religious Toleration and Freedom of Conscience. In: Theology, Politics and Letters at the Crossroads of European Civilization. Archives Internationales D’Histoire Des Idees International Archives of the History of Ideas, vol 107. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-4343-8_11
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-4343-8_11
Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht
Print ISBN: 978-94-010-8430-7
Online ISBN: 978-94-009-4343-8
eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive