Thomas Sprat (1635-1713) was both a bishop in the Church
of England and a founding member and secretary of the Royal Society. In his
book, The History of the Royal Society
for the Improving of Natural Knowledge (1667), he explains why he and other
Christian intellectuals made the switch.
1. Violence Ended
but Credibility Lost
The fierceness of violent
inspirations is in good measure departed: the remains of it will be soon chac’d
out of the World by the remembrance of the terrible footsteps it has everywhere
left behind it. And, though the Church of Rome still preserves its pomp, yet
the real authority of that too is apparently decaying….This is the present
state of Christendom (quoted in An
Historian’s Approach to Religion [1956] by Arnold Toynbee, 155).
Sprat was born in 1635. He was 13 years old when peace
broke out at Westphalia. He was 16 when the English Civil War of Religion
ended. He was old enough both to remember the wanton destruction, injury, and
death caused by war and to enjoy the tremendous sense of relief following its
end.
Roman Catholic leaders encouraged the Baroque style in
painting, sculpture, architecture, and music, following the Council of Trent
(1545-1563), as one creative response to the Protestant Reformation. This style
was intentionally extravagant, even pompous. It was exemplified by St. Peter’s
Basilica, opened in 1626, which remains centuries later the largest church
building in the world.
Because of the Latin Christian civil war, popes permanently
lost control of churches in Germania, Britannia, and Scandinavia. Still, they
managed to save Gallia from the Huguenots and to rid Czechia of the Hussites
and other Protestants. There was never a question of Iberia or Latium
abandoning Rome.
By 1648, Rome had managed, oddly enough, to maintain
control of all churches in lands which had once been part of the Roman Empire.
The price in violence, however, had been too great. Its moral authority,
dependent, as it was, on its imitation of Christ, suffered irreparably. So too
did that of Protestant churches.
When Sprat speaks of the large geographical area once
encompassed by the Latin Church and, in his day, divided into Catholic and
Protestant regions, he refers to it as Christendom. Not Europe. Europe was the
name given to this area by Western Christian intellectuals after 1648 when they
no longer desired to identify their land in Christian terms.
2. Hatred of
Violence Leads to Rejection of Church
Let it be a true observation
that many modern naturalists have bin negligent in the worship of God; yet
perhaps they have bin driven on this profaneness by the late extravagant
excesses of enthusiasm. The infinit pretences to inspiration, and immediate
communion with God, that have abounded in this age, have carry’d several men of
wit so far as to reject the whole matter—who would not have bin so exorbitant if
the others had kept within more moderate bounds (155).
In Sprat’s day, gentlemen like his colleagues in the
Royal Society, in effect early scientists seeking experimental knowledge of
nature, were known as natural philosophers or naturalists. Sprat, bishop in the
established Church of England, admitted that many of his colleagues had
abandoned Sunday worship. For them, the fierceness
of violent inspirations, the extravagant
excesses of enthusiasm, had failed miserably to witness to all the freedom
for truth, love, and life that were theirs, and remain ours, in Jesus Christ.
3. Christianity Knowingly
Lost and Olympianity Unknowingly Found
It is apparent to all that the
influence which Christianity once obtain’d on mens minds is prodigiously
decay’d. The generality of Christendom is now well-nigh arriv’d at that fatal
condition which did immediately precede the destruction of the worships of the
Ancient World, when the face of Religion in their public assemblies was quite
different from that apprehension which men had concerning it in privat: in
public they observ’d its rules with much solemnity, but in privat regarded it
not at all. It is difficult to declare by what means and degrees we are come to
this dangerous point; but it is certain, that the spiritual vices of this age
have well-nigh contributed as much towards it as the carnal; and, for these,
the most efficacious remedy that Man of himself can use is not so much the sublime
part of divinity as its intelligible and natural and practical doctrines (156).
As long ago as 1667, Sprat informs us, people were
attending Sunday worship simply because it was useful and not because it was
meaningful. Their bodies were present, but their minds and hearts were
elsewhere. The significance of the Bible and theology, even among churchgoers,
had prodigiously decayed.
Sprat wonders what caused this dramatic decline. He
readily acknowledges that the carnal vices of lust and gluttony caused some of
it. He places the greater blame, however, on Christians themselves betraying their infinite pretenses to divine inspiration through the spiritual vices
of laziness, rage, envy, greed, and, worst of all, arrogance.
The remedy proposed by the good bishop? Switching from divinity (theology) to intelligible and natural and practical
doctrines (technology). In this way the sheepfold was opened to the wolves,
unwittingly enough, by the shepherds themselves.
Copyright © 2018
by Steven Farsaci.
All rights reserved. Fair use encouraged.
All rights reserved. Fair use encouraged.