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With a distinctly rationalistic temper, he was yet a faithful, if independent, son of the Roman Church. He speaks sometimes as if he regarded the Church as the great storehouse of necessary authority for the intellectually feeble; but he accepted the main dogmas himself, being satisfied of them by intuition and reason.
In fact, the logical development of Protestantism could not fail to lay the authority of the Scriptures at the feet of Reason; and in the hands of latitudinarian and rationalistic theologians, the despotism of the Bible was rapidly converted into an extremely limited monarchy.
Not to lay himself open to the charge of inconsistency, he throws out the suggestion that the Sefer Yezirah represented Abraham's own speculations before he had the privilege of a prophetic communication from God. When that came he was ready to abandon all his former rationalistic lucubrations and abide by the certainty of revealed truth.
The word does not denote the theoretical philosopher, to be sure, but it approximates it more closely than the expression describing the ideal man of Jeremiah's commendation. It is in line with Maimonides's general rationalistic and intellectualistic point of view when he undertakes to find a reason for every commandment, where no reason is given in the Law.
The rationalistic tendencies of Mme. de Grignan give her some anxiety, and she rallies her often upon the doubtful philosophy of her PERE DESCARTES. She could not admit a theory which pretended to prove that her dog Marphise had no soul, and she insisted that if the Cartesians had any desire to go to heaven, it was out of curiosity. ALLEZ, ALLEZ, you are jesting!
If there ever was a time when the intellect went wild, and had a licentious revel, it was at the date I speak of. When was there ever a more curious, more meddling, bolder, keener, more penetrating, more rationalistic exercise of the reason than at that time? What class of questions did that subtle, metaphysical spirit not scrutinize? What premiss was allowed without examination?
In our modern state, and in the United States more than anywhere else, the social structure is based on contract, and status is of the least importance. Contract, however, is rational even rationalistic. It is also realistic, cold, and matter-of-fact. A contract relation is based on a sufficient reason, not on custom or prescription. It is not permanent.
They both fought in many ways for the limitations of their own rationalistic epoch; but they were nearer the truth than the men who simply assumed those limitations as rational. The war of the controversionalists was a wider thing than the peace of the arbiters. And in the same way the Englishman never cuts a less convincing figure before other nations than when he tries to arbitrate between them.
It may be doubted whether what Lord Acton wrote in 1877 would be true now: There are in our day many educated men who think it right to persecute. In 1895, Lecky was a candidate for the representation of Dublin University. His rationalistic opinions were indeed brought up against him, but he was successful, though the majority of the constituents were orthodox.
With his energetic but short-breathed thinking, he did not succeed in fusing the rationalistic elements received from foreign sources with these native tendencies, so as to produce a unified system. A similar unmediated dualism will meet us in Locke also.
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