Chapter 23 Twenty-two, the new heaven

There is no reason to fear that Spinoza's book will spread.His book is as interesting as a trigonometry textbook, yet very few people can read more than three sentences, no matter what chapter it is. A different kind of person is needed to spread new ideas to people. In France, the zeal for independent thought and inquiry ceased as soon as the country became a monarchy. In Germany, the Thirty Years' War brought poverty and terror that stifled individual creativity for at least two hundred years. In the second half of the seventeenth century, Britain was the only country in Europe that had the potential to make progress in independent thinking. The long-term feud between the king and the parliament increased the factors of instability and promoted the cause of individual freedom.

First we have to talk about the British monarch.For years the unfortunate king had been caught between the devilish Catholicism and the sea of ​​Puritans. Catholic subjects (including many secret Anglicans who had defected to Rome) have been clamoring for a return to the blissful days when English kings were servants of the pope. But the Puritan subjects stared at Geneva with the other eye, dreaming that one day there would be no king in England, and England would become like a happy union curled up in the corner of the Swiss mountains. But that's not all. The one who rules England is also the King of Scotland, and the Scots subjects are well aware of their claims in terms of religion.They are fully convinced that they are right to stand firmly against freedom of religion or belief.It seemed to them evil that other denominations existed in Protestant lands and could worship freely.They insisted that not only Catholics and Anabaptists should be expelled from the British Isles.And Socinians, Arminians, Cartesians, in short, all who hold a different view of the existence of a living God, should be hanged.

However, this triangular conflict had unintended consequences.Those who wished to maintain neutrality between rival sects were compelled to remain silent, and this made them more tolerant than they were. If Stuart and Cromwell at various times in their lives insisted on equal rights of denominations - and history tells us that they did - it was by no means due to What feelings, or they are loved by those believers.They're just trying to get the best out of a very difficult deal.The dreadful event in which a sect in the Massachusetts Bay Colony ended up becoming powerful tells us what would become of England's fate if one of England's many competing sects established an absolute despotism throughout the country look.

Cromwell certainly got his way, but the Lord Protector was wise.Knowing that his rule was maintained by an iron army, he carefully avoided any act or decree which would bring the opposition together against him.But that's where his tolerance ends. As for the dreaded "atheists"—that is, the aforementioned Socinians, Arminians, Cartesians, and other adherents of the divine powers of man—their lives were still as precarious as ever. Of course, the British "free thinkers" had a big advantage.They are close to the sea, and they can reach the safe haven—the Dutch city—as long as they fainted for thirty-six hours on a boat.The printing houses of the Dutch cities published the criminal literature of southern and western Europe, and crossing the North Sea meant going to the publishers for a fee and seeing what was new in intellectual rebellion literature.

Some have used this favorable opportunity for quiet study and quiet contemplation, the most famous of whom was John Locke. He was born in the same year as Spinoza.Like Spinoza (and indeed most independent thinkers), he was the son of a devoutly religious family.Baruch's parents were Orthodox Jews, and John's parents were Orthodox Christians.They train their children in the strict teachings of different creeds, and of course they mean well.But this kind of education either destroys the hearts of children, or turns them into rebels.John, like Baruch, is not a person who is easy to submit. He gritted his teeth and left the house to make a living by himself.

At twenty, Locke came to Oxford and heard Descartes speak for the first time.But in the dusty bookshops of the Rue Sainte-Catherine he found other books more to his liking, such as Thomas Hobbes. Hobbes is an interesting character. He was a student at Magdalen College, and he was always restless. He went to Italy to talk with Galileo, and wrote letters with the famous Descartes. He lived in continental Europe for most of his life. To escape the wrath of the Puritans.Occasionally he wrote a tome containing his views on every conceivable subject, under a catchy title: The Totalitarian State, or Matter of the Presbyterian and National Leagues, Form and Power".

Locke was a sophomore in college when this learned book came out.It strikes the nail on the head of the nature, power, and, above all, of the responsibilities of princes, and even the most thoroughgoing Cromwellians have to agree with them, and many Cromwellists are inclined to pardon the usual skeptic, For although he was a Royalist, he exposed the hypocrisy of the Royalists in a book that weighed no less than five pounds.Of course, Hobbes was not the type to easily classify.People at the time called him a "non-dogmatic man," meaning that he was more interested in Christian ethics than Christian teaching, and advocated a certain degree of "freedom" for people on matters of lesser importance.

Locke has the same temperament as Hobbes.He taught all his life, but he wholeheartedly agreed with the generous interpretation of life and belief.What good, he and his friends thought, was the country getting rid of one tyrant (the one with the golden crown) if only for another (the one with the black drooping hat) to abuse his power?Why deny the loyalty of one group of priests one day, and accept the rule of another group of equally arrogant and despotic priests the next day?Logically speaking, this is certainly true, but there is a group of people for whom if the "free men" succeed in turning the rigid social system into a society of ethical debate, they will have nothing to eat, so This view does not work among them.

Locke himself seemed to have some strength, and he had powerful friends who protected him from the suspicion of the magistrate, but it was not long before he could no longer escape the suspicion of being an "atheist." This happened in the autumn of 1683, and Locke came to Amsterdam.Spinoza had been dead for five or six years, but the academic climate in the Dutch capital was still free, and Locke had the opportunity to study and write without official interference.He was an industrious man who, during his four years away, wrote the famous Letter Concerning Tolerance, which makes him the protagonist of our little history book.In the letter (according to his opponents, it should be three letters), he completely denied the right of the state to interfere with religion.Locke believes (this stems from another exile, the Frenchman Pierre Bell, who was living in Rotterdam at that time, was compiling an encyclopedia by himself, very talented), the state is just a protective organization, composed of a group of people Created and maintained for mutual benefit and security.Locke and his believers have never understood why such an organization should issue orders and make people believe in this and not allow them to believe in that.The state does not stipulate what they should eat and drink, why must they be forced to go to this church and avoid that church!

The incomplete triumph of Puritanism made the sixteenth century an age of strange religious compromises. The Peace of Westphalia puts an end to all religious wars.It clarifies a truth: "All subjects must obey the religious beliefs of the ruler." In this way, the subjects of a principality are all Lutherans one day (because the Grand Duke is a Lutheran), and the next day they are all Lutherans. Became a Catholic (because the Baron happened to be Catholic). Locke argued: "If the state has the power to order people's souls, then half the people are doomed to perdition, because it is impossible for both religions to be true (according to the first article of the religious manual), and those born on this side of the border will certainly be Go to heaven, and those who are born there are destined to go to hell. In this way, the geographical location at the time of birth can determine whether a person's soul can be saved."

It is indeed a pity that Locke did not include Catholics in his plan of toleration, but it is understandable.In the eyes of British people in the seventeenth century, Catholicism was not a form of religion, but a political party, which never stopped subverting British security. It built an "Invincible Fleet" and brought large barrels of explosives to destroy the parliament of this friendly country. Crash to pieces. Therefore, Locke would rather advocate the transfer of power to the pagans in the colonies than to the Catholics, and ask them not to set foot on British soil again.But this is only because of their dangerous politics, not because of their different beliefs. To hear this view one must go back sixteen centuries.A Roman emperor once set a famous principle: Religion is a matter between man and God. When God feels that his dignity is damaged, he will take care of himself. The British, who have undergone four changes of government in less than sixty years, are more receptive to the fundamentals of the common-sense ideal of tolerance. When William of Orange crossed the North Sea in 1688, Locke followed him by ship, with the Queen of England on board.From then on, his life was stable and peaceful, and he lived a long life until he was seventy-two years old. He became a respected author and no longer a frightening heretic. Civil war is a terrible thing, but it has one great advantage.It cleans the atmosphere. The political divisions of England in the seventeenth century drained the country of its excess energy.While other nations were fighting each other for the Holy Trinity, religious persecution in Great Britain had stopped.Now and then an overly presumptuous critic of the church, like Daniel Defoe, might have had the misfortune of breaking the law.But the author of Robinson Crusoe was put in the pillory not because he was an amateur theologian, but because he was a humorist.The Anglo-Saxon people have always been inherently suspicious of irony.Defoe would not have been blamed if he had written a serious defense of tolerance.His attack on ecclesiastical tyranny, reduced to a semi-humorous pamphlet called The Shortcut to Dissent, shows him to be no less than a shabby brute, no less than a prison thief. Fortunately for Defoe, he never traveled beyond the British Isles.Driven from its origins, tyranny found a welcome home in the colonies across the ocean.This should be attributed less to the character of the people who had just moved into that land than to the vast economic advantages of the New World over the Old. England is a small island, densely populated, but most people have a foothold, and if people are unwilling to perform the ancient and respectable law of "equal exchange", all business will cease.But in America, a country of incomprehensible size and incredible wealth, a continent inhabited by a handful of farmers and workers, such compromises are unnecessary. Thus, in the little communist community on the Massachusetts coast, there arose a defensive, self-professed orthodoxy, which had never been the case since Calvin's happy days as police commissioner and supreme judge in western Switzerland. Never showed up. For the first time inhabited in the ice and snow of the Charles River was a small company called the "Pilgrim Fathers."A pilgrim generally refers to "a person who travels to a holy place as an expression of religious devotion."In this sense, the passengers of the "Mayflower" were not pilgrims.They were English bricklayers, tailors, ropemen, blacksmiths, and wheelwrights who hated the Catholic doctrine worshiped by others and left England in order to leave it. They first crossed the North Sea to the Netherlands, arriving here just in time for the Great Depression.Our textbooks go on to say that they decided to keep traveling because they didn't want their children to learn Dutch, or they would be assimilated by the country.It seems impossible that these simple people should go out to be American citizens without trying to repay their favor.In fact, they have to live in slums most of the time, and it is really difficult to find a way to survive in an already densely populated country. It was said that the income from growing tobacco in the United States was far better than combing wool in Leyton, so they set off for Virginia.But when the wind was against them, and the sailors on the shore of Massachusetts were clumsy, they decided to stay where they were, and not venture into the horrors of the sea in a leaky ship. But although they escaped the danger of drowning and seasickness, they were still in danger.Most of them are people from small towns in the British interior, without the ability to create a life.The communist ideology was shattered by the cold, the enthusiasm of the city was chilled by the relentless wind, and the wives and children died for lack of decent food.Only a few survived three winters, good-natured, accustomed to the rough and simple tolerance of their homeland.But they were completely swallowed up by the subsequent arrival of thousands of new colonists.Those who came after were, without exception, the harsher, more intransigent Puritans who made Massachusetts, for centuries, the Geneva-sur-Charles. The Puritans, scrambling to make a living in a tiny place, were always suffering, and more than ever they looked to the Old Testament for justification for what they thought and did.They broke off with respectable society and books, and realized their own strange religious spirit.They saw themselves as the descendants of Moses and Gideon, who would soon become the Maccabees of the Indians of the West.They have no way of consoling themselves with their tedious life, but believe that they are suffering for the only true faith, and from this they conclude that everyone else is wrong.Whoever implicitly says that what the Puritans did was not quite right, is ill-treated for differing views, and is either mercilessly whipped and driven into the moors, or has his ears and tongue cut off, and is driven out of the country , unless they were lucky enough to escape and hide in the neighboring Swedish and Dutch colonies. This colony contributed nothing to the cause of religious liberty and toleration, and it did not do what it wanted to do, but did it wrongly, which is not uncommon in the history of human progress.The violence of religious despotism provoked the reaction of more liberal policies.After almost two centuries of clerical despotism, a new generation arose, open and formidable enemies of all forms of clerical government, who believed in the necessity of a separation of church and state, and resented the mixing of religion and politics by their predecessors. The development was slow, but with some luck, the crisis did not arise until hostilities broke out between Great Britain and its American colonies.It turned out that the men who wrote the Constitution of the United States were either freethinkers or secret enemies of old-fashioned Calvinism, and they injected into the document rather modern principles that have proven to be of great value in maintaining the peace and stability of the republic. Before this, however, the New World had undergone an unexpected development in the field of Catholicism, and it was in the Catholic Diocese, in what is now Maryland. The main characters in this interesting incident are Calvert and his son, originally from Flemish, but his father later moved to England and served the Stuart dynasty, doing a good job.They were Protestants at first, but George Calvert—who became private secretary and steward to King James I—tired of the theological entanglements of the day, and returned to the old faith.Good or bad or neither, the old faith calls black black and white white, and does not leave the final judgment of every creed to a bunch of semi-literate priests. This George Calvert seemed to have many talents, and his backsliding (a serious crime in those days!) did not disqualify him from the favor of his royal master.Instead, he was created Baron Baltimore of Baltimore and had promises of help in planning a small settlement for persecuted Catholics.He first tried his luck in Newfoundland, but the occupants he sent were evicted, so he applied for several thousand square miles in Virginia. Unexpectedly, Virginians are diehard Episcopalians, and they don't want these dangerous people as neighbors.Baltimore then claimed a stretch of wilderness between Virginia and the Dutch and Swedish territories, but died before it was granted.His son Cecil continued the good work, and in the winter of 1633-1634, two small ships, the Ark and the Dove, crossed the Atlantic under the command of George's brother Leonard, Arrived safely in the Chesapeake Bay full of passengers in March 1634.The new country was called Maryland, named after Mary, daughter of King Henry IV of France.Henry IV had planned to form a union of European countries, but this plan was broken by a mad monk with a dagger.Mary became the wife of the King of England, who soon lost his head at the hands of the Puritans. This colony was very different, it did not cut off Indian women, it treated Catholics and Protestants equally, and it had a hard time.First of all, there are many Episcopalians in the settlement area, who came to escape the tyranny of the Puritans in Massachusetts.Later, the Puritans also stepped into this immigration area in order to escape the tyranny of the Virginia Episcopal Church.These two groups are outlaws, domineering, and both want to bring their "correct beliefs" into the state that just gave them a place to live.Since "all strife leading to fanaticism" was forbidden on Maryland soil, the old settlers had the power to keep Episcopalians and Puritans quiet.But soon after the homeland war between the Royalists and the Roundheads broke out, Marylanders feared that no matter which side won, their old freedoms would be lost.Thus, in April 1649, just after news of the execution of Charles I, the famous Act of Toleration was passed at the direct initiative of Sewell Calvert.One of these passages is excellent: "Because the oppressive rule of religion over thought often produces harmful results wherever it reaches, for the stability of the political power in this province, and for the protection of the friendship and solidarity among the residents, it is hereby decided that no one shall use religion or religious belief as a Intervention, harassment, and persecution of all those who believe in Jesus Christ in this province for the same reason.” To be able to pass such a bill in a country where the Jesuits hold a lot of power shows outstanding political ability and extraordinary courage of the Baltimore family.This spirit of generosity was praised by visitors.Later, a group of fleeing Puritans overthrew Maryland and repealed the Toleration Act and replaced it with their own Religious Act, which granted freedom of religion to those who claimed to be Christians, but not Catholics and Episcopalians. Except. Fortunately, this reactionary period was not long.In 1660 the Stuarts returned to power, and the Baltimores returned to the Great Seal of Maryland. Yet another attack on their policies came from the other side.The Anglicans had won a complete victory in their own country, and therefore insisted on making their church the official religion of all colonies.The Calverts continued to fight, but they saw that it was impossible to attract the new settlers to their side.After a whole generation of struggle, the experiment was terminated. The Protestants had won. Bossiness also prevailed.