early Christians and all the most distinguished and religious philosophers have borne that name, simply because they were too far before men for their sympathy, too far above them for their comprehension, and because, therefore, their Idea of God was sublimer and nearer the truth than that held by their opponents.
Now the conception we form of God, under the most perfect circumstances, must, from the nature of things, fall short of the reality. The Finite can form no adequate conception or imagination of the Infinite. All the conceptions of the human mind are conceived under the limitation of Time and Space; of dependence on a cause exterior to itself;
Clarke, Jacob Böhme; Kant, and Fichte, and Scbelling, and Hegel, are still under the ban. See some curious details of this subject in Reimmann's Historia Atheismi, &c. 1725, a dull book but profitable. See also a Dissertation by Buchwaldius, De Controversiis recentioribus do Atheismo, Viteb. 1716, 1 vol. quarto, and “Historical Sketch of Atheism,” by Dr Pond, in American Biblical Repository, for Oct. 1839, p. 320, et seq.
Possevin, in his Bibliotheca, puts Luther and Melancthon among the Atheists. Mersenne (in his Comment, in Geneseos) says, that in 1622 there were 50,000 Atheists in Paris alone, often a dozen in a single house. Biographie Universelle, Tom. XXVIII. p. 390. See some curious details respecting the literary treatment of the subject in J.G. Walch's Philosophisches Lexicon, 2d ed., Leip. 1733, pp. 134–146. Dr Woods, in his translation of Knapp's Theology (New York, 1831, 2 vols. 8vo), in a note borrowed from Hahn's Lehrbuch des Christ. Glaubens, p. 175, et seq., places Dr Priestley among the modern Atheists, where also he puts De La Mettrie, Von Holbach (or La-Grange), Helvetius, Diderot, and d'Alembert. Such catalogues are instructive. But see Clarke's Classification of Atheists at the beginning of the discourse, in his Works, Vol. II. p. 521, et seq.
The charge of impiety is always brought against such as differ from the public faith, especially if they rise above it. Thus Hicks declared Tillotson “the gravest Atheist that ever was.” Discourse on Tillotson and Burnet in Lechler, Gesch. Englischen Deismus, Stuttgart, 1841, p. 150, et seq. In 1697, Peter Browne, for a similar abuse of Toland, was rewarded with the office of a Bishop.—Ib. p. 195. A curious old writer says, “among the Grecians of old, those, Secretaries of Nature, which first made a tender of the natural causes of lightnings and tempests to the rude ears of men, were blasted with the reproach of Atheists, and fell under the hatred of the untutored rabble, because they did not, like them, receive every extraordinary in nature as an immediate expression of the power and displeasure of the Deity.” Spencer, Preface to his Discourse concerning Prodigies, London, 1665. Diodorus Siculus, Lib. 1, p. 75 (ed. Rhodoman), relates an instructive case. A Roman soldier, in Egypt, accidentally killed a cat—killed a god, for the cat was a popular object of worship. The people rose upon him, and nothing could save him from a violent death at the hands of the mob. All religious persecutions, if it be allowed to compare the little with the great, may be reduced to this one denomination. The heretic, actually or by implication, killed a consecrated cat, and the Orthodox would fain kill him. But as the same thing is not sacred in all countries (for even asses have their worshippers), the cat-killer, though an abomination in Egypt, would be a great saint in some lands where dogs are worshipped.
