It may be
remarked that this reasoning, with a few modifications, could be used in
favour of other religions, at Mecca or at Timbuctoo. He has, in effect,
revived the argument used by Pascal that if there is one chance in any
very large number that Christianity is true, it is a man's interest to
be a Christian; for, if it prove false, it will do him no harm to have
believed it; if it prove true, he will be infinitely the gainer. Butler
seeks indeed to show that the chances in favour amount to a probability,
but his argument is essentially of the same intellectual and moral value
as Pascal's. It has been pointed out that it leads by an easy logical
step from the Anglican to the Roman Church. Catholics and Protestants
(as King Henry IV of France argued) agree that a Catholic may be saved;
the Catholics assert that a Protestant will be damned; therefore the
safe course is to embrace Catholicism. [3]
I have dwelt at some length upon some of the English deists, because,
while they occupy an important place in the history of
[153] rationalism in England, they also supplied, along with Bayle, a
great deal of the thought which, manipulated by brilliant writers on the
other side of the Channel, captured the educated classes in France. We
are now in the age of Voltaire. He was a convinced deist. He considered
that the nature of the universe proved that it was made by a conscious
architect, he held that God was required in the interests of conduct,
and he ardently combated atheism.
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