Reason and Religion in Late Seventeenth-Century England

Christopher J. Walker

"Reason has always held an uncertain position within Christianity. 'I believe because it is absurd',wrote Tertullian in the third century as he dismissed rational thought. For Augustine of Hippo, reason had some merit as a route to faith but otherwise was of limited value, since it could undermine a person's ability to approach God: 'the wisdom of the creature', he opined, 'is a kind of twilight.' In seventeenth-century England, reason had come to mean, most usually, a spirit of free enquiry: the exercise of human intelligence upon some form of truth, whether religious or scientific. The notion of revelation, by contrast, indicated the wider divine scheme within which human existence was situated. Despite the influential writings of Erasmus of Rotterdam - exemplary Christian humanist, whose friendships with Thomas More and John Colet were close - rationality and faith continued to sit...