Baxter Smacks Spinoza
Extracts from Richard Baxter's "The second part of The nonconformists plea for peace being an account of their principles about civil and ecclesiastical authority and obedience" (1680)
Published in 1680—though the author recollects that most of the material was penned in 1668—Richard Baxter’s (1615-1691) apologia for nonconformists under the then-reestablished Stuart monarchy (five years prior to the death of Charles II) constitutes more than a mere defense against accusations of sedition and “plea for peace.” It is, as the subtitle hints, an “ACCOVNT of […] Principles about Civil and Ecclesiastical Authority,” and serves as a follow-up to the Nonconformists Judgement of the Interest of Reason in Religion (1676), and, more obviously, The Nonconformists Plea for Peace or An Account of their Judgment (1679).
Again, the stated impetus for Baxter’s sequel was to combat “the Popish Dialogue and many others, continuing loudly to accuse us, and make men believe that we are plotting a new war, and that our Principles are rebellious.” That is, that nonconformist could, at any moment, hatch a “Plot for the destruction of the King, and change of Government and Religion,” and that Presbyterians, in particular, subversive, disloyal, “Fanaticks” singularly responsible for instigating the civil war.
Baxter makes clear that he is not a Presbyterian, but nevertheless rides to their aid and defense. He seems to have been moved by a sort of NATO, mutual security idea of nonconformity—i.e., an attack on one is an attack on all. Even as he distinguishes his own Baxterian polity from, well, everyone else, Baxter repeatedly refers to his interlocutors as “our accusers” or “those that seek our blood and ruine by the false accusation of Rebellious principles.”
One preliminary argument in the Second Part is revealing in this regard. In brief, Baxter accuses the accusers of nonconformists of being demonstrably unreasonable—calling it unlikely that they believe in “a life to come” or a future judgment at all—for believing in a Presbyterian plot. For Presbyterians did not, in fact, exist in England then, argues Baxter. Where was the national assembly? Where were the classes of London? Et cetera. By extension and implication, all nonconformists were Congregationalists after the Restoration since Presbyterian distinctives could not be recognized. Maybe Baxter was cleverly pointing this out to his (formerly) Presbyterian brethren.
He further claims, inter alia, that Presbyterians roundly rejected the execution of Charles I; that Oliver Cromwell and the parliamentarian army never could have accomplished such if they had not purged parliament of loyal Presbyterians and jailed many besides; and that the Restoration army of George Monck (1608-1670) had “twenty if not forty times as many Presbyterians in it as the Earl of Essex’s [i.e., Robert Devereux (1591-1646)] Army had when the war began.” In other words, Charles II never would have recovered his throne had it not been for Presbyterians.
As the book progresses beyond the preface, Baxter’s method of rebuttal is not merely defensive; rather, he positively outlines Protestant political principles, painting them as both loyal and conventional. There is no reason to think Baxter was being disingenuously pragmatic. He should be taken as representative.
The Second Part opens with, of all things, a refutation of Baruch Spinoza (1632-1677) “and such Bruitists,” like Hobbes, whose “principles are so pernicious, subverting humanity, morality and Government.”[1] Specifically, Baxter selects Spinoza’s Tractatus Theologico-Politicus (1670) as his whipping boy and whip him he does.
The central claim of Spinoza from which all other problems follow, in Baxter’s view, is that “The Right of Nature is nothing but the Rule by which every thing is determined to his manner of being and operation… That natural Right extendeth as far as power. That every Individual hath the Highest Right, to all things that he is able to do. That it is the chief Law of Nature, that every thing do its utmost to continue in its own state, having no respect to any other, but only to it self.”[2]
“Man being naturally made to be Governed, God must needs be his supreme governour, as having the chief Right and sole capacity and aptitude.” God is the foundation of all rule, all power, all morality, all law. “If God were not the supreme Governour, no King or person could have true Right to govern, for there could be no effect for want of a cause.”[3]
Against this claim Baxter froths mightily.
That man is little more than a beast governed by “only Lass of Appetite” and that “the natural right of every man is not determined by sound reason, but by Lust and power,” is ludicrous dangerous, argues Baxter; that every man is left to his own judgment and interests is licentious. Spinoza’s power politics, in Baxter’s estimation, yields the result that “societies may be formed without any wrong to the right of nature: and he that hath most power is bound by no Law. And thus we are bound to execute all his commands that hath most power, be they most absurd: because reason bids us chuse the less evil.”[4] An untenable result this.
In the “Bruitist” world, “charity, justice and common honesty, except what mens private interest, or the will of him that is strongest doth infer” are all shunned in favor of “civil Right” constructed only by the positive law and will of those in power with no transcendent referent undergirding the same. “[F]or in the state of nature, Reason hath no more Right than Appetite,” so social strictures may be founded on either one according to the preference of the powerful.[5]
These political premises are animated by Spinoza’s “Epicurean principles of Philosophy about God” wherein God moves the world “as a Clock or Watch by mere invariable necessity,” as the “necessary… first cause of all things and motions” only and without any further intervention.[6] Baxter calls as witness against Spinoza and the Epicureans—who Cicero said were objects of “common contempt with sober men”—the ius gentium, the testimony of even “the most Barbarous Nations of the world” that “a morally Governing Deity” rules the world, not the aloof, disinterested clock winder of the mechanical philosophers.
The result is that kings, as purveyors of positive law and power, are set “above God as to all civil obligations,” since God has no direct interest in the affairs of men.[7] Worse still, “to feign God to be a meer principle of Vniversal motion as the Spring in a Watch, or the poise of a Clock, is to debase him below the Vitality of Beasts: and to feign him to be a meer sensitive principle of motion, is to debase him below humane nature.”[8]
Speaking of human nature, contra Spinoza,
“Man having Vitality, Intellection and Free-will, and being a Sociable creature, each one having need of others and disposed to converse, and placed among others, is a Creature made to be Governed according to his Reason, by Verities, and according to his Free-will by proposed Good; and not meerly moved as a Stone, or Engine, nor meer∣ly moved as Bruits by sense: that is, he is to be ruled by Laws.. If the Nature of man were not to be morally governed by proposed Truth and Good, his Reason and Will were vain; he should not be ruled as a man but as a stone or beast.”[9]
Indeed, man’s nature itself “is the chief part of this objective Law of Nature; from whence [man’s] duty resulteth, and God’s will is notified [i.e., promulgated].”[10]
It is through anthropology, we might say, that we learn how man should live. If man is fundamentally sociable, for example, then, he must live in society, in concern with others. (If he is a reasonable creature then he must be governed by reasonable laws, and so on.)
“God’s Law of Nature bindeth mankind (ordinarily) to live in Governed societies, and hath not left it free to them to do otherwise. Parental Authority is conjunct with our first being, and natural necessity obligeth the rest.”[11]
Of the types of government: “Civil Ecclesiastical and Economical Governours, being instituted by God, are his Officers, and receive their power from his Institution and Universal Laws, and not from the people, who do but choose, or consent to the person that shall receive it.”
Of the character of the types of government: “All Government that is lawful is for God’s Glory and the Common Good. And Laws that are certainly and notoriously against God and the common Good, have no true obliging power to formal obedience on the soul.”[12]
Yet, this principle deserves practical qualifications in order for it to remain congruent with the prior assertions:
“Though the common description of Tyrants in Politicians and Lawyers is (quod exercitium) that they are such as Govern not for the common good, but for their own, yet men must take heed, that hence they infer not either, 1. That we are made judges of the secret intentions of our Rulers’ hearts, or 2. That one or a few Laws or actions may denominate them such, 3. Yea though we knew that they preferred themselves in their intents, it is enough to us, if they preserve the common good in their practice. Else almost all ungodly Rulers would be Tyrants, for it is their common vice to be most for themselves.”[13]
Indeed,
“Though a Prince have not Authority to make Laws to the hurt of the Commonwealth as such, or sub hac ratione, yet he hath Authority to judge what is for the good of the Commonwealth as a Ruler, and subjects must acquiesce in his judgment, when cogent evidence of the contrary doth not forbid them. And when they know that a Law is against the common good, and obligeth not to formal obedience, yet because the general Law of Honouring our Rulers still continues, and sometimes disobeying may tend more to the common hurt, than the obedience of that hurtful law may do, where God himself forbids it not, material obedience in such cases is a duty.”[14]
To wit, “No man is to make himself a publick judge or Executioner of God’s Laws, without God’s Commission.”[15] And further, Baxter makes a point vis a vis human law similar to that of Aquinas, viz., that particular determinations of the natural law applied to context are only binding as to the contingencies they immediately address and are, therefore, not always and everywhere binding in their particulars.
“As the particular case of Countries, persons and things do vary, so many things may be one man’s duty that are not another’s, and a duty at one time, and in on place, which are not so in another: which therefore were not to be particularly determined in an Universal Law.”[16]
On the form of government:
“God hath not made any one form of Government universally necessary, Monarchy, Aristocracy, or Democracy; and who hath the highest power, and in what degree, and under what limits, is not to be decided by Divines from the word of God alone, but by Lawyers from the Constitutions of the respective Commonwealths. And it is usually of ill consequence, when Divines are too forward to go out of their calling, and to be determiners herein; Especially when few of them use to be well studied in the Laws of the Land; at least not comparably to Lawyers, who have made it the business of their lives.”[17]
This was, and remained, a common (and pragmatic) conviction of post-Reformation orthodox. In the Vindication (1717) of John Wise (1652-1725), for example, he invokes Henry Booth (1652-1694), the first earl of Warrington, for the idea that government, as to its form, is not a “Divine Institution,” but rather “the Produce of Man’s Reason, of Humane and Rational Combinations.” No society can “subsist without it,” but the “Particular Form of Government is necessary which best suits the Temper and Inclination of a People.” For “Nothing can be God’s Ordinance, but what he has particularly Declared to be such; there is no particular Form of Civil Government described in God’s Word, neither does Nature prompt it.” Wise is, perhaps, a little looser with this subject insofar as he does not limit his consideration of governmental form to the Aristotelian trifecta, than Baxter but the central principle is the same. (One day, I’ll post a ridiculously long piece on Wise’s source materials, but it is not this day.)
Back to Baxter. Cleverly, he turns his critique of Spinoza into a defense of nonconformists. He rattles off a twelve point list of convictions belonging to the Spinoza-Hobbes crowd which include “to make all the vitiosity of man to be his natural Law,” “that no man oweth Love, justice or duty to Parents, King or Country… and that it is no sin to kill King or Parents or Children or Neighbours; if he can scape revenge and hurt, and serve his lust thereby,” and “that no Oaths bind him to his King or Country longer than he find it for his sensual good,” et cetera. Baxter then concludes:
“I say they that hold and publish this, are such as we hold more worthy to be banished five miles from all Cities and Corporations, than our selves: And we leave their Principles and ours to the judgement of posterity, wishing (in vain) that those Conformists who are thought sufficient for the sacred work without us, and have access to those whom we may not coverse with, had proved more sufficient to have preserved Cities and Corporations and the Land from Infidelity, Popery and raging sensuality.”[18]
[1] Baxter, second part, 2.
[2] Baxter, second part, 2.
[3] Baxter, The second part of the nonconformists plea for peace being an account of their principles about civil and ecclesiastical authority and obedience…, p. 11.
[4] Baxter, second part, 4.
[5] Baxter, second part, 7.
[6] Baxter, second part, 6.
[7] Baxter, second part, 7.
[8] Baxter, second part, 9.
[9] Baxter, second part, 10.
[10] Baxter, second part, 12.
[11] Baxter, second part, p. 15.
[12] Baxter, second part, p. 15.
[13] Baxter, second part, p. 16 (emphasis original).
[14] Baxter, second part, pp. 16-17.
[15] Baxter, second part, p. 24.
[16] Baxter, second part, p. 24. “Christ hath taken down the Judaical Laws of Moses.” Ibid., p. 28.
[17] Baxter, second part, p. 18.
[18] Baxter, second part, 19.