Modern Skepticism: A Journey Through the Land of Doubt and Back Again. Joseph Barker
a Kempis, and William Law. And then came Bolton and Howe, and Doddridge and Watts. Then Penn, and Barclay, and Clarkson, and Sewell, and Hales, and Dell caught my attention, giving me interesting revelations of Quaker thought and feeling.
And I was edified by Lactantius and Chrysostom, the most eloquent, rational and practical of the Christian Fathers. By and by came Priestley and Price, and Dr. John Taylor, and W. E. Channing, and a host of others of the modern school of heterodox writers. I also read a number of celebrated French authors, including Bossuet and Bourdaloue, Flechier and Massillon, Pascal and Fenelon, and the eloquent, Protestant preacher and author, M. Saurin. I read the principal works both of Catholics and Protestants, of the Fathers and Reformers, of Churchmen and Dissenters, of Quakers and Mystics, of Methodists and Calvinists, of Unitarians and Infidels.
I read several works on Law and Government, including Puffendorf's Law of Nature, Grotius on the Laws of Peace and War, Bodin on Government, Montesquieu's Spirit of Laws, Blackstone's Commentaries, and Jeremy Taylor's Ductor Dubitantium. I had read works on Anatomy, Physiology and Medicine, when I could get hold of them, from the time when I was only twelve years old. I never went far into any other sciences, yet I studied, to some extent, Astronomy, Geology, Physical Geography, Botany, Natural History, and Anthropology. I read Wesley's publication on Natural Philosophy, and I gave more or less attention to every work on science and natural philosophy that came in my way. Works on natural religion and natural theology, in which science was taught and used in subservience to Christian truth and duty, I read whenever I could get hold of them. They interested me exceedingly. For works on Painting, Sculpture, Architecture, I had not the least regard. They seemed to have no tendency to help me in the work in which I was engaged, and I had no desire to talk respectable nonsense on such subjects. I was fond of Ecclesiastical and Civil History, and read most greedily such works as threw light on the progress of society in learning, science, and useful arts; in freedom, morals, religion and government. I read many of the works of the ancient Greeks and Romans, and the history of the wonderful periods in which they flourished. I was especially fond of Cicero, Seneca, and Epictetus. All subjects bearing on the great interests of mankind, and all works revealing the workings of the human mind and the laws of human nature, seemed to me to bear important relations to religion and the Bible; and the writings of the great philosophers, lawyers, and historians, appeared to be almost as much in my line as Baxter's Christian Directory, or Wesley's Notes on the New Testament.
Tales of wars and intrigues, and of royal and aristocratic vices and follies I hated. Yet I was interested in accounts of religious controversies, and read with eagerness, though with pain and horror, the tragic and soul-harrowing stories of the deadly conflicts between Christian piety and anti-Christian intolerance. Above all I loved well-written books on the beneficial influence of Christianity on the temporal interests and the general happiness of mankind. I liked good biographies, especially of celebrated students, great philosophers, and remarkable Christian philanthropists. Of works of fiction I read very few, and evermore still fewer as I got older, until at length I came to view them generally as a great nuisance. There are few, I suppose, that can say they read the whole, not only of Wesley's works, but of his Christian Library, in fifty volumes; yet I went through the whole, though one of the books was so profound, or else so silly, that I could not find one sentence in it that I could properly understand. I read the greater part of the books of my friends. I went through nearly the whole library of a village about two miles distant from my native place. My native place itself could not boast a library in those days. I read scores, if not hundreds of books that taught me nothing but the ignorance and self-conceit of the writers, and the various forms of literary and religious insanity to which poor weak humanity is liable.
There was a large old Free Library at Newcastle-on-Tyne, left to the city by a celebrated clergyman, which contained all the Fathers, all the Greek and Roman Classics, all the more celebrated of the old Infidels, all the old leading skeptical and lawless writers of Italy, and France, and Holland, all the great old Church of England writers, and all the leading writers of the Nonconformists, Dissenters, and Heretics of all kinds. To this library I used to go, day after day, and stay from morning to night, reading some of the great authors through, and examining almost all of them sufficiently to enable me to see what there was in each, that I had not met with in the rest. Here I read Hobbes and Machiavel, Bolingbroke and Shaftesbury, Tindal and Chubb. Here I first saw the works of Cudworth and Chillingworth, and here too I first found the entire works of Bacon and Newton, of Locke and Boyle. Here also I read the works of some of the older defenders of the faith. Grotius on the truth of the Christian religion I had read much earlier. I had used it as a school book, translating it both out of Latin into English, and out of English back into Latin, imprinting it thereby almost word for word upon my memory. I had also read the work of his commentator on the causes of incredulity. Leland on the deistical writers, and Paley's Evidences, and others, I read after. But in this great old library I met with numbers of interesting and important works that I have never met with since. And here, in the dimly lighted antiquated rooms, I used to fill my mind with a world of facts, and thoughts, and fancies, and then go away to meditate upon them while travelling on my way, or sitting in my room, or lying on my bed. Day and night, alone and in company, these were the things which filled my mind and exercised my thoughts.
And having a rather retentive memory, and considerable powers of imagination, I was able at times to bring almost all the things of importance which I had met with in my reading, before my mind, and compare them both with each other, and with all that was already in my memory. And whatever appeared to me most rational, most scriptural, I treasured for future use, allowing the rest to drift away into forgetfulness.
No one can imagine the happiness I found in this my search after truth, except those who have experienced the like. I seemed at times to live in a region of the highest and divinest bliss. Every fresh discovery of truth, every detection of old error, every enlargement of my views, brought unspeakable rapture; and had it not been for the narrow-mindedness of some of my friends, the restraints of established creeds, and the thought of the trials which my mental revels might some day bring on me and my family, my life would have been a heaven on earth.
Perhaps I read too much, or too greedily and variously. Would it not in any case have been better for me to have refrained from reading the writings of such a host of heretics, infidels, and mere natural philosophers? It is certain that what I attempted was too much for my powers, and too vast for one man's life. But I was not sufficiently conscious of the infinitude of truth, or of the narrow limits of my powers, or of the infinite mysteries of which humanity and the universe are full. And my desire for knowledge was infinite, and my appetite was very keen, and I was so desirous to be right on every subject bearing on the religion of Christ, and on the great interests of mankind, that nothing that I could do seemed too much if it seemed likely to help me in the attainment of my object.
Then I had no considerate and enlightened guide; no friend, no colleague, with a father's heart, to direct me in my studies or my choice of books. There was one minister in the Body to which I belonged that might have given me good counsel, if he had been at hand, but he and I were never stationed in the same neighborhood. And he had suffered so much on account of his superior intelligence and liberal tendencies, that he might have felt unwilling to advise me freely. The preachers generally could not understand me, and they had no sympathy with my eager longings for religious knowledge. They could not comprehend what in the world I could want beyond their own old stereotyped notions and phrases, and the comfortable provision made for the supply of my temporal wants. Why could I not check my thinking, enjoy my popularity, and rejoice in the success of my labors? And when I could not take their flippant counsels, they had nothing left but hints at unpleasant consequences. There was nothing for me therefore, but to follow the promptings of my own insatiate soul, and travel on alone in the fear of God, hoping that things would get better, and my prospects grow brighter by and by.
So I moved on in my own track, still digging for truth as for silver, and searching for it as for hidden treasure. And I worked unceasingly, and with all my might. I lost no time. I hated pleasure parties, and all kinds of amusements. My work was my amusement. I hated company, unless the subject of conversation could be religion, or something pertaining to it. When obliged to go out and take dinner, or tea, or supper, I always took a book or two with me, and if the company were not inclined to spend the time