Page:History of Modern Philosophy (Falckenberg).djvu/213

 TINDAL, CHUBB. 191 the creation, as universal as reason, and as unchange- able as God, human nature, and the relations of things, which we should respect in our actions. Religion is moral- ity; more exactly, it is the free, constant disposition to do as much good as possible, and thereby to promote the glory of God and our own welfare. For the harmony of our conduct with the rules of reason constitutes our perfection, and on this depends our happiness. Since God is infinitely blessed and self-sufKcient his purpose in the moral law is man's happiness alone. Whatever a positive religion contains beyond the moral law is superstition, which puts emphasis on worthless trivialities. The true religion occupies the happy mean between miserable un- faith, on the one hand, and timorous superstition, wild fanaticism, and pietistical zeal on the other. In proclaim- ing the sovereignty of reason in the sphere of religion as well as elsewhere, we are only openly demanding what our opponents have tacitly acknowledged in practice {e. g., in allegorical interpretation) from time immemorial. God has endowed us with reason in order that we should by it distinguish truth from falsehood. Thomas Chubb (1679-1747), a man of the people (he was a glove maker and tallow-chandler), and from 171 5 on a participant in deistic literature and concerned to adapt the new ideas to the men of his class, preached in The True Gos- pel of Jesus Christ an honorable working-man's Christianity. Faith means obedience to the law of reason inculcated by Christ, not the acceptance of the facts reported about him. The gospel of Christ was preached to the poor before his death and his asserted resurrection and ascension. It is probable that Christ really lived, because of the great effect of his message ; but he was a man like other men. His gospel is his teaching, not his history, his own teach- ing, not that of his followers — the reflections of the apos- tles are private opinions. Christ's teaching amounts, in effect, to these three fundamental principles: (i) Conform to the rational law of love to God and one's neighbor ; this is the only ground of divine acceptance. (2) After transgres- sion of the law, repentance and reformation are the only grounds of divine grace and forgiveness. (3) At the last