Clergymen as Polite Philosophers. Douglas and the Conflict between Moderates and Orthodox in the Scottish Enlightenment

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Notes

¹ On the patronage issue, see R. Sher, Church and University in the Scottish Enlightenment. The Moderate Literati of Edinburgh (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1985), ch. 2, and I. D. Clark, ‘From Protest to Reaction: The Moderate Regime in the Church of Scotland, 1752–1805’, in Scotland in the Age of Improvement, second edition, edited by N. Phillipson and R. Mitchison (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1996).

² On Robertson, see especially William Robertson and the Expansion of Empire, edited by S. J. Brown (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997). For Blair and Ferguson, see R. B. Sher, ‘Blair, Hugh (1718–1800)’ and F. Oz‐Salzberger, ‘Ferguson, Adam (1723–1816)’ in the 2004 Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.

³ Sher, Church and University, 65.

⁴ On the development of this language of politeness in the early eighteenth century, see L. Klein, Shaftesbury and the Culture of Politeness. Moral Discourse and Cultural Politics in Early Eighteenth‐century England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 3–8.

⁵ G. Anderson, The Use and Abuse of Diversions. A Sermon on Luke XIX. 13. With an Appendix, shewing that the Stage in particular is an Unchristian Diversion (Edinburgh, 1733), 58.

⁶ J. Witherspoon, Ecclesiastical Characteristics: Or, the Arcana of Church Policy (Glasgow, 1753), 23.

⁷ A. Cameron, ‘Theatre in Scotland 1660–1800’, in The History of Scottish Literature Volume 2, edited by A. Hook (Aberdeen: Aberdeen University Press, 1987), 191–205: 197–8.

⁸ See D. W. Howe, ‘John Witherspoon and the Trans‐Atlantic Enlightenment’, in The Atlantic Enlightenment, edited by F. Cogliano and S. Manning (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008), 61–80.

⁹ Quoted in N. C. Landsman, ‘Witherspoon and the Problem of Provincial Identity’, in Scotland and America in the Age of Enlightenment, edited by R. Sher and J. Smitten (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1990), 29–45: 36.

¹⁰ Anderson, The Use and Abuse of Diversions.

¹¹ Anderson, 58.

¹² J. Witherspoon, A Serious Enquiry into the Nature and Effects of the Stage (Glasgow, 1757), 9.

¹³ Witherspoon, 9.

¹⁴ Witherspoon, 11.

¹⁵ Witherspoon, 11.

¹⁶ Witherspoon, 19.

¹⁷ Witherspoon, 13–14.

¹⁸ Witherspoon, ‘Lectures on Moral Philosophy’ in The Works of John Witherspoon, D.D. Sometime Minister of the Gospel at Paisley, and Late President of Princeton College, in New Jersey. 9 vols (Edinburgh, 1805), vol. 7, 24.

¹⁹ Witherspoon, Serious Enquiry, 19.

²⁰ M. Noll, America’s God (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 106.

²¹ J. Witherspoon, ‘Lectures on Moral Philosophy’, 19.

²² Witherspoon, 22.

²³ Witherspoon, 17–18.

²⁴ Witherspoon, 42.

²⁵ Witherspoon, 18.

²⁷ A. Ferguson, The Morality of Stage‐Plays Seriously Considered (Edinburgh, 1757), 3.

²⁶ The actor and theatre manager Colley Cibber, for example, virtually rewrote Shakespeare’s Richard III (see E. Salmon, ‘Cibber, Colley (1671–1757)’, in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004)).

²⁸ J. Seigel, The Idea of the Self. Thought and Experience in Western Europe since the Seventeenth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 161.

³¹ Ferguson, 11.

²⁹ Ferguson, The Morality of Stage‐Plays, 10.

³⁰ Ferguson, 8.

³² Ferguson, 11.

³³ Ferguson, 17.

³⁴ Ferguson, 18.

³⁵ H. Blair, ‘Sermon X. On Devotion’, 274, in Hugh Blair, Sermons (Edinburgh, 1777).

³⁶ On the seventeenth‐century origins of these arguments on the passions, see S. James, Passion and Action. The Emotions in Seventeenth‐Century Philosophy (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997), esp. Part III.

³⁷ D. Hume, Treatise of Human Nature, edited by D. F. Norton and M. J. Norton (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 2.2.3.

³⁸ G. Anderson, An Estimate of the Profit and Loss of Religion, Personally and Publicly Stated (Edinburgh, 1753), 10.

³⁹ A. Ferguson, An Essay on the History of Civil Society, edited by F. Oz‐Salzberger (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), esp. Part VI.

⁴⁰ Witherspoon, A Serious Inquiry, 69–70.

⁴¹ Witherspoon, A Serious Inquiry, 7–8. See Seneca’s Epistulae morales ad Lucilium, letter 7, section 2, line 6.

⁴² On the Hutchinsonians, see N. Aston, ‘From Personality to Party: The Creation and Transmission of Hutchinsonianism, c.1725–1750’, Studies in History and Philosophy of Science, 35 (2004), 625–44.

⁴³ Witherspoon, ‘Lectures on Moral Philosophy’, 11.

⁴⁴ A. Ferguson, The Morality of Stage‐Plays Seriously Considered (Edinburgh, 1757), 21–2.

⁴⁵ Witherspoon, Serious Enquiry, 2.

⁴⁶ ‘[Q]ui autem scandalizaverit unum de pusillis istis qui in me credunt expedit ei ut suspendatur mola asinaria in collo eius et demergatur in profundum maris.’

⁴⁷ ‘Quapropter si esca scandalizat fratrem meum, non manducabo carnem in aeternum, ne fratrem meum scandalizem.’ (1 Cor. 8:13).

⁴⁸ See L. Buisson, Potestas und Caritas. Die päpstliche Gewalt im Spätmittelalter (Cologne and Graz: Böhlau Verlag, 1958), ch. 1.

⁴⁹ T. Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, 2a2ae, q.10, art. 10 (T. Aquinas, Political Writings, edited by R. W. Dyson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 273).

⁵⁰ B. Carpzov, Opus Definitionum Ecclesiasticarum seu Consistorialium (1665), quoted in T. Ahnert, Religion and the Origins of the German Enlightenment; Faith and the Reform of Learning in the Thought of Christian Thomasius (Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 2006), 49.

⁵¹ Carpzov, quoted in Ahnert, 49.

⁵² Ferguson, The Morality of Stage‐Plays, 21.