monument to immutable morality and Christian
philosophy which has survived many changes of opinion and revolutions of
thought.'[150] But from another point of view we shall come to a very
different conclusion.

Shaftesbury was regarded by his contemporaries as a decided and
formidable adversary of Christianity. Pope told Warburton,[151] that 'to
his knowledge "The Characteristics" had done more harm to Revealed
Religion in England than all the works of Infidelity put together.'
Voltaire called him 'even a too vehement opponent of Christianity.'
Warburton, while admitting his many excellent qualities both as a man
and as a writer, speaks of 'the inveterate rancour which he indulged
against Christianity.'[152]

A careful examination of Shaftesbury's writings can hardly fail to lead
us to the same conclusion. He writes, indeed, as an easy, well-bred man
of the world, and was no doubt perfectly sincere in his constantly
repeated disavowal of any wish to disturb the existing state of things.
But his reason obviously is that 'the game would not be worth the
candle.' No one can fail to perceive a contemptuous irony in many
passages in which Shaftesbury affirms his orthodoxy, or when he touches
upon the persecution of the early Christians, or upon the mysteries of
Christianity, or upon the sacred duty of complying with the established
religion with unreasoning faith, or upon his presumed scepticism, or
upon the nature of the Christian miracles, or upon the character of our
Blessed Saviour, or upon the representation of God in the Old Testament,
or upon the supposed omission of the virtue of friendship in the
Christian system of ethics.

It is needless to quote the passages in which Shaftesbury, like the
other Deists, abuses the Jews; neither is it necessary to dwell upon his
strange argument that ridicule is the best test of truth. In this, as in
other parts of his writings, it is often difficult to see when he is
writing seriously, when ironically. Perhaps he has himself furnished us
with the means of solving the difficulty. 'If,' he writes, 'men are
forbidden to speak their minds seriously on certain subjects, they will
do it ironically. If they are forbidden to speak at all upon such
subjects, or if they find it really dangerous to do so, they will then
redouble their disguise, involve themselves in mysteriousness, and talk
so as hardly to be understood or at least not plainly interpreted by
those who are disposed to do