Secularisation

Christian political thought in the period from 1760 to 1789 largely followed the ideological agenda set by the Restoration and Revolution Settlements in the later seventeenth century. It was dominated by constitutional and philosophical arguments relating to political authority, obligation and the right of rebellion. In one sense the central tradition itself represented a secularising tendency; the distinction between government in general as the ordinance of God and the particular form of government as the ordinance of man stressed that one area of political theory at least was left for human, secular determination. Some thinkers, like Horne and Wesley, limited this area as much as possible. Others, like Watson, Berington and Robinson, stressed the human autonomy within it. But the degree of secularisation within this latter tradition should not be exaggerated. The role of God in Locke's political philosophy has been demonstrated recently, and the political theory of his disciples in this period remained essentially theocentric. As well as regarding the divine will as the ultimate source of obligation, writers like Watson, Evans and Price based their concept of popular sovereignty upon the God-given equality of man, and reformers like Cartwright and Burgh based their radical arguments on the same premise.

Secularisation came less from within the old Locke–Filmer spectrum and more from the Enlightenment mode of thought. The atheist Enlightenment was represented in Britain largely by Hume, Gibbon and Bentham, but their effect was slight compared with that of Christian writers deeply influenced by the new ways of thinking.