[In the following essay, Aldridge discusses Shaftesbury's critique of religious superstition in The Adept Ladies.]

Scholars have realized for many years that a close connection exists between Protestantism and Rosicrucianism, but the only major literary figures that have been extensively studied from this perspective are the Renaissance martyr Giordano Bruno (who remained nominally a Catholic) and the political and philosophical propagandist of the early Enlightenment John Toland. Bruno's pantheistic hermetism contributed to the development of Rosicrucian texts of the seventeenth century, and Toland drew upon both Bruno and the Rosicrucians for the construction of his theological system, eventually portrayed under the title Pantheisticon. Anthony Ashley Cooper, Third Earl of Shaftesbury, an associate and one-time patron of Toland, approved of the deistical aspects of Toland's system, but ridiculed Rosicrucianism as a particularly invidious type of religious superstition. In so doing, he associated it with the Quakers of his day.

Shaftesbury made this connection between Quakers and Rosicrucians in a prose satire, written ca. 1701-02 but not published during his lifetime: The Adept Ladys or The Angelick Sect. Being the Matters of Fact of certain Adventures Spiritual, Philosophical, Political, and Gallant. In a Letter to a Brother. In these adventures, Shaftesbury himself, as protagonist, successfully resists the financial-erotic schemes of a sanctimonious bawd described as a “Woman in a Quaker dress,” who operates in association with an “Angelick Sect.” The latter is clearly identified as Rosicrucian. The documented historical relations of Shaftesbury with actual Quakers belong to a brief period in 1699-1700 when he lived in Rotterdam.

Although he sought out and established intellectual contacts with Pierre Bayle, Pierre Desmaizeaux, Jean Le Clerc and the Armenian Philip Van Limborch, his most intimate friend was a Quaker, Benjamin Furly, a native Englishman who had taken up residence in Holland as a merchant. Some Quakers at the time were pietistic, given to emotional religious experiences, but others at the opposite extreme were so rational that they were taken for deists. Since Furly completely shared Shaftesbury's religious rationalism, he obviously cannot be associated with the Quaker lady in Shaftesbury's satire. Another prominent resident of the time, however, Francis Mercury Van Helmont, had connections with both Quakers and Rosicrucians. Shaftesbury knew Van Helmont in Holland and describes him in his Characteristics as a “notable enthusiast,” “a successor of Paracelsus, and a master in the occult sciences” (Cooper 1900, 1: 186-87).

While in Rotterdam, Shaftesbury summarized his attitude toward the supernatural in religion.

Amongst those that are celebrating superstitious rites, what would I have? Why seek Familiarity with these? Can I make my self what they are? Can I reconcile my Opinions to theirs? if not, why do I affect this intimacy? their Principles and mine are opposite as the Antipodes.

(qtd. in Voitle 90)

This passage has been taken as referring to orthodox Christianity, but the word rites suggests Rosicrucian ceremonies as well. Elsewhere, in his private notebook, however, Shaftesbury exhorts himself:

Remember therefore to respect these rites, whatever they may be, which others have within their own minds erected to the Deity, as well as those other rites which they have publicly erected and in other outward temples. If modern superstition disturb these be thankful it is not Indian and barbarian, that they are not human sacrifices, that they are not Druids.

(Cooper 1914, 29)

The Quaker woman in Shaftesbury's satire uses a combination of Christian cant, Rosicrucian lore and erotic bait, hoping to lure him into marrying a common prostitute. Shaftesbury was not unique at the time in associating sex and religion with the Quakers. Swift in A Tale of a Tub, which was at first attributed to Shaftesbury, describes female priests who convert carnal pruriency into spiritual ecstasy and identifies them with the Quakers, “who suffer their women to preach and pray” (463). In dedicating an early version of his The Moralists to Lord Somers, Shaftesbury drew a parallel between religious superstition and gallantry, or priests and prostitutes, whores and confessors, in the age of Charles II. In Shaftesbury's words, “Christianity is super-natural Religion: Gallantry is super-natural Love” (qtd. in Voitle 241). This is the pejorative meaning of Gallant in his Adept Ladys.

Although Shaftesbury's Adept Ladys has elements of anti-sectarian satire, it is not a work of deism comparable to the author's widely-known Characteristics. Indeed it incorporates a notable passage of personal testimony, defending the protestantism of the Church of England against competing forms of religion. Shaftesbury recounts that on the day after his unpleasant encounter with the woman in Quaker dress, he and his brother attended the Anglican Church. The following long passage indicates a strain of piety in Shaftesbury's thought quite at odds with his published works.

Thither I never went with truer Zeal in a better Disposition, or with wholesomer Reflections. & what Satisfyed me still the more, it was by appointment that we were that Day to receive the Sacrament together; having had no opportunity of a long time; and it being now in a manner our Duty, at least for Examples sake, on the Account of our Stations in Parlement.

HERE We both of us joyn'd in blessing that good Providence … which had given us … establish'd Rites of Worship as were so Decent, Chast, innocent, pure, and had plac'd us in a Religion and Church where, in respect of the Moderate Party, and far greater Part; the Principle of Charity was really more extensive than in any Christian or Protestant Church besides in the world.

(Cooper 1981, 1: 1, 414)

This passage has little in common with the attack on Rosicrucianism that comprises the major part of the Adept Ladys. The word adept in this title ordinarily in Shaftesbury's day referred to those familiar with the scientific and religious mysteries of the Society of the Rosy Cross. Samuel Butler's Hudibras also uses the term in delightful reference to four of its most notorious votaries.

Or Sir Agrippa for profound
And solid lying much renown'd;
He Anthroposophus, and Floud
And Jacob Behemen understood;
Knew many an amulet and charm,
That would do neither good nor harm:
In Rosicrucian love as learned,
As he that vere adeptus earned.

(Butler 41-42)

These lines refer to Cornelius Agrippa (Agripa von Nettesheim), Robert Fludd, and Jacob Böhme and to a treatise by Thomas Vaughan Anthroposophia Theomagica, or a Discourse of the Nature of Man in the State after Death. Vaughan also translated from the German a major manifesto of the Rosicrucian movement, The Fame and Confession of the Fraternity of R.C. Commonly of the Rosie Cross (London, 1652; original German version 1614).

Almost as important in the history of Rosicrucianism is another German work which directly influenced Shaftesbury's Adept Ladys and which furnishes the basis for interpreting Shaftesbury's satire as being directed in large measure against alchemical religion. This is a religious and political allegory Chymische Hochzeit Christiani Rosencreutz (1616; The Chemical Wedding of Christian Rosencreutz) by Johann Valentin Andreae, who is better known in literary history as the author of a religious utopia Reipublicae Christianopolitanae Descriptio (1619; English version Christianapolis). The Chemical Wedding concerns the activities involved in a week-long marriage ceremony based on Rosicrucian symbolism which culminates in the creation of an alchemical bird. The direct connection between Andreae's allegory and Shaftesbury's Adept Ladys is highlighted in one of the verse squibs appended to the latter work entitled “The Golden Lovers, a Ballad. / Being a Dialogue between Mick of the North, and Nan of the Town.” The “Golden” in the title refers to both the alchemical metal and human urine. The last stanza of the ballad points directly to the Rosicrucians and Andreae in particular.

When jolly Lad Mick went to cheer up his Nancy,
In a Pickle he found her, not much to his Fancy;
With Gally-Pot, Cruisable, Furnace, and Kettle;
At the Work of Creation, a making of mettle.
                    What's here, my sweet Rose?
                    Quoth he, holding his Nose,
Are these the Soft Terms on my Love you impose?
                    I have lov'd Thee for all thour't a Drab and a Blouse:
                    But who can Endure a Chemicall Spouse?

(Cooper 1981, 1: 1, 440)

The reference to Andreae's Chemical Wedding is unmistakable.

Another poetic epigram in Adept Ladys has the title “To his Adept-Mistress: A Song, by Deisdaemon.” As an adept, the lady of the song presumably is a master at the art of alchemy. The poem plays satirically on her two ways of converting base materials to gold—another reference to metal and to urine. In one line “Her single Touch transforms to Gold”; in another, she “Pours from her Urn a Golden Shower!” (Cooper 1981, 1: 1, 434). This subject matter has more in common with Swift's “A Beautiful Young Nymph Going to Bed” than with the elegant prose of the Characteristics. The pen name Deisdaemon that Shaftesbury uses for his epigram literally means God-demon and suggests religious superstition and worship of the forces of evil. The term has connections with two other English deists, Sir Robert Howard and John Toland, as well as with Shaftesbury's later Characteristics. Howard is known in literary history as Dryden's brother-in-law and collaborator in the heroic play The Indian Queen and as a character in The Rehearsal. In addition to various dramatic works, he also wrote The History of Religion which has been neglected, I might say ignored, in scholarship concerning deism. Yet it is one of the most vigorous and incisive attacks on orthodox Christianity to appear in the Age of the Enlightenment. Through a number of ingenious parallels, Howard suggests that Christianity is a type of superstition, only superficially removed from pagan devil worship. He portrays Christianity as a corruption of natural religion by its deifying of man while acknowledging “a superior Sort of Daemons, who never were Men” (11). Quoting Hermes Trismegistus, one of the Rosicrucian hierarchy, he traces the origin of “an Art to make Gods, and to call them Souls of Demons and Angels, and put them into those Images or Gods” (16). He cites the fifteenth satire of the Roman poet Juvenal for authority that men have worshipped “Crocodiles, Serpents, Golden Monkies, Fishes, Dogs, and even Onions and Leeks” (26).

Howard makes the transition to Christianity by affirming that the Romish Saints

and Angels answer to the Daemons and Heroes, deified by the Heathen Priests; and their Idol(s) of Bread, Divinity infused into Crosses, Images, Agnus Dei's and Relicks, correspond to the Pillars, Statues and Images consecrated by Pagan Priests.

When St. Paul at Athens, preached Jesus Christ risen from the dead; they took, this for a Part of their Doctrine of Daemons; which Word is expressly used in the Original. Our Translation saith, Others said, He seemeth to be a Setterforth of strange Gods; but in the Original 'tis, of strange Daemons. For hearing of one, who after his Death had Divine Honours and Worship given to him, they took it presently, according to their own Opinion, that he was proposed as a New Daemon.

(17-18)

Toland reported that Howard was accused of using his History of Religion to whip “the Protestant Clergy on the back of the Heathen and Popish Priests” and that he asked in reply “what they had to do there” (185-86).

In 1697 there appeared in London a pamphlet of 72 pages entitled A Lady's Religion. In a Letter to the Honourable my Lady Howard. By a Divine of the Church of England. Its only connection with the History of Religion consists in a pseudonym attached to a “prefatory Epistle … by a lay-Gentleman.” This preface is signed Adeisidaemon, the negative of Deisidaemon. Later in the same year an Irish clergyman Peter Browne in an attack on Toland's deistical Christianity Not Mysterious, which had been published in 1696, affirmed that the Adeisidaemon of A Lady's Religion was Toland himself (Carabelli 32). The latter in A Defense of Mr. Toland printed in the same year, 1696, denied the attribution (Carabelli 32).

In 1699 Toland gave a manuscript copy of Shaftesbury's treatise An Inquiry concerning Virtue to a printer for publicaton, perhaps with and perhaps without Shaftesbury's connivance. In his Inquiry Shaftesbury gives an extensive treatment of the significance of daemonism. After defining god as “whatsoever is superior in any degree over the World, or rules in nature with discernment and a Mind,” he observes that if there are several gods and if any “are not in their nature necessarily good, they rather take the name of Daemon” (Cooper 1984, 2: 2, 37) To believe in a being who does all things without obligation to good and what is best is “to believe an infinit [sic] Devil, and not an infinit God” (37). Shaftesbury argues that religions incorporate various mixtures of daemonism, polytheism, and theism. “Perfect Daemonists there are in Religion; because we know whole Nations that worship a Devil or Fiend, to whom they sacrifice and pray, only to prevent mischief he would do them. And we know that there are those of some Religions, who give no other Idea of their God, but of a Being arbitrary, violent, causing ill, and ordaining to misery, which is a Devil in the place of God.” Shaftesbury also defines a vicious god as a “Daemon or Idol of the Mind” (103).

In the next year Toland published a work of his own on daemonism, but since he was personally involved with Rosicrucianism and a fallen-away Catholic, he centered his attention upon the Church of Rome. Entitled Clito: A Poem on the Force of Eloquence, it consists of a dialogue between Clito and Adeisidaemon, the latter a “Lucretian-Rosicrucian-Miltonic” rhetorician (Carabelli 68). The preface indicates that

By Clito is meant a certain eminent Man, who is no more suppos'd to have held this Discourse, or to be full of these Opinions, than the principal persons in Plato's or Cicero's Dialogues to have said whatever we read of 'em there, tho' introduc'd for the dignity of the Subject, and as a mark of the Author's esteem.

Biographical circumstances suggest that Clito represents Shaftesbury. The preface also affirms that “Mr. Toland himself is understood by Adeisidaemon, which signifies Unsuperstitious.” A later French critic translated the word as “l'Homme sans Superstition” (Carabelli 162). The poem has nothing specific to say about Shaftesbury, but a good deal about the beauty of the natural universe and the horrors of the Catholic religion.

Shaftesbury carried on the crusade against daemonism in his Advice to an Author, 1710, by suggesting that the name of Shakespeare's Desdemona is a variant of Deisdaemon. He wonders why “amongst his Greek names,” Shakespeare “should have chosen one which denoted the lady superstitious” and then concludes that “there is a very great affinity between the passion of superstition and that of tales” (Cooper 1900, 1: 224). So far as I know, Shaftesbury is unique in tracing the etymology of Desdemona to demonism.

In the previous year Toland published two Latin dissertations in a single volume, one of which is entitled in English translation: Adeisidaemon, or Titus Livius freed from superstition. In which dissertation it is proved that Livy's History on sacred things, portents, and signs of the Romans to be interpreted was by no means unbelievable or superstitious; and that Superstition itself is pernicious no less for the Republic (if not more so) than Atheism is pure and bright. In this work Toland vindicates Livy against the accepted view that the Roman historian was superstitious or a believer in religious absurdities and defends the thesis of the first part of Shaftesbury's Inquiry concerning Virtue that atheism is preferable in the state to “false Religion or fantastical Opinion, deriv'd from Superstition and Credulity,” (Book 1, Part 3, Sec 2) a concept formerly stated by Pierre Bayle. Toland had prepared his Adeisidaemon for publication in the same year as the appearance in print of Shaftesbury's A Letter concerning Enthusiasm, which reverses the hard line against superstition of the Inquiry. and looks upon religious excesses with amused toleration. Both in tone and reasoning Shaftesbury's Letter takes a quite different direction from Toland's Adeisidaemon as well as from his own Inquiry.

The greatly-needed Standard Edition of Shaftesbury's works now in progress at the University of Erlangen follows a thematic rather than a chronological principle. Adept Ladys, therefore, is printed in the same volume as A Letter concerning Enthusiasm, presumably because both satires concern religious superstition. It is true that the theme is the same, but the subject matter is quite different. Adept Ladys attacks charlatanism, the attempt of unprincipled characters to extract financial benefit through hypocritical religion, pseudo-science, and even political maneuvering. A Letter concerning Enthusiasm portrays religious fervor as genuine, although invidious, and argues that it should be resisted by ridicule rather than political force. Shaftesbury's new target is French pietism rather than German Rosicrucianism. A Protestant religious sect known as the Camisards because of its origin in southern France claimed to have the gift of prophecy through the direct inspiration of the Holy Ghost. Late in 1706, three members of the sect fled to London from persecution in their native land and began exhibiting their prophetical gifts in public. In their ecstacies, they rolled their eyes, foamed at the mouth, and frequently fell on the floor in a trance as a preliminary to their inspired utterances. These consisted for the most part of incoherent babble, but some of the English converts to the sect allegedly spoke in Latin even though they had absolutely no prior knowledge of the language. Shaftesbury in his Letter refers to “our good Brethren, the French Protestants, laterly come among us,” who were anxious to turn themselves into martyrs for the sake of propagating their faith (Cooper 1981, 1: 1, 338) This “prophesying Sect,” according to Shaftesbury, claimed to have performed an outstanding miracle, “acted premeditately, and with warning, before many hundreds of People, who actually give testimony to the Truth of it” (360). The particular miracle Shaftesbury had in mind is still to be established. The most sensational one to be attempted by the prophets, however, concerned the raising from the dead of a certain Thomas Emes, who had been assured in his dying moments by an English adherent to the prophets, John Lacy, that he would assuredly be brought back to life. A few weeks later the date of the intended miracle was announced in print, and on the appointed day, an enormous crowd appeared at the graveyard, held in check by a detachment of soldiers expressly ordered for the occasion by Queen Anne. Lacy, who was supposed to officiate, stayed away altogether, and poor Emes lost his chance for resurrection. Lacy later explained that he was not able to work his miracle in the presence of a noisy, adverse multitude (Aldridge 315).

Voltaire without reference to Shaftesbury described the same episode in the article “Fanatisme” of his Dictionnaire philosophique as well as in his “Dieu et les hommes.” Typically, he changed and embroidered details to make the narrative more dramatic and the victims of his satire seem more absurd. Most important, he revealed that one of the prophets who published eye-witness accounts of miracles performed by the group was none other than an eminent mathematician, Nicolas Fatio de Duillier, known in the history of science as an intimate friend of Newton during the final decade of the seventeenth century and the person who initially charged Leibniz with plagiarizing Newton. Voltaire casts Fatio rather than Lacy in the role of mock hero and, completely ignoring the recently defunct Emes, affirms that the subject of the demonstration, the most stinking corpse in the cemetery, was picked at random. Voltaire also affirms that Fatio and the other “pretended resuscitators” were arrested and condemned to the pillory. Historical fact reveals that Voltaire combined two separate events. Fatio and two other scribes were indicted for publishing and for holding illegal assemblies and ordered to the pillory in November 1707. But the scene in the cemetery did not take place until May of the following year, and Fatio had absolutely nothing to do with this fiasco. Also Voltaire maintains that Fatio had come to London from the mountains of the Dauphine; whereas he was actually a Swiss from Geneva. Voltaire sought credibility by asserting that he had derived his information from one of the prophets who had been a witness to the proceedings and had explained that the corpse was not resurrected because one of the prophets at the grave was in a condition of venial sin. Obviously this is another fabrication of Voltaire's since protestant theology makes no distinction between venial and mortal sins.

Shaftesbury does not formally distinguish between superstition and enthusiasm, but it is clear that his Adept Ladys concerns the former and his Letter, the latter. The distinction could be used to resolve an apparent contradiction between his condemning “false religion or fantastical opinion, derived commonly from superstition and credulity” in his Inquiry concerning Virtue and his recommending in his Letter concerning Enthusiasm toleration or good humor in regard to vulgar opinions of the deity. Daemonism is to be condemned and opposed, but enthusiasm is to be tolerated and in some forms accepted. In this way, Shaftesbury combats both Calvinism and Rosicrucianism and balances his interior deism with his external orthodoxy.

Works Cited

Aldridge, A. Owen. Shaftesbury and the Deist Manifesto. Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1951.

Butler, Samuel. Hudibras. Chandos Classics. Ed. Zachary Grey. London: Frederick Warne, n.d.

Carabelli, Giancarlo. Tolandia: materiali bibliografici per lo studio dell'opera e della fortuna di John Toland. Florence: La Nuova Italia Editrice, 1975-78.

Cooper, Anthony Ashley, Third Earl of Shaftesbury. Characteristics. Ed. J. M. Robertson. London: Grant Richards, 1900.

Cooper, Anthony Ashley, Third Earl of Shaftesbury. Life, Unpublished Letters and Philosophical Regimen. Ed. Benjamin Rand. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1914.

Cooper, Anthony Ashley, Third Earl of Shaftesbury. Complete Works. Vols. 1 and 2. Eds. Gerd Hemmerich & Wolfram Benda. Stuttgart: Fromman-Holzboorg, 1981, 1984.

Howard, Sir Robert. The History of Religion. London, 1694.

Swift, Jonathan. Gulliver's Travels, A Tale of a Tub. Modern Library Edition. New York, 1931.

Toland, John. Life of John Milton. London, 1698-99.

Voitle, Robert. The Third Earl of Shaftesbury 1671-1713. Chapel Hill: U of North Carolina P, 1984.