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Atheism, Unbelief, and Protestantism in Early Modern England

Dr Patrick S. McGhee is an Honorary Fellow in the Department of Theology and Religion at the University of Durham. He is currently developing his postdoctoral project, ‘The Anatomy of Atheism in the Atlantic World, c. 1600–1800’. He completed his PhD on ‘”Heathenism” in the Protestant Atlantic World, c. 1558 – c. 1700’ at the University of Cambridge. He has published in Atlantic Studies, Studies in Church History, and Exchange, and has co-edited a Special Issue of the Journal of Early Modern History entitled ‘Global Protestantisms’ (2024).

Despite the prevalent assumption that atheists were scarce before the Enlightenment, the idea of atheism has invited study and debate from classical antiquity onwards. Many people in England during the 16th and early 17th centuries were preoccupied by the possibility that different kinds of doubt, uncertainty, and unbelief might invite the rejection of religion or God. While ‘unbelief’ sometimes referred to spiritual stumbles on the Christian path towards true faith, ‘atheism’ often implied a more direct hostility towards God or the denial of his existence. However, evidence from English Protestant theologians and ministers suggests some significant overlap between these concepts, neither of which comprehensively described the complex religious dispositions of men and women in the early modern era.

As French reformer John Calvin had suggested in his Institutes of the Christian Religion: ‘So deeply rooted in our hearts is unbelief, so prone are we to it, that while all confess with the lips that God is faithful, no man ever believes it without an arduous struggle’.

William Perkins by Renold or Reginold Elstrack (Elstracke), line engraving, early 17th century, NPG D25261 © National Portrait Gallery, London

Part of the reason for the recurring perception that atheism was a potential danger lay in the principles and structures of English Protestantism itself. Scripture characterised non-belief as a misguided inner feeling that betrayed both intellectual failure and moral deterioration. As Psalm 14 explained: ‘The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God. They are corrupt, they have done abominable works, there is none that doeth good.’ (Psalm 14:1, KJV).

During the Elizabethan and Stuart eras, numerous Protestant theologians and ministers developed this idea in their writings and sermons. As French reformer John Calvin (1509-1564) had suggested in his Institutes of the Christian Religion (first translated into English in 1561): ‘So deeply rooted in our hearts is unbelief, so prone are we to it, that while all confess with the lips that God is faithful, no man ever believes it without an arduous struggle’. Developing English Calvinist ideas, the prominent Cambridge divine William Perkins (1558-1602) associated this affliction of the heart with satanic manipulation. Describing ‘The kingdome of darknes’ in a work on salvation published 1591, he argued that ‘members of this kingdome, and Subiectes to Satan, are his Angels, and vnbeleeuers, amongst whome, the principall members are Atheistes, who say in their hart, there is no God’. He went on to describe ‘Atheisme’ as a condition in which ‘the hart denyeth either God, or his attributes: as his Iustice, Wisdome prouidence, presence’.

Writing in his diary in 1587, the minister Richard Rogers recalled an encounter with ‘a company of bad felowes’, including ‘one young man who is become a veary Atheist’…

Richard Rogers after Unknown artist, line engraving, 1650, NPG D25265 © National Portrait Gallery, London

These works suggest that Protestants viewed atheism not merely as an unconscionable theory, but rather as a real phenomenon that they might have to confront in their own lives. Writing in his diary in 1587, the minister Richard Rogers (1551-1618) recalled an encounter with ‘a company of bad felowes’, including ‘one young man who is become a veary Atheist’, who ‘stiffly held that all the sort of profess[ors] were ranck hippocr[ites] and the worst of any’. Whether this mysterious troublemaker considered himself an outright atheist or not, it is telling that the minister saw fit to label him as one.

Again, this suggests that Protestants saw atheism as a spectrum of attitudes towards religion, politics, and culture, emerging from a deeper affliction. Some time later, Rogers published a collection of treatises on practical divinity, or pastoral instruction and guidance, collectively entitled The Practise of Christianitie (1603). In one section, Rogers described ‘the heart’ as ‘ouerspread with vnbeleefe’, which he identified as ‘the roote’ of sin, ‘when a man not giuing sound credit to the word of God, and the holie Scriptures, dareth be bold to harbour the same whatsoeuer is forbidden in them’.

Even as Protestants sought to repudiate atheism, their conviction that the condition emerged from within led them to insist that acknowledging, confronting, and overcoming moments of spiritual crisis were integral steps towards the renewal of faith. Nonetheless, this process could produce intense bouts of emotional distress and sensory instability. In 1638, for example, the godly minister Samuel Rogers admitted in his diary that ‘[I] mourne under a dead, unbeleiving, disturbed heart’. This was just a latter episode in a series of oscillations between belief and unbelief that he recorded over several years. 

A benefit – and a challenge – of a secular society is that each of us is able to decide what atheism, and indeed, humanism, might mean to us, free from the constraints of religious authorities, dogmas, and privileges.

Today, the relationship between belief and non-belief can seem adversarial to the point of extreme polarisation, particularly in the context of emotive political issues. Such vigorous debate can play an important role in advancing positive change and reaffirming cherished values. It might well be inevitable given the foundational conceptual tension between theism and atheism. At the same time, the past reveals some of the limits inherent in a strictly binary opposition between believers and non-believers. The meaning of these labels has always been filtered through a theological lens as well as a scientific and political one. A benefit – and a challenge – of a secular society is that each of us is able to decide what atheism, and indeed, humanism, might mean to us, free from the constraints of religious authorities, dogmas, and privileges. 

Bibliography

Calvin, John, Institutes of the Christian Religion, trans. Henry Beveridge (Peabody, MA, 2008), III, 2:15, 365

Febvre, Lucien, The Problem of Unbelief: The Religion of Rabelais, trans. Beatrice Gottlieb (Cambridge, MA, 1982, originally published 1942)

Hunter, Michael, Atheists and Atheism Before the Enlightenment: The English and Scottish Experience (Cambridge, 2023)

Muller, Richard A. “In the Light of Orthodoxy: The ‘Method and Disposition’ of Calvin’s Institutio from the Perspective of Calvin’s Late-Sixteenth-Century Editors.” The Sixteenth Century Journal, vol. 28, no. 4, 1997, pp. 1203–29. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/2543575. Accessed 16 Jan. 2025

Perkins, William, A golden chaine, or the description of theologie containing the order of the causes of saluation and damnation, according to Gods woord (London, 1591, STC 19657), sig E5r, sig. F2r

Rogers, Richard, Two Elizabethan Puritan Diaries by Richard Rogers and Samuel Ward, ed. M. M. Knappen (Chicago, 1933), 54

Rogers, Richard, Seuen treatises containing such direction as is gathered out of the Holie Scriptures, leading and guiding to true happines, both in this life, and in the life to come: and may be called the practise of Christianitie (London, 1603, STC 21215), 88, 102

Ryrie, Alec, Unbelievers: An Emotional History of Doubt (London, 2019)

Whitmarsh, Tim, Battling the Gods: Atheism in the Ancient World (London, 2016)

See also

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