I.What is the Ideal Religion in More's Heart?
What is the ideal religion in Thomas More's heart?More himself has told us about it in Utopia:
There are different kinds of religion not only in various parts of the island,but also in each city.Some worship the Sun;others the Moon,others one of the planets as God.Some reverence a man who in former times was conspicuous for virtue or glory,not only as God,but as the supreme God.But the majority,and those the wiser among them,do nothing of the kind,but believe in one unknown Divine Power,eternal,incomprehensible,inexplicable,far beyond the reach of human intellect,diffused throughout the universe not in bulk but in power and potency.Him they call Father,to Him alone they attribute the beginnings,the growth,the progress,the changes and the ends of all things,and to no other do they give divine honours.Nay,all the others too,though varying in their belief,agree with them in this respect,that they think there is one supreme Being,to Whom we owe it that the whole world was made and is governed;and all alike call Him in their native language,Mythra.[2]
But after reading it,we are still not very clear about More's views.As Quentin Skinner has argued,it is‘one of the most puzzling questions about More's Utopia:the question of what he may have intended to convey to Christian Europe by stressing the admirable qualities of the Utopians while at the same time emphasizing their ignorance of Christianity.’[3]More gave a further account for his views on religion when he declared,‘since the religion of all is not the same,and yet all its fashions,though varied and manifold,by different roads as it were,all tend to the same end,the worship of the Divine Nature’.[4]According to J.Rawson Lumby,here the‘Divine Nature’means‘a common Father of all,to whom they attribute the origin and growth and change of all things.’[5]If this explanation is correct,then we may say that Thomas More held that the purpose of any kind of religion consisted in its nature,and its form had only secondary meaning,or was not very important.Furthermore,we can say that even though More fought against Reformation,he didn't like the numerous rites and ceremonies of contemporary Catholicism,and he was strongly opposed to those practices that laid emphasis on ceremonies in particular,while neglecting the true tenets of Christianity.
For humanists like Thomas More,the pursuit of virtues had paramount meaning.We can accept what Professor Quentin Skinner says about More's religious views that
If the prince attains complete virtue,this will make him fully a Christian;and if he becomes fully a Christian,this will enable him to lay the foundations of a perfect commonwealth…true holiness consists of living a life of virtue,and thus that the heathen inhabitants of Utopia,far more than the nominal Christians of Europe,have succeeded in establishing a truly Christian commonwealth.The fact that Utopians are not Christians merely serves,on this interpretation,to intensify More's essentially Erasmian commitment,and to make it resonate with a characteristic note of irony.[6]
Skinner has also generalized his opinions as follows,‘A true Christian must rather be a man who employs his God-given reason in order to distinguish good from evil,and then uses his best endeavours to avoid the evil and embrace the good.’[7]
Although these views have their origins in humanism,the uniqueness of More's life experiences made these views remarkably different from others.