CHAPTER VIII 



POSITIVE RELIGIONS AND THE RELIGION OF 

 PHILOSOPHY 



THE hostility which the Italian and some of the Latin 

 writings of Bruno showed towards the positive religions 

 of his day, alike the Catholic, the Reformed, the 

 Jewish, and the Mahomedan, had two grounds : his 

 belief that religious or sectarian strife was the chief 

 cause of the evils of war and civil discord that were 

 rife throughout Europe, and the fact that one and all 

 of these Churches claimed the right of limiting thought 

 as well as of dictating practice, and in their exercise of 

 this right formed an unendurable barrier in the way of 

 human progress. Of the Roman Catholic Church, to 

 which all his life Bruno belonged in spirit if not in 

 outward conformity, he never expressly denied any of 

 the essential doctrines, as he maintained before the 

 Inquisition at Venice. On the other hand, he admitted 

 that he had occasionally made indirect criticism of 

 these doctrines, speaking or writing " philosophically," 

 not " theologically." To the doctrine of the Trinity, 

 for example, he had given a rationalist, half-mystical 

 interpretation, seeing in it a figure or metaphor of the 

 coincidence in God of the three highest principles 

 Mind (the Father), Intellect (the word, the Son), and 



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