ИСТИНА

After the Glorious revolution, religion remained significant for English politics and culture, being important in forging the Protestant identity and defining Englishness during the long eighteenth century. The aim of the paper is to study the attitude towards religion in the works of Charles Davenant (1656-1714), an English economist, politician and thinker. This problem will be approached in the context of the complex issue of early 18th century religious and early Enlightenment identities. The speaker will show how Davenant combined his religious views and beliefs with the elements of Republican political thought and with the contemporary Enlightenment influences. The thinker stressed that “the religion of the Church of England… is the purest, so it seems to agree best with the nature of our constitution”. However, according to Davenant “a wise government” had to restrain from religious prosecutions, so to stay away from extremities. Davenant thus expressed a pragmatic approach towards religious cause, using the rhetoric of the “reason of the state”. Davenant’s position will be compared to the views of his contemporaries, such as Locke, Defoe and Swift. His views will be placed into the early 18th century ‘Rage of Party’ context. Another question the speaker will touch upon is the complexity of Davenant’s Protestantism. The thinker used this notion to define Englishness. Nevertheless, he stayed far from alluding to the “Protestant interest” rhetoric, when it contradicted with England’s national interest. To sum up, Davenant’s identity was a complex one. The Enlightenment values and ideas were combined in the thinker’s system of views with his religious beliefs. Davenant saw Protestantism as an important marker of the English (as well as of the British) identity. However, the pamphleteer tended to put the interest of the state above any religious contradictions or sympathies.