PRE-ENLIGHTENMENT THOUGHT

I used to believe that the Enlightenment pretty much began without predecessors aside from the ancient Greeks but I no longer do so. One of the important pre-cursors who is little known today is Pierre Bayle (1647-1706) who urged toleration for people of with different beliefs, even atheists:

Historical criticism leaves us with an image of man which is strikingly similar to that of Calvinist theology: we are all incurable sinners; not only our actions but our judgements are determined by our passions, and the fact that we are often unaware of this makes the consequences even worse.
It is in this perspective that we should see what for many readers seemed to be Bayle's most notorious 'paradox' — the assertion that atheists are not a social menace, and that a society composed only of atheists would be perfectly viable. 'It is no more strange that an Atheist should lead a virtuous life, than that a Christian should commit any kind of crime' — this last being a fact of experience.

SOURCE: Bayle / Elisabeth Labrousse ; translated by Denys Potts; Oxford ; New York : Oxford University Press, 1983; page 52