Times." But, if we were to follow up Cave's nomenclature, the appellation Seculum rationalisticum might be affixed to the eighteenth century with greater precision than many of his names apply to the previous centuries: for it was not merely that Rationalism then obtruded itself as a heresy, or obtained a footing of toleration within the Church; but the rationalizing method possessed itself absolutely of the whole field of theology. With some trifling exceptions, the whole of religious literature was drawn in to the endeavor to "prove the truth" of Christianity. The essay and the sermon, the learned treatise and the philosophical disquisition, Addison the polite writer, and Bentley the classical philologian (Addison, "Evidences of the Christian Religion," a posthumous publication; Bentley, "Eight Sermons at Boyle's Lecture," 1692), the astronomer Newton ("Four Letters," &c., Lond. 1756), no less than the theologians by profession, were all engaged upon the same task. To one book of A. Collins ("A Discourse on the Grounds and Reasons of the Christian Religion," Lond. 1724) are counted no less than thirty-five answers. Dogmatic theology had ceased to exist: the exhibition of religious truth for practical purposes was confined to a few obscure writers. Every one who had anything to say on sacred subjects drilled it into an array of argument against a supposed objector. Christianity appeared made for nothing else but to be "proved:" what use to make of it when it was proved was not much thought about. Reason was at first offered as the basis of faith, but gradually became its substitute. The mind never advanced as far as the stage of belief; for it was unceasingly engaged in reasoning up to it. The only quality in Scripture which

was dwelt upon was its "credibility." Even the "Evangelical" school, which had its origin in a reaction against the dominant Rationalism, and began in endeavors to kindle religious feeling, was obliged to succumb at last. It, too, drew out its rational "scheme of Christianity," in which the atonement was made the central point of a system, and the death of Christ was accounted for as necessary to satisfy the Divine Justice.

This whole rationalist age must again be subdivided into two periods, the theology of which, though belonging to the common type, has distinct specific characters. These periods are of nearly equal length ; and we may conveniently take the middle year of the century, 1750, as our terminus of division. Though both periods were engaged upon the proof of Christianity, the distinction between them is that the first period was chiefly devoted to the internal, the second to the external, attestations. In the first period, the main endeavor was to show that there was nothing in the contents of the revelation which was not agreeable to reason. In the second, from 1750 onwards, the controversy was narrowed to what are usually called the "evidences," or the historical proof of the genuineness and authenticity of the Christian records. From this distinction of topic arises an important difference of value between the theological produce of the two periods. A great injustice is done to the eighteenth century, when its whole speculative product is set down under the description of that Old Bailey theology, in which, to use Johnson's illustration, the apostles are being tried once a week for the capital crime of forgery. This evidential school the school of Lardner, Paley, and Whately-belongs

strictly to the latter half only of the period now under consideration. This school, which treated the exterior evidence, was the natural sequel and supplement of that which had preceded it, which dealt with the intrinsic credibility of the Christian revelation. This historical succession of the schools is the logical order of the argument; for, when we have first shown that the facts of Christianity are not incredible, the whole burden of proof is shifted to the evidence that the facts did really occur. Neither branch of the argument can claim to be religious instruction at all; but the former does incidentally enter upon the substance of the gospel. It may be philosophy rather than theology; but it raises in its course some of the most momentous problems which can engage the human mind. On the other hand, a mind which occupies itself with the "external evidences" knows nothing of the spiritual intuition, of which it renounces at once the difficulties and the consolations. The supply of evidences in what, for the sake of a name, may be called the Georgian period (1750-1830), was not occasioned by any demands of controversy. The attacks through the press were nearly at an end: the Deists had ceased to be. The clergy continued to manufacture evidence as an ingenious exercise, a literature which was avowedly professional, a study which might seem theology without being it, which could awaken none of the scepticism then dormant beneath the surface of society. Evidences are not edged tools; they stir no feeling: they were the proper theology of an age whose literature consisted in writing Latin hexameters. The orthodox school no longer dared to scrutinize the contents of revelation. The preceding period had eliminated the religious

experience: the Georgian had lost, besides, the power of using the speculative reason.

The historical investigation, indeed, of the Origines of Christianity, is a study scarcely second in importance to a philosophical arrangement of its doctrines. But, for a genuine inquiry of this nature, the English writers of the period had neither the taste nor the knowledge. Gibbon alone approached the true difficulties, but met only with opponents, "victory over whom was a sufficient humiliation." (Autobiography.) No Englishman will refuse to join with Coleridge in "the admiration he expresses "for the head and heart" of Paley; "the incomparable grace, propriety, and persuasive facility, of his writings." (Aids to Reflection, p. 401.) But Paley had, unfortunately, dedicated his powers to a factitious thesis: his demonstration, however perfect, is in unreal matter. The case, as the apologists of that day stated it, is wholly conventional. The breadth of their assumptions is out of all proportion to the narrow dimensions of the point they succeeded in proving. Of an honest critical inquiry into the origin and composition of the canonical writings, there is but one trace, Herbert Marsh's Lectures at Cambridge; and that was suggested from a foreign source, and died away without exciting imitators. That investigation, introduced by a bishop and a professor of divinity, has scarcely yet obtained a footing in the English Church; but it is excluded, not from a conviction of its barrenness, but from a fear that it might prove too fertile in results. This unwholesome state of theological feeling among us is perhaps traceable in part to the falsetto of the evidential method of the last generation. We cannot justify, but we may perhaps make our predecessors

bear part of the blame of, that inconsistency, which, while it professes that its religious belief rests on historical evidence, refuses to allow that evidence to "be freely examined in open court.

It seems, indeed, a singular infelicity, that the construction of the historical proof should have been the task which the course of events allotted to the latter half of the eighteenth century. The critical knowledge of antiquity had disappeared from the universities. The past, discredited by a false conservatism, was regarded with aversion, and the minds of men. directed habitually to the future, some with fear, others with hope. "The disrespect in which history was held by the French philosophes is notorious: one of the soberest of them (D'Alembert, we believe) was the author of the wish, that all record of past events could be blotted out." (Mill, Dissertations, vol. i. p. 426.) The same sentiment was prevalent, though not in the same degree, in this country. Hume, writing to an Englishman in 1756, speaks of "your countrymen" as "given over to barbarous and absurd faction." Of his own history, the publisher, Millar, told him he had only sold forty-five copies in a twelvemonth. (My Own Life, p. 5.) Warburton had long before complained of the Chronicles published by Hearne, that "there is not one that is not a disgrace to letters; most of them are so to common sense, and some even to human nature." (Parr's Tracts, &c., p. 109.) The oblivion into which the remains of Christian antiquity had sunk, till disinterred by the Tractarian movement, is well known. Having neither the critical tools to work with, nor the historical materials to work upon, it is no wonder if they failed in their art. Theology had almost died out when it