humane manners. "The men who took a foremost part seemed to be intent on disparaging each other, and proving that neither possessed any qualification of wisdom, knowledge, or public virtue. . . Epithets of reproach were lavished personally on Lord North, which were applicable only to the vilest and most contemptible of mankind." (Massey, Hist. of England, ii. 218.)

Were this blustering language a blemish of style, and nothing more, it would taint their books with vulgarity as literature, but it would not vitiate their matter. But the fault reaches deeper than skin-deep. It is a most serious drawback on the good sense of the age, that it wanted justice in its estimate of persons. They were no more capable of judging their friends than their foes. In Pope's satires there is no medium,

our enemies combine all the odious vices, however incongruous; our friends have "every virtue under heaven." We hear sometimes of Pope's peculiar "malignity;" but he was only doing what every one around him was doing, only with a greatly superior literary skill. Their savage invective against each other is not a morally worse feature than the style of fulsome compliment in which friends address each other. The private correspondence of intimate friends betrays an unwholesome insincerity, which contrasts strangely with their general manliness of character. The burly intellect of Warburton displays an appetite for flattery as insatiable as that of Miss Seward and her coterie.

This habit of exaggerating both good and evil the divines share with the other writers of the time. But theological literature, as a written debate, had a form of malignant imputation peculiar to itself. This is

one arising out of the rationalistic fiction which both parties assumed; viz., that their respective beliefs. were determined by an impartial inquiry into the evidence. The orthodox writers considered this evidence so clear and certain for their own conclusions, that they could account for its not seeming so to others, only by the supposition of some moral obliquity which darkened the understanding in such cases. Hence the obnoxious assumption of the divines, that the Deists were men of corrupt morals; and the retort of the infidel writers, that the clergy were hired advocates. Moral imputation, which is justly banished from legal argument, seems to find a proper place in theological. Those Christian Deists, who, like Toland or Collins, approached most nearly in their belief to revelation, were treated, not better, but worse, by the orthodox champions; their larger admissions being imputed to disingenuousness or calculated reserve. This stamp of advocacy which was impressed on English theology at the Reformation-its first work of consideration was an "Apology"-it has not, to this day, shaken off. Our theologians, with rare exceptions, do not penetrate below the surface of their subject, but are engaged in defending or vindicating it. The current phrases, of "the bulwarks of our faith," "dangerous to Christianity," are but instances of the habitual position in which we assume ourselves to stand. Even more philosophic minds cannot get rid of the idea, that theology is polemical. Theological study is still the study of topics of defence. Even Prof. Fraser can exhort us, "that, by the study of these topics, we might not merely disarm the enemies of religion of what in other times has been, and will continue to be, a favorite weapon of

assault; but we might even convert that weapon into an instrument of use in the Christian service." (Essays in Philosophy, p. 4.) "Modern science," as it is called, is recommended to the young divine, because in it he may find means of "confuting infidelity."

A little consideration will show that the grounds on which advocacy before a legal tribunal rests make it inappropriate in theological reasoning. It is not pretended that municipal law is co-extensive with universal law, and therefore incapable of admitting right on both sides. It is allowed that the natural right may be, at times, on one side, and the legal title on the other; not to mention the extreme case where "communis error facit jus." The advocate is not there to supply all the materials out of which the judge is to form his decision, but only one side of the case. He is the mere representative of his client's interests, and has not to discuss the abstract merits of the juridical point which may be involved. He does not undertake to show that the law is conformable to natural right, but to establish the condition of his client relatively to the law. But the rational defender of the faith has no place in his system for the variable, or the indifferent, or the non-natural. He proceeds on the supposition, that the whole system of the Church is the one and exclusively true expression of reason upon the subject on which it legislates. He claims for the whole of received knowledge what the jurist claims for international law, to be a universal science. He lays before us, on the one hand, the traditional canon or symbol of doctrine; on the other hand, he teaches that the free use of reason upon the facts of nature and Scripture is the real mode by which this traditional symbol is arrived at. To show,

then, that the candid pursuit of truth leads every impartial intellect to the Anglican conclusion, was the task which, on their theory of religious proof, their theology had to undertake. The process, accordingly, should have been analogous to that of the jurist or legislator with regard to the internal evidence, and to that of the judge with regard to the external evidence. If theological argument forgets the judge and assumes the advocate, or betrays the least bias to one side, the conclusion is valueless; the principle of free inquiry has been violated. Roman Catholic theologians consistently enough teach that "apologetics make no part of theology, as usually conducted as replies to special objections urged; but that a true apologetic must be founded (1) on a discovery of the general principle from which the attack proceeds, and (2) on the exhibition, per contra, of that general ground-thought of which the single Christian truths are developments. (Hageman, Die Aufgabe der Catholischen Apologetik.)

With rare exceptions, the theology of the Hanoverian period is of the most violently partisan character. It seats itself, by its theory, in the judicial chair; but it is only to comport itself there like Judge Jefferies. One of the favorite books of the time was Sherlock's "Trial of the Witnesses." First published in 1729, it speedily went through fourteen editions. It concludes in this way:

Judge: What say you? Are the apostles guilty of giving false evidence in the case of the resurrection of Jesus, or not guilty?

"Foreman: Not guilty.

"Judge: Very well; and now, gentlemen, I resign my commission, and am your humble servant.

"The company then rose up, and were beginning to pay their compliments to the judge and the counsel, but were interrupted

by a gentleman, who went up to the judge, and offered him a fee. What is this?' says the judge. A fee, sir,' said the gentleman. A fee to a judge is a bribe,' said the judge. True, sir,' said the gentleman; but you have resigned your commission, and will not be the first judge who has come from the bench to the bar without any diminution of honor. Now, Lazarus's case is to come on next; and this fee is to retain you on his side.""

One might say that the apologists of that day had, in like manner, left the bench for the bar, and taken a brief for the apostles. They are impatient at the smallest demur, and deny loudly that there is any weight in anything advanced by their opponents. In the way they override the most serious difficulties, they show anything but the temper which is supposed to qualify for the weighing of evidence. The astonishing want of candor in their reasoning, their blindness to real difficulty, the ill-concealed predetermination to find a particular verdict, the rise of their style in passion in the same proportion as their argument fails in strength, constitute a class of writers more calculated than any other to damage their own cause with young, ingenuous minds, bred in the school of Locke to believe that "to love truth for truth's sake is the principal part of human perfection in this world, and the seed-plot of all other virtues." (Locke, æt. 73, Letter to Collins.) Spalding has described the moral shock his faith received on hearing an eminent clergyman in confidential conversation with another, who had cited some powerful argument against revelation, say, "That 's truly awkward: let us consider a little how we get out of that; wie wir uns salviren. (Selbstbiographie, p. 128.) A truthful mind is a much rarer possession than is commonly supposed; for "it is as easy to close the eyes of the mind as those of the body." (Butler, Sermon x.) And, in this rarity, there is a natural limit to the injury