the history of free
thought in the second great crisis of church history, and incidentally
illustrated its connexion with social movements as well as religious, and
shown its relation to intellectual or moral causes. On the intellectual
side we have witnessed the scholastic philosophy giving activity to the
spirit of change, and contact with Mahometan life and opinion imparting
the latitude to Christian thought which passed into incredulity. On the
moral we have noticed that the effect of social wants or of actual
viciousness gave birth respectively to religious restlessness, or to
actual disbelief of the supernatural. The church of the time was not
unaware of the movement. In part it tried to repress it by persecution and
by the Inquisition; but in part also by the lawful weapon of spiritual
contest. The grand works of defence of the thirteenth century, which
adjusted scholastic philosophy to dogmatic theology, and the spiritual
activity of the mendicant orders, were real and lawful means of victory,
appealing respectively to the intellect and heart.

The moral judgment formed on the movement seen in the whole period must
vary with the phase of it viewed. The attack is not, like those of the
early unbelievers, a struggle with which the sympathies of Christians
cannot be enlisted. The darker aspects of it partake indeed of the same
character; but it embodies a better element, a nobler form of movement,
tainted perhaps with doubt, but not with disbelief; viz. the attempt of
the human mind to assert its rights in philosophy, theology, and politics;
and as the epoch closes, the great truth has made itself felt in the world
as the result of the contest, that Christianity is supreme only within its
own sphere, which it is the problem of religious philosophy to discover;
that freedom of inquiry is to be used outside the boundary, but that
speculation must expire in adoration within it.

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A new crisis may be considered to commence in the fifteenth century, in
consequence of the introduction of fresh influences through the classical
revival. Yet as the two periods are connected in time, the transition is
not sudden: the old influences gradually vanish away; the new ones had
been slowly preparing before they became distinctly evident. The
intellectual and social activity of the past period had been the means of
educating the mind of Europe for the reception of the new forc