he tone of fairness in Spinoza's
manner, which compels most modern readers to believe in his honesty, and
which presents so striking a contrast to the profaneness of subsequent
scepticism, was then regarded as latent irony. The work on its appearance
was suppressed by public authority; but it was frequently reprinted; and
probably no work of free thought has ever had more influence, both on
friends and foes, except the memorable work of Strauss in the present age.
Not only have freethinkers been moulded by it, but it has produced lasting
effects on those who have loved the faith of Christ. For Spinoza's work,
if it did not create, gave expression to the tendency of which slight
traces are perceptible elsewhere,(356) to recognize a large class of facts
relating to the personal peculiarities of the inspired writers, and to the
"human element," as it has been frequently called(357) in scripture, for
which orthodox criticism has always subsequently had to find a place in a
theory of inspiration; facts which first shook the mechanical or verbal
theory, which, however piously intended, really had the effect of
degrading the sacred writers almost into automatons, and regarded them as
the pens instead of the penmen of the inspiring Spirit.(358) Indirectly
the effect of Spinoza's thought was seen even in the English church. The
difficulties which, through means of the English deists, it brought before
the notice of the great apologetic writers of our own country, created the
free, but perhaps not irreverent theory of revelation manifested in the
churchmen of the last century,(359) which restricted the miraculous
assistance of inspiration to the specific subject of the revealed
communication, the religious element of scripture, and did not regard it
as comprehending also the allusions, scientific or historic, extraneous to
religion.

Nor is it merely in respect of criticism that Spinoza's views have
affected subsequent thought. The central principle of his philosophy, the
pantheistic disbelief of miraculous interposition which has subsequently
entered into so many systems, was first clearly applied to theology by
him. Wherever the disbelief in the supernatural has arisen from _a priori_
considerations, and expressed itself, not with allegations of conscious
fraud against the devotees of religion, nor with attempts to explain it
away as merely mental realism, but with assertions that miracles are
impossible, and nature an unchangin