e authority of the commonwealth became the authority of the
church.(376) Though he had occasion to discuss revelation and the
canon(377) as a rule of faith, yet it is hard to fix on any point that was
actual unbelief.

The amount of thought contributed by him to deism was small; for his
influence on his successors was unimportant. The religious instincts of
the heart were too strong to be permanently influenced by the cold
materialist tone which reduced religion to state craft. With the exception
of Coward,(378) a materialist who doubted immortality about the end of the
century, the succeeding deists more generally followed Herbert, in wishing
to elevate religion to a spiritual sphere, than Hobbes, who degraded it to
political expedience. A slight additional interest however belongs to his
speculations, from the circumstance that his ideas, together with those of
Herbert, most probably suggested some parts of the system of Spinoza.(379)

The two writers of whom we have now been treating, lived prior to or
during the Commonwealth. From the date of the Restoration the existence of
doubt may be accepted as an established fact. During the reaction,
political and ecclesiastical, which ensued in the early part of the reign
of Charles II, it is not surprising that doubt concealed itself in
retirement; but the frequent allusions to it under the name of
atheism,(380) in contemporary sermons and theological books, proves its
existence. Indeed the reaction contained the very elements which were
likely to foster unbelief among undiscerning minds. The court set a sad
example of impurity; and the excessive claims of the churchmen, alien to
the spirit of political and religious liberty, were calculated to generate
an antipathy to the clergy and to religion.

Toward the end of Charles's reign, a feeling of this kind expresses itself
in the writings of Charles Blount,(381) who availed himself of the
temporary interval in which the press became free, owing to the omission
to renew the act which submitted works to the censor,(382) to publish with
notes a translation of Philostratus's Life of Apollonius of Tyana, with
the same purpose as Hierocles in the fourth century, to disguise the
peculiar character of Christ's miracles, and draw an invidious parallel
between the Pythagorean philosopher and the divine founder of
Christianity. Subsequently to Blount's death, his friend Gildon, who lived
to retract his opinions,(383) published a collec