awn from second-hand sources, it exhibits wide reading and thoughtful
judgment.

A portion of the Bampton Lectures for 1852, by the Rev. J. C. Riddle, was
devoted to the subject of infidelity. The author's object, as the
title(22) implies, was to give the natural history of unbelief, to the
neglect of the literary. Psychological rather than historical analysis was
used by him for the investigation; and his examination of the moral causes
of doubt is better than of the intellectual. The notes contain a
collection of valuable quotations, which supplement those of Van Mildert,
but are unfortunately given, for the most part, without references.

This completes(23) the enumeration of the histories professedly devoted to
infidelity, with the exception of a small but very creditable production
published since several of these lectures were written, _Defence of the
Faith; Part I. Forms of Unbelief_, by the Rev. S. Robins, forming the
first part of a work, of which the second is to treat the evidences; the
third to draw the moral. It does not profess to be a very deep work;(24)
but it is interesting; drawn generally from the best sources, and written
in an eloquent style and devout spirit.

2. The transition is natural from these works, which treat of the history
of unbelief or give lists of the works of unbelievers, to the notices of
sceptical writers contained in general histories of the church or of
literature.

In this, as in the former case, it is only in modern times that important
notices occur concerning forms of unbelief. The circumstance that in the
early ages unbelief took the form of opposition or persecution on the part
of heathens, and that in the middle ages it was so rare, caused the
ancient church historians and mediaeval church chroniclers to record little
respecting actual unbelief, though they give information about heresy.
Even in modern times, it is not till the early part of the eighteenth
century that any attention is bestowed on the subject. The earlier
historians, both Protestant, such as the Magdeburg Centuriators, and
Catholic, like Baronius, wrote the history of the past for a controversial
purpose in relation to the contests of their own times: and in the next
period, in the one church, Arnold confined himself to the history of
heresy rather than unbelief; and in the other, Fleury and Tillemont wrote
the history of deeds rather than of ideas, and afford no information,
except in a few allusions o