f the latter writer to the early intellectual
opposition of the heathens.

But about the middle of the eighteenth century, in the period of cold
orthodoxy and solid learning which immediately preceded the rise of
rationalism, as well as in that of incipient free thought, we meet not
only with the historians of theological literature already named above,
but with historians of thought like Brucker, and of the church like
Mosheim, possessed of large taste for inquiry, and wide literary
sympathies, who contribute information on the subject: and towards the
close of the century we find Schroeckh, who, in his lengthy and careful
history of the church since the Reformation,(25) has taken so extensive a
view of the nature of church history, that he has included in it an
account of the struggle with freethinkers. Among the same class, with the
exception that he differs in being marked by rationalist sympathies, must
be ranked Henke.(26)

In the present century the spread of the scientific spirit, which counts
no facts unworthy of notice, together with the attention bestowed on the
history of doctrine, and the special interest in understanding the
fortunes of free thought, which sympathy in danger created during the
rationalist movement, prevented the historians from passing lightly over
so important a series of facts. It may be sufficient to instance, in
proof, the notices of unbelief which occur in Neander's _Church History_.
General histories also of literature, like Schlosser's _History of
Literature in the Eighteenth Century_, or the more theological one of
Hagenbach (_Geschichte des 18__n__ Jahrhunderts_) incidentally afford
information.

The various works just named are the chief of this class which furnish
assistance.

3. After a general preliminary idea of the history has been obtained from
these sources, in order to prevent being confused with details; it is
necessary to resort next to the original sources of information, without
careful study of which the history must lack a real basis.

In reference to the early unbelievers, the direct materials are lost; but
the contemporary replies to these writings remain. In the case of later
unbelievers, both the works and the answers to them exist. It will be
presumed that in so large a subject the writer cannot have read all the
sceptical works which have been written, and are here named. With the
exception however of Averroes and of the Paduan school,(27) in which cases