l causes
for natural events, and in securing in France, in the eighteenth century,
the political rights of the lower orders against the claims of the church.
Accordingly in his opinion scepticism was an almost unmixed boon.

Those who recall the outline of the history will probably think that each
of these views, taken alone, is one-sided, and contains a partial truth.
The review of facts shows that free thought has had an office in the
world; and, like most human agencies permitted under the administration of
a benevolent Providence, its influence has neither been unmixed evil nor
unmixed good. It has been an evil, so far as in the conflict of opinions
it has invaded the body of essential truth which forms the treasure given
to the world, in the miraculous revelation of our Lord Jesus Christ; but
it has been a good, so far as it has contributed, either directly to
further human progress intellectually and socially, or indirectly to bring
out into higher relief these very truths by the progress of discussion.

When, for example, Christian doctrine has been overlaid from age to age by
concretions which had gathered round it, as was the case previously to the
Reformation,(1018) it has been free thought which has attacked the system,
and, piercing the error, has removed those elements which had been
superadded. Or, when the church has attempted to fetter human thought in
other departments than its own proper domain of religion, as when the
ecclesiastical authorities disgraced themselves by vetoing the discoveries
of Galileo,(1019) it has been to free thought that we owe the emancipation
of the human mind. Or, when the church linked itself in alliance with a
decaying political system, as in the last century in France, it was free
thought that recalled to it the lesson to render to Caesar the things that
were Caesar's, and to God the things that were God's. It is instances like
these, where free thought has been the means of making undoubted
contributions to human improvement, or of asserting toleration, which have
led writers to describe it as almost innocuous, and hastily to regard the
ratio of the emancipation of the human mind from the teaching of the
priesthood to be the sole measure of human improvement.

In many instances also, free thought has indirectly contributed to
intellectual good, in points where it has ran a greater risk, than in
those just cited, of trespassing upon the sacred truths of religion;
instances,