of
Saturn, the spots in the sun and its turning on its own axis, the
inequalities and selenography of the moon, the several phases of Venus
and Mercury, the improvement of telescopes, the grinding of glasses for
that purpose, the weight of air, the possibility or impossibility of
vacuities, and Nature's abhorrence thereof, the Torricellian experiment
in quicksilver, the descent of heavy bodies and the degree of
acceleration therein, and divers other things of like nature."

[Sidenote: The Latitudinarians.]

To what great results this protest against the Puritan concentration of
all human thought on spiritual issues was to lead none could foresee.
But results almost as great were to spring from the protest against the
Puritan dogmatism which gave birth to the Latitudinarians. Whatever
verdict history may pronounce on Falkland's political career, his name
must remain memorable in the history of religious thought. A new era in
English theology began with the speculations of the men he gathered
round him in his country house at Great Tew in the years that preceded
the meeting of the Long Parliament. Their work was above all to deny the
authority of tradition in matters of faith, as Bacon had denied it in
matters of physical research; and to assert in the one field as in the
other the supremacy of reason as a test of truth. Of the authority of
the Church, its Fathers, and its Councils, John Hales, a Canon of
Windsor, and a friend of Laud, said briefly, "It is none." He dismissed
with contempt the accepted test of universality. "Universality is such a
proof of truth as truth itself is ashamed of. The most singular and
strongest part of human authority is properly in the wisest and the most
virtuous, and these, I trow, are not the most universal." William
Chillingworth, a man of larger if not keener mind, had been taught by an
early conversion to Catholicism, and by a speedy return, the insecurity
of any basis for belief but that of private judgement. In his "Religion
of Protestants" he set aside ecclesiastical tradition or Church
authority as grounds of faith in favour of the Bible, but only of the
Bible as interpreted by the common reason of men. Jeremy Taylor, the
most brilliant of English preachers, a sufferer like Chillingworth on
the Royalist side during the troubles, and who was rewarded at the
Restoration with the bishopric of Down, limited even the authority of
the Scriptures themselves. Reason was the one means whic