s unfavourable,
and appeals to the history if the theory is impugned. In this way,
just so much is picked out of the mass of facts as suits his argument,
and the rest is quietly put aside.

I. In the theory of my early creed, (which was that of the New
Testament, however convenient it may be for my critics to deride it as
fanatical and _not_ Christian,) cultivation of mind and erudition
were classed with worldly things, which might be used where they
pre-existed, (as riches and power may subserve higher ends,) but which
were quite extraneous and unessential to the spiritual kingdom of
Christ. A knowledge of the Bible was assumed to need only an honest
heart and God's Spirit, while science, history, and philosophy were
regarded as doubtful and dangerous auxiliaries. But soon after the
first reflux of my mind took place towards the Common Understanding,
as a guide of life legitimately co-ordinate with Scripture, I was
impressed with the consideration that _Free Learning_ had acted on
a great scale for the improvement of spiritual religion. I had been
accustomed to believe that _the Bible_[8] brought about the Protestant
Reformation; and until my twenty-ninth year probably it had not
occurred to me to question this. But I was first struck with the
thought, that the Bible did not prevent the absurd iniquities of the
Nicene and Post Nicene controversy, and that the Church, with the
Bible in her hands, sank down into the gulf of Popery. How then was
the Bible a sufficient explanation of her recovering out of Popery?

Even a superficial survey of the history shows, that the first
improvement of spiritual doctrine in the tenth and eleventh centuries,
came from a study of the moral works of Cicero and Boethius;--a fact
notorious in the common historians. The Latin moralists effected, what
(strange to think!) the New Testament alone could not do.

In the fifteenth century, when Constantinople was taken by the Turks,
learned Greeks were driven out to Italy and to other parts of the
West, and the Roman Catholic world began to read the old Greek
literature. All historians agree, that the enlightenment of mind
hence arising was a prime mover of religious Reformation; and learned
Protestants of Germany have even believed, that the overthrow of
Popish error and establishment of purer truth would have been brought
about more equably and profoundly, if Luther had never lived, and the
passions of the vulgar had never been stimulated ag