rded as a
matter of comparative indifference whether our beliefs be true or false,
should it, above all, become our prevailing habit to "call good evil,
and evil good," we can scarcely fail, in such circumstances, to fall
into a course of _practical Atheism_; and this, as all experience
testifies, will leave us an easy prey, especially in seasons of peculiar
temptation and trial, to any form of _speculative Infidelity_ that may
happen to acquire a temporary ascendancy. If there be no dogmatic
Atheism involved in this state of mind, there is at least the germ of
_skepticism_, which may soon grow and ripen into the open and avowed
denial of religious truth. At the very least, it will issue in that
heartless _indifference_ to all creeds and all definite articles of
faith, which, under the plausible but surreptitious disguise of
"freethinking" and "liberalism," is the nearest practical approximation
to utter Infidelity.[228]

The system which is known under the name of Religious Liberalism or
Indifference has been recently avowed in our own country with a
frankness and boldness which can leave no room for doubt in regard to
its ultimate tendency. The late Blanco White avowed it as his mature
conviction, that "to declare any one unworthy of the name of Christian
because he does not agree with your belief, is to fall into the
intolerance of the articled Churches; that the moment the name Christian
is made necessarily to contain in its signification belief in certain
historical or metaphysical propositions, that moment _the name itself
becomes a creed_,--the _length_ of that creed is of little
consequence."[229] This is the extreme on one side, and it plainly
implies that _no one article of faith_ is necessary, and that a man may
be a Christian who neither acknowledges an historical Christ, nor
believes a single doctrine which He taught! But there is an extreme also
on the other side, which is exemplified in the singularly eloquent, but
equally unsatisfactory, treatise of the Abbe Lamennais,[230] in which,
as _then_ an ardent and somewhat arrogant advocate of the Romish Church,
he attempts to fasten the charge of _Indifference_ or _Liberalism_ on
the Protestant system, and to prove that there can be no true faith, and
of course no salvation, beyond the Catholic pale. The chief interest of
his treatise depends on his peculiar "theory of certitude," to which we
shall have occasion to advert in the sequel; in the meantime, we may