other channel then experience. Have we or
have we not that other channel? This is the problem."

"Thus, before we can dogmatize upon on to logical subjects, we must
settle this question--Can we transcend the sphere of our consciousness,
and know things _per se_?"

"I."

ANTHONY COLLINS.

Freethought, as developed in the Deistic straggles of the seventeenth
century, had to battle for existence against the Puritanic reaction
which took its second rise from the worn-out licentious age of the last
of the Stuarts, and that of the no less dangerous (though concealed)
libertinism of the Dutch king. A religious rancor also arose which, but
for the influence of a new power, would have re-enacted the tragedy of
religious persecution. But this rancor became somewhat modified, from
the fact that the various parties now were unlike the old schismatics,
who were each balanced at the opposite ends of the same pole--extreme
Papacy on the one hand, and Fifth-monarchists on the other--when
each oscillation from the Protestant centre deranged the balance of
enthusiasm, and drove it to the farthest verge of fanaticism, until all
religious parties were hurled into one chaos of disunion. Such were the
frequent changes of the seventeenth century--but at its close the
power of Deism had evolved a platform on which was to be fought the
hostilities of creeds. Here, then, could not exist that commingling of
sects, which were deducible in all their varied extravagance from the
Bible. Theology had no longer to fight with itself, but with philosophy.
Metaphysics became the Jehu of opinion, and sought to drive its chariot
through the fables of the saints. The old doctrines had to be re-stated
to meet new foes. For the Papists, Nonconformists, and Brownists, were
excluded to make way for the British Illuminati, who spread as much
consternation through England as did the French Encyclopaedists across
Europe. The new field of action was only planned, for when Catholicism
first opposed Protestantism, its leaders little thought what a Pandoric
box it was opening--nor did the Divines of the latter sect ever
doubt the finality of their own doctrines. They wished to replace one
infallibility by another. And the same charge can be substantiated
against Deism. When in this Augustan age the Free-thinking leaders,
fresh from the trammels of Christism, first took the name of Moral
Philosophers, they little knew they were paving the way for an Atheism
t