crept in. . . .
Baptists, deriders of religion, Epicureans and atheists are
everywhere." Ten years later John Lyly wrote that "there never were
such sects among the heathens, such schisms among the Turks, such
misbelief among infidels as is now among scholars." The same author
wrote a dialogue, _Euphues and Atheos_, to convince skeptics, while
from the pulpit the Puritan Henry Smith shot "God's Arrow against
atheists." According to Thomas Nash [Sidenote: 1592] (_Pierce
Penniless's Supplication to the Devil_) atheists are now triumphing and
rejoicing, scorning the Bible, proving that there were men before Adam
and even maintaining "that there are no divells." Marlowe and some of
his associates were suspected of atheism. In 1595 John Baldwin,
examined before Star Chamber, "questioned whether there were a God; if
there were, how he should be known; if by his Word, who wrote the same,
if the prophets and the apostles, they were but men and _humanum est
errare_." The next year Robert Fisher maintained before the same court
that "Christ was no saviour and that the gospel was a fable."

[Sidenote: Bacon]

That one of the prime causes of all this skepticism was to be found in
the religious revolution was the opinion of Francis Bacon. Although
Bacon's philosophic thought is excluded from consideration by the
chronological limits of this book, it may be permissible to quote his
words on this subject. In one place he says that where there are two
religions contending for {636} mastery their mutual animosity will add
warmth to conviction and rather strengthen the adherents of each in
their own opinions, but where there are more than two they will breed
doubt. In another place he says:

Heresies and schisms are of all others the greatest
scandals, yea more than corruption of manners. . . . So
that nothing doth so keep men out of the church and drive
men out of the church as breach of unity. . . . The doctor
of the gentiles saith, "If an heathen come in and hear
you speak with several tongues, will he not say that you
are mad?" And certainly it is little better when atheists
and profane persons hear of so many discordant and
contrary opinions in religion.

But while Bacon saw that when doctors disagree the common man will lose
all faith in them, it was not to religion but to science that he looked
for the reformation of philosophy. Theology, in Bacon's judgment, was
a chief enemy to philosophy,