vine services: to
maintain order and respectability and the traditional morality. It had
no distinctive philosophy or theology, for the articles of belief
represented simply a compromise; an attempt to retain as much of the old
as was practicable and yet to admit as much of the new as was made
desirable by political considerations. It was the boast of its more
liberal members that they were not tied down to any definite dogmatic
system; but could have a free hand so long as they did not wantonly come
into conflict with some of the legal formulae laid down in a previous
generation. The actual teaching showed the effects of the system. It had
been easy to introduce a considerable leaven of the rationalism which
suited the lay mind; to explain away the mysterious doctrines upon which
an independent church had insisted as manifestations of its spiritual
privileges, but which were regarded with indifference or contempt by the
educated laity now become independent. The priest had been disarmed and
had to suit his teaching to the taste of his patrons and congregations.
The divines of the eighteenth century had, as they boasted, confuted the
deists; but it was mainly by showing that they could be deists in all
but the name. The dissenters, less hampered by legal formulae, had
drifted towards Unitarianism. The position of such divines as Paley,
Watson, and Hey was not so much that the Unitarians were wrong, as that
the mysterious doctrines were mere sets of words, over which it was
superfluous to quarrel. The doctrine was essentially traditional; for it
was impossible to represent the doctrines of the church of England as
deductions from any abstract philosophy. But the traditions were not
regarded as having any mysterious authority. Abstract philosophy might
lead to deism or infidelity. Paley and his like rejected such philosophy
in the spirit of Locke or even Hume. But it was always possible to treat
a tradition like any other statement of fact. It could be proved by
appropriate evidence. The truth of Christianity was therefore merely a
question of facts like the truth of any other passages of history. It
was easy enough to make out a case for the Christian miracles, and then
the mysteries, after it had been sufficiently explained that they really
meant next to nothing, could be rested upon the authority of the
miracles. In other words, the accepted doctrines, like the whole
constitution of the church, could be so modified as to