esent
depressed and ignorant state of the Greek Churches,' speaks also with
warm sympathy of their poverty and persecution--'a peculiar character of
bearing the Cross.'--_Four Sermons, &c._, 198.]

[Footnote 137: _Biographical Dictionary_, 'Ludolph.]

[Footnote 138: Christopher Wordsworth, _University Life in the
Eighteenth Century_, 331.]

[Footnote 139: Secretan, 103.]

[Footnote 140: Wordsworth, _University Life_, &c. 324-5.]

[Footnote 141: Teale, 302.--This was in 1707. Archbishop Sharp gave his
help in furthering this work.--_Life_, i. 402.]

[Footnote 142: Evans' _Life of Frampton_, 44.]

[Footnote 143: Secretan, ii. 220-2. Hearne's _Reliquiae_, ii. 230.]

[Footnote 144: Pp. 309-59.]

[Footnote 145: Secretan, 195.]

[Footnote 146: Bowles' _Life of Ken_, 247.]

* * * * *

CHAPTER III.

THE DEISTS.

Of the many controversies which were rife during the first half of the
eighteenth century, none raised a question of greater importance than
that which lay at the root of the Deistical controversy. That question
was, in a word, this--How has God revealed Himself--how is He still
revealing Himself to man? Is the so-called written Word the only
means--is it the chief means--is it even a means at all, by which the
Creator makes His will known to His creatures? Admitting the existence
of a God--and with a few insignificant exceptions this admission would
have been made by all--What are the evidences of His existence and of
His dealings with us?

During the whole period of pre-reformation Christianity in England, and
during the century which succeeded the rupture between the Church of
England and that of Rome, all answers to this question, widely though
they might have differed in subordinate points, would at least have
agreed in this--that _some_ external authority, whether it were the
Scripture as interpreted by the Church, or the Scripture and Church
traditions combined, or the Scripture interpreted by the light which
itself affords or by the inner light which lighteth every man that
cometh into the world, was necessary to manifest God to man. The Deists
first ventured to hint that such authority was unnecessary; some even
went so far as to hint that it was impossible. This at least was the
tendency of their speculations; though it was not the avowed object of
them. There was hardly a writer among the Deists who did not affirm that
he had no wish to depreciate rev