ive of the
working classes. He attacks individual clergymen, inveighs against the
'unnatural coalition of Church and State,'[159] and speaks of men living
in palaces like kings, clothing themselves in fine linen and costly
apparel, and faring sumptuously.

The lower and lower-middle classes have always been peculiarly sensitive
to the dangers of priestcraft and a relapse into Popery. Accordingly
Chubb constantly appealed to this anti-Popish feeling.[160]

Chubb, being an illiterate man, made here and there slips of
scholarship, but he wrote in a clear, vigorous, sensible style, and his
works had considerable influence over those to whom they were primarily
addressed.

The cause of Deism in its earlier sense was now almost extinct. Those
who were afterwards called Deists really belong to a different school of
thought. A remarkable book, which was partly the outcome, partly,
perhaps, the cause of this altered state of feeling, was published by
Dodwell the younger, in 1742. It was entitled 'Christianity not founded
on argument,' and there was at first a doubt whether the author wrote as
a friend or an enemy of Christianity. He was nominally opposed to both,
for both the Deists and their adversaries agreed that reason and
revelation were in perfect harmony. The Deist accused the Orthodox of
sacrificing reason at the shrine of revelation, the Orthodox accused the
Deist of sacrificing revelation at the shrine of reason; but both sides
vehemently repudiated the charge. The Orthodox was quite as anxious to
prove that his Christianity was not unreasonable, as the Deist was to
prove that his rationalism was not anti-Christian.

Now the author of 'Christianity not founded on argument' came forward to
prove that both parties were attempting an impossibility. In opposition
to everything that had been written on both sides of the controversy for
the last half century, Dodwell protested against all endeavours to
reconcile the irreconcilable.

His work is in the form of a letter to a young Oxford friend, who was
assumed to be yearning for a rational faith, 'as it was his duty to
prove all things.' 'Rational faith!' says Dodwell in effect, 'the thing
is impossible; it is a contradiction in terms. If you must prove all
things, you will hold nothing. Faith is commanded men as a duty. This
necessarily cuts it off from all connection with reason. There is no
clause providing that we should believe if we have time and ability to
examin