e than was as yet allowed in
practice. In the eighteenth century this fundamental postulate of the
Reformation became for the first time a prominent, and, to many minds,
an absorbing subject of inquiry. For the first time it was no longer
disguised from sight by the incidental interest of its side issues. The
assertors of the supremacy of reason were at first arrogantly, or even
insolently, self-confident, as those who were secure of carrying all
before them. Gradually, the wiser of them began to feel that their
ambition must be largely moderated, and that they must be content with
far more negative results than they had at first imagined. The question
came to be, what is reason unable to do? What are its limits? and how is
it to be supplemented? An immensity of learning, and of arguments good
and bad, was lavished on either side in the controversy between the
deists and the orthodox. In the end, it may perhaps be said that two
axioms were established, which may sound in our own day like
commonplaces, but which were certainly very insufficiently realised when
the controversy began. It was seen on the one hand that reason was free,
and that on the other it was encompassed by limitations against which it
strives in vain. The Deists lost the day. Their objections to revelation
fell through; and Christianity rose again, strengthened rather than
weakened by their attack. Yet they had not laboured in vain, if success
may be measured, not by the gaining of an immediate purpose, but by
solid good effected, however contrary in kind to the object proposed. So
far as a man works with a single-hearted desire to win truth, he should
rejoice if his very errors are made, in the hands of an overruling
Providence, instrumental in establishing truth. Christianity in England
had arrived in the eighteenth century at one of those periods of
revision when it has become absolutely necessary to examine the
foundations of its teaching, at any risk of temporary disturbance to the
faith of individuals. The advantage ultimately gained was twofold. It
was not only that the vital doctrines of Christian faith had been
scrutinised both by friends and enemies, and were felt to have stood the
proof. But also defenders of received doctrine learnt, almost
insensibly, very much from its opponents. They became aware--or if not
they, at all events their successors became aware--that orthodoxy must,
in some respects, modify the stringency of its conclusions; th