he
Divine Legation_ (first three books) to the Freethinkers.]

[Footnote 176: It is, however, not improbable that Locke contributed to
some extent to foster that dry, hard, unpoetical spirit which
characterised both the Deistical and anti-Deistical literature, and,
indeed, the whole tone of religion in the eighteenth century. 'His
philosophy,' it has been said, 'smells of the earth, earthy.' 'It is
curious,' writes Mr. Rogers (_Essays_, vol. iii. p. 104, 'John Locke,'
&c.) 'that there is hardly a passing remark in all Locke's great work on
any of the aesthetical or emotional characteristics of humanity; so that,
for anything that appears there, men might have nothing of the kind in
their composition. To all the forms of the Beautiful he seems to have
been almost insensible.' The same want in the followers of Locke's
system, both orthodox and unorthodox, is painfully conspicuous. And
again, as Dr. Whewell remarks (_History of Moral Philosophy_, Lecture v.
p. 74) 'the promulgation of Locke's philosophy was felt as a vast
accession of strength by the lower, and a great addition to the
difficulty of their task by the higher school of morality.' The lower or
utilitarian school of morality, which held that morals are to be judged
solely by their consequences, was largely followed in the eighteenth
century, and contributed not a little to the low moral and spiritual
tone of the period.]

[Footnote 177: The Calvinistic controversy was more bitter, but it
belonged to the second, not the first half of the century.]

[Footnote 178: 'They attacked a scientific problem without science, and
an historical problem without history.'--Mr. J.C. Morison's Review of
Leslie Stephen's 'History of English Thought' in _Macmillan's Magazine_
for February 1877.]

[Footnote 179: See Bishop Butler's charge to the clergy of Durham,
1751.--'A great source of infidelity plainly is, the endeavour to get
rid of religious restraints.']

[Footnote 180: Mr. Leslie Stephen, _Essays on Freethinking and Plain
Speaking_. On Shaftesbury's 'Characteristics.'--'The Deists were not
only pilloried for their heterodoxy, but branded with the fatal
inscription of "dulness."' This view is amplified in his larger work,
published since the above was written.]

[Footnote 181: _Aids to Faith_, p. 44.]

[Footnote 182: In a brilliant review of Mr. Leslie Stephen's work in
_Macmillan's Magazine_, February 1877, Mr. James Cotter Morison remarks
on the Deists' view tha