belief.'[235]

In calling upon all men to test their faith by their reason, Tillotson
had to explain the relations of human reason to those articles of belief
which lie beyond its grasp. There was the more reason to do this,
because of the difficulties which were felt, and the disputes which had
arisen about 'mysteries' in religion. Undoubtedly it is a word very
capable of misuse. 'Times,' says the author last quoted, 'unfruitful in
theological knowledge are ever wont to fall back upon mystery and upon
the much abused demand of "taking the reason prisoner to the obedience
of faith."' With some, religion has thus been made barren and
ineffectual by being regarded as a thing to be passively accepted
without being understood. Among others, it has been degraded into
superstition by the same cause. When an appetite for the mysterious has
been cherished, it becomes easy to attribute spiritual results to
material causes, to the confusion of the first principles alike of
morality and of knowledge. Some, through an ambition of understanding
the unintelligible, have wasted their energies in a labyrinth of
scholastic subtleties; others have surrendered themselves to a vague
unpractical mysticism.

But, whatever may have been the errors common in other ages, it was
certainly no characteristic of the eighteenth century to linger
unhealthily upon the contemplation of mysteries. The predominant fault
was one of a directly opposite nature. There was apt to be an impatience
of all mystery, a contemptuous neglect of all that was not self-evident
or easy to understand. 'The Gospel,' it was said, 'professes plainness
and uses no hard words.'[236] Whatever was obscure was only the
imperfection of the old dispensation, or the corruption of the new, and
might be excluded from the consideration of rational beings. Even in the
natural world there was most mystery in the things which least concern
us; Divine providence had ordered that what was most necessary should
be least obscure. Much too was added about the priestcraft and
superstition which had commonly attended the inculcation of mysterious
doctrines. In all such arguments there was a considerable admixture of
truth. But in its general effect it tended greatly to depress the tone
of theological thought, to take away from it sublimity and depth, and to
degrade religion into a thing of earth.[237] Even where it did not
controvert any of the special doctrines of revealed religion, it
incli