an opponent of Christianity. Warburton says,
"Mr. Pope told me that, to his knowledge, _The Characteristics_ have
done more harm to revealed religion in England than all the other works
of infidelity together." Collins contributed more than any other author
to the rise of Deism in France. He applied himself to the overthrow of
all faith. Ignoring prophecy, he held that nothing in the Old Testament
has any other than a typical or allegorical bearing upon the New
Testament.

Wollaston's creed was the pursuit of happiness by the practice of reason
and truth. He was the epicurean of the system which he adopted, and
sought to prove that religion is wholly independent of faith. He first
published a brief outline of his views in a limited number of copies,
but afterwards prepared a new and enlarged edition. Twenty thousand
copies were sold, and six other editions found a ready sale between 1724
and 1738. Woolston strove to bring the miracles of Christ into contempt.
Mandeville and Morgan, contemporaries of Woolston, wrote against the
state religion. Of Chubb's views we can gather sufficiently from his
three principles: _First._ That Christ requires of men that, with all
their heart and all their soul, they should follow the eternal and
unchangeable precepts of natural morality. _Second._ That men, if they
transgress the laws of morality, must give proofs of true and genuine
repentance, because without such repentance, forgiveness or pardon is
impossible. _Third._ In order more deeply to impress these principles
upon the minds of men, and give them a greater influence upon their
course of action, Jesus Christ has announced to mankind, that God hath
appointed a day wherein he will judge the world in righteousness, and
acquit and condemn, reward or punish, according as their conduct has
been guided by the precepts which he has laid down. With Bolingbroke's
name closes the succession of the elder school of English Deists. He
wrote against the antiquity of faith, showing bitter hostility to the
Old Testament. His aim, in addition to this antagonism to revelation,
was to found a selfish philosophy.

Many of the works by these writers were ill-written and lacked depth of
thought. Some were, however, masterpieces of original thinking and
writing. The style of Mandeville, for example, has been eulogized
extravagantly both by Hazlitt and Lord Macaulay.

It cannot be expected that a movement so extensive as this, and
participated in b