former
country, and the German those from the latter. We must not therefore
expect to find a very wide difference either respecting theology or
practical religion between the Swiss and their two influential
neighbors.

When the Skepticism of Voltaire and his disciples was penetrating the
French mind the Reformed Church of Switzerland did not long remain
unaffected by it. While that crafty man was enjoying his romantic
retreat at Ferney, he was visited and even flattered by persons who had
taken upon themselves the vows of the Christian ministry. The pastors of
Geneva were regarded by the Encyclopaedists as sympathizers and
co-laborers in overthrowing the distinctive doctrines of the Gospel. In
the early part of the nineteenth century there was in Switzerland, as in
Germany, a strife between the old confessional faith and Rationalism.
But in Germany Reason attacked the contents of the Scriptures, while in
Switzerland the attempt was made to reduce all revealed truth to a
system of natural religion. Rationalism in the Swiss Church was Arianism
and Socinianism revived.[121] It swept away the strong Calvinism of the
old Genevan theology. The clergy were little better than the English
Deists. D'Alembert says, "All the religion that many of the ministers of
Geneva have is a complete Socinianism, rejecting everything called
mystery, and supposing that the first principle of a true religion is to
propose nothing to be received as a matter of faith which strikes
against reason." Rousseau declares that those who filled the pulpits of
that venerable city had no answer to the question, "Is Christ divine?"

Theological training was neglected. The professors, like the pastors,
committed themselves to an undisguised system of Rationalistic
Unitarianism. M. Bost, writing in 1825, says that, "for more than thirty
years the ministers who have gone out of our schools of theology, to
serve either the churches of our own land or those of France and other
foreign countries, have not received one single lecture on the truths
which exclusively belong to revelation, such as the redemption of
mankind by the death of Christ, the justification of the Saviour by
faith, the corruption of our nature, the divinity of our Saviour, &c. In
theology we were taught nothing but what are called the dogmas of
natural religion. The extent to which this practical incredulity was
carried is clear from the fact, elsewhere unheard of, I suspect, in the
annals o