burton), are among its many excellences. In form it is a dialogue, carried on between Dion, Euphranor, and Crito, the defenders of the Christian doctrine and the principles of morals, and Alciphron and Lysicles, the representives of freethinking, or, as Euphranor names them in imitation of Cicero, 'minute philosophers.' Alciphron frankly avows that the progress of free inquiry has led him to disbelieve in the existence of God, and the reality of moral distinctions; he is, however, gradually driven from position after position by the ingenious questionings, Socratico more, of Euphranor and Crito, and, after a long and stubborn contest, allows himself to be vanquished by the force of truth.

89. The third is the Analogy of Religion, both Natural and Revealed, to the Constitution and Course of Nature (1736), by Bishop Butler. Of this profound and difficult piece of argumentation, the exact force and bearing of which can only be mastered by close and continuous study, some notion as to the general scope can be derived from the summary, found near the conclusion, of the principal objections against religion to which answers have been attempted in the book. The first of these objections is taken from the tardiness and gradual elaboration of the plan of salvation; to which it is answered that such also is the rule in nature, gradual change-'continuity,' as we now call it-being distinctive of the evolution of God's cosmical plan. The second stumbles at the appointment of a Mediator; to which the consideration is opposed, how God does in point of fact, from day to day, appoint others as the instruments of His mercies to us. The third proceeds from those who are staggered by the doctrine of redemption, and suggests that reformation is the natural and reasonable remedy for moral delinquency; to which it is answered, among other things, that even the heathen instinct told them that this was insufficient, and led them to the remedy of sacrifice. The fourth is taken from the light of Christianity not being universal, nor its evidence so strong as might possibly have been given us; its force is weakened or rebutted by observ ing, first, how God dispenses His ordinary gifts in such great variety, both of degrees and kinds, amongst creatures of the same species, and even to the same individuals at different times; secondly, how the evidence upon which we are naturally appointed to act in common matters, throughout a very great part of life, is doubtful in a high degree.' Probability, says Butler in another place, 'is the guide of life.'

As against the Deists, the controversy was now decided. It was abundantly proved that the fact of a revelation was, if

not demonstrable, yet so exceedingly probable that no prudent mind could reject it, and that the Christian ethics were not inconsistent with, but a continuation and expansion of, natural morality. Deism accordingly fell into disrepute in England about the middle of the century. But in France the works of some of the English Deists became known through the translations of Diderot and the Encyclopædists, and doubtless co-operated with those of Voltaire in causing the outburst of irreligion which followed the Revolution of 1789.

90. One more of these apologetic works must be mentioned, the Divine Legation of Moses, by Bishop Warburton (1743). This writer, known for his arrogant temper, to whom Mallet addressed a pamphlet inscribed To the most Impudent Man alive,' had considerable intellectual gifts. His friendship with Pope, whose Essay on Man he defended against the censures of Crousaz, first brought him into notice. The favour of Queen Caroline, whose discerning eye real merit or genius seldom escaped, raised him to the episcopal bench. The full title of the controversial work above mentioned is, 'The Divine Legation of Moses demonstrated on the Principles of a Religious Deist from the Omission of the Doctrine of a Future State of Reward and Punishment in the Jewish Dispensation.' The introduction is in the form of a 'Dedication to the Free Thinkers,' in which, while protesting against the buffoonery, scurrility, and other unfair arts which the anti-Christian writers employed in controversy, Warburton carefully guards himself from the supposition of being hostile to the freedom of the press. 'No generous and sincere advocate of religion,' he says, 'would desire an adversary whom the laws had before disarmed.'1

91. The rise of Methodism dates from about 1730. It was a reaction against the coldness and dryness of the current Protestant theology, which has been described as 'polished as marble, but also as lifeless and cold.' With its multiplied 'proofs' and 'evidences,' and appeals to reason, it had failed to make Christianity better known or more loved by its generation; its authors are constantly bewailing the inefficacy of their own arguments, and the increasing corruption of the age. Methodism appealed to the heart, thereby to awaken the conscience and influence the will; and this is the secret of its astonishing success. It originated in the prayer-meetings of a few devoutly disposed young men at Oxford, whom Wesley joined, and among whom he at once became the leading spirit.

1 The materials of the above sketch are partly taken from an able paper by Mr. Pattison in the volume of Essays and Reviews,

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He was himself much influenced by Count Zinzendorf, the founder of Moravianism; but his large and sagacious mind refused to entangle itself in mysticism; and, after a curious debate, they parted, and each went his own way. After fruitlessly endeavouring for many years to accommodate the new movement to the forms of the Establishment, Wesley organized After the an independent system of ministerial work and government for the sect which he had called into existence. middle of the century multitudes of human beings commenced to crowd around the newly-opened manufacturing and mining centres in the northern counties. Neither they nor their employers took much thought about their religious concerns. Hampered by their legal status, and traditionally suspicious of anything approaching to enthusiasm, the clergy of the Established Church neglected this new demand on their charity;and miners and factory hands would have grown up as pagans in a Christian land had not the Wesleyan irregulars flung themselves into the breach, and endeavoured to bring the Gospel, according to their understanding of it, within the reach of these untended flocks. The movement obtained a vast extension, and has of course a literature to represent it; but from its sectarian position the literature of Methodism is, to use an American phrase, sectional merely; it possesses no permanent or general interest. Wesley himself, and perhaps Fletcher of Madeley, are the only exceptions.

92. Conyers Middleton wrote in 1729 his Letter from Rome, in which he attempted to derive all the ceremonies of the Roman ritual from the Pagan religion which it had sup planted. An able reply, The Catholic Christian Instructed, was written by Challoner (1737), to the effect that Middleton's averments were in part untrue, in part true, but not to the purpose of his argument, since an external resemblance between a Pagan and a Christian rite was of no importance, provided the inward meaning of the two were different.

The excellent Bishop Challoner was converted in early youth by the teaching of John Gother. Many years of his life were passed in the English college at Douai; in 1741 he came over to England to take charge of the southern district, with the title of Bishop of Debra, in partibus. He died in his ninetieth year in 1781, saddened by the ruin and confusion wrought by the No-Popery riots of the previous year. Among his numerous works, chiefly controversial and devotional, none has a higher value than the Memoirs of Missionary Priests (1742); it contains numberless details, which would otherwise have been lost, respecting the labours and sufferings of Catholic priests employed on the English mission, from the change of religion down to the bishop's own time.

Dr. Prideaux (ante, iv. 66) is the author of The Connexion of the

History of the Old and New Testaments (1715), a work still much prized by Anglicans. The good Thomas Wilson, Protestant Bishop of Sodor and Man, author of two widely known devotional manuals, Sacra Privata and an Introduction to the Holy Communion, closed a long and beautiful life in 1755.

Philip Doddridge, the son of a London merchant, laboured for many years as a nonconformist minister at Northampton. He is the author of Rise and Progress of Religion in the Soul (1745), a Life of Colonel Gardiner, who fell at Prestonpans, and the Family Expositor.

William Paley, a writer of great clearness of thought and force of character, after passing through Cambridge, took orders, and became eventually Archdeacon of Carlisle. His Hora Paulina (1790) is an endeavour, by pointing out various 'undesigned coincidences' between passages in the Pauline epistles and the narrative in the Acts of the Apostles, to establish the historical credibility of both. In his Evidences of Christianity (1794) he popularised and put in a more striking and available shape the arguments supplied by Lardner (see above, § 40). In Natural Theology (1802) he aims at proving the existence of an intelligent personal Creator by the numerous instances of apparent design which may be traced in the works of Nature.

Philosophy, 1700-1800:-Berkeley, Shaftesbury, Hume, Reid, Butler, Hutcheson, Adam Smith, Hartley, Tucker, Priestley, Paley.

93. Nothing more than a meagre outline of the history of philosophy in this period can here be attempted. Those who devoted themselves to philosophical studies were numerous; this, in fact, up to past the middle of the century, was the fashionable and favourite pursuit with the educated classes. The most famous work of the greatest poct of the age, Pope's Essay on Man, is a metaphysico-moral treatise in heroic verse. The philosophers may be classed under various heads: we have the Sensational school, founded by Locke, of whom we have already spoken; the Idealists, represented by Bishop Berkeley; the Sceptical school, founded by Hume; the Common-sense or Scotch school, comprising the names of Reid, Brown, and Dugald Stewart; and the Moralists, represented by Butler, Smith, and Paley.

There are few philosophers whose personal character it is more agreeable to contemplate than George Berkeley, the Protestant Bishop of Cloyne. He was born in 1684 at Kilevin, in the county of Kilkenny, and educated at Trinity College, Dublin, where he obtained a fellowship in 1707. About four years later he went over to London, where he was received with open arms. There seems to have been something so winning about his personal address that criticism, when it questioned his positions, forgot its usual bitterness; and ex

traordinary natural gifts seemed for once to have aroused no envy in the beholder. Pope, whose satire was so unsparing, ascribes

To Berkeley every virtue under heaven;

and Atterbury, after an interview with him, said, 'So much understanding, so much knowledge, so much innocence, and such humility, I did not think had been the portion of any but angels, till I saw this gentleman."

Of Berkeley's share in the controversy with the Deists, we have already spoken. His Principles of Human Knowledge, published in 1710, contains the idealist system for which his name is chiefly remembered.2 In devising this his aim was still practical; he hoped to cut the ground away from beneath the rationalising assailants of Christianity by proving that the existence of the material universe, the supposed invariable laws of which were set up by the sceptics as inconsistent with revelation, was in itself problematical, since all that we can know directly respecting it is the ideas which we form of it. which ideas may, after all, be delusive. His other philosophical works are, Hylas and Philonous, Siris, or Reflections on Tar-water, and a Theory of Vision. Sir James Mackintosh was of opinion that Berkeley's works were beyond dispute the finest models of philosophical style since Cicero.

93a. The philosophical essays and papers of Anthony Ashley Cooper, third Earl of Shaftesbury, were collected after his death, and published under the title of Characteristics of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times (1716). Shaftesbury opposed the atheists, and supported the doctrine of an inherent moral sense in man; he writes, however, in a sceptical tone on the subject of revealed religion, and is therefore classed by Leland, in his View of the principal Deistical Writers, with the authors of that school. His style is pure, easy, and pleasing, while not deficient in dignity and impressiveness. Among the essays are, A Letter concerning Enthusiasm,' 'Sensus Communis,' Advice to an Author,' and 'An Inquiry concerning Virtue and Merit.' In the first named he insists upon the utility and power of ridicule to eject and exorcise the melancholy demon of Enthusiasm.' Repression of 'panick outbursts of this nature by law or the sword of the magistrate is, he maintains, both wrong and absurd. To prescribe bounds to fancy and speculation, to regulate men's apprehensions and religious beliefs or fears, to suppress by violence the natural passion of Enthusiasm, or to endeavour to ascertain it, or I Mackintosh's Dissertation on Ethical Philosophy, article 'Berkeley.' 2 See Crit. Sect. ch. II. § 45.