. This is a point in the state of English
party in the seventeenth century which is well worth noticing,
and we must endeavour to comprehend it.

"We might think, _a priori_, that the spirit of political, and
that of intellectual, and that of religious movement, would go
on together, each favouring and encouraging the other. But the
Spirit of intellectual movement differs from the other two in
this, that it is comparatively one with which the mass of
mankind have little sympathy. Political benefits all men can
appreciate; and all good men, and a great many more than we
might well dare to call good, can appreciate also the value,
not of all, but of some religious truth which to them may seem
all: the way to obtain God's favour and to worship Him aright,
is a thing which great bodies of men can value, and be moved to
the most determined efforts if they fancy that they are
hindered from attaining to it. But intellectual movement in
itself is a thing which few care for. Political truth may be
dear to them, so far as it effects their common well-being; and
religious truth so far as they may think it their duty to learn
it; but truth abstractedly, and because it is truth, which is
the object, I suppose, of the pure intellect, is to the mass of
mankind a thing indifferent. Thus the workings of the intellect
come even to be regarded with suspicion as unsettling: we have
got, we say, what we want, and we are well contented with it;
why should we be kept in perpetual restlessness, because you
are searching after some new truths which, when found, will
compel us to derange the state of our minds in order to make
room for them. Thus the democracy of Athens was afraid of and
hated Socrates; and the poet who satirized Cleon, knew that
Cleon's partizans, no less than his own aristocratical friends,
would sympathize with his satire when directed against the
philosophers. But if this hold in political matters, much more
does it hold religiously. The two great parties of the
Christian world have each their own standard of truth, by which
they try all things: Scripture on the one hand, the voice of
the church on the other. To both, therefore, the pure
intellectual movement is not only unwelcome, but they dislike
it. It will question what they will not allo