thought to have touched
upon the questions discussed in the modern critical school. The
controversy which ensued was the means of opening up the discussion of the
great question which relates to the New Testament canon, viz., whether our
present New Testament books are a selection made in the second century
from among early Christian writings, or whether the church from the first
regarded them as distinct in kind and not merely in degree from other
literature; whether the early respect shown for scripture was reverence
directed to apostolic men, or to their inspired teaching.

If Toland is the type of free speculation applied to the theoretical side
of religion, lord Shaftesbury(406) is an example of speculations on the
practical side of it, and on the questions which come under the province
of ethics.

The rise of an ethical school parallel with discussions on the philosophy
of religion is one of the most interesting features of that age, whether
it be regarded in a scientific or a religious point of view. The age was
one in which the reflective reason or understanding was busy in exploring
the origin of all knowledge. The department of moral and spiritual truth
could not long remain unexamined. In an earlier age the sources of our
knowledge concerning the divine attributes and human duty had been
supposed to depend upon revelation; but now the disposition to criticise
every subject by the light of common sense claimed that philosophy must
investigate them. Reason was to work out the system of natural theology,
and ethics the problem of the nature and ground of virtue. Hence it will
be obvious how close a relation existed between such speculations and
theology. The Christian apologist availed himself of the new ethical
inquiries as a corroboration of revealed religion; the Deist, as a
substitute for it.

Lord Shaftesbury is usually adduced as a deist of this class. He has not
indeed expressed it definitely in his writings; and an ethical system
which formed the basis of Butler's sermons,(407) cannot necessarily be
charged with deism. But the charge can be substantiated from his memoirs;
and his writings manifest that hatred of clerical influence, the wish to
subject the church to the state, which will by some persons be regarded as
unbelief, but which was not perhaps altogether surprising in an age when
the clergy were almost universally alien to the revolution, and the
Convocation manifested opposition to political