Independent
Christian"; and, as the wiser of his modern biographers have
discerned, he was the precursor, not of sixteenth century reform, but
of eighteenth century "enlightenment"; a sort of broad-church
Voltaire, who held by his "Independent Christianity" as stoutly as
Voltaire by his Deism.

In fact, the stream of the Renascence, which bore Erasmus along, left
Protestantism stranded amidst the mudbanks of its articles and creeds:
while its true course became visible to all men, two centuries later.
By this time, those in whom the movement of the Renascence was
incarnate became aware what spirit they were of; and they attacked
Supernaturalism in its Biblical stronghold, defended by Protestants
and Romanists with equal zeal. In the eyes of the "Patriarch,"
Ultramontanism, Jansenism, and Calvinism were merely three persons of
the one "Infame" which it was the object of his life to crush. If he
hated one more than another, it was probably the last; while
D'Holbach, and the extreme left of the free-thinking host, were
disposed to show no more mercy to Deism and Pantheism.

The sceptical insurrection of the eighteenth century made a terrific
noise and frightened not a few worthy people out of their wits; but
cool judges might have foreseen, at the outset, that the efforts of
the later rebels were no more likely than those of the earlier, to
furnish permanent resting-places for the spirit of scientific inquiry.
However worthy of admiration may be the acuteness, the common sense,
the wit, the broad humanity, which abound in the writings of the best
of the free-thinkers; there is rarely much to be said for their work
as an example of the adequate treatment of a grave and difficult
investigation. I do not think any impartial judge will assert that,
from this point of view, they are much better than their adversaries.
It must be admitted that they share to the full the fatal weakness of
_a priori_ philosophising, no less than the moral frivolity common to
their age; while a singular want of appreciation of history, as the
record of the moral and social evolution of the human race, permitted
them to resort to preposterous theories of imposture, in order to
account for the religious phenomena which are natural products of that
evolution.

For the most part, the Romanist and Protestant adversaries of the
free-thinkers met them with arguments no better than their own; and
with vituperation, so far inferior that it lacked the wi