prove that there were no
mysteries in Christianity, yet perhaps he set men a-thinking that there
was a real danger of darkening counsel by words without knowledge,
through the indiscriminate use of scholastic jargon. If Collins
confounded freethinking with thinking in his own particular way, he yet
drew out from his opponents a more distinct admission of the right of
freethinking in the proper sense of the term than might otherwise have
been made. If Shaftesbury made too light of the rewards which the
righteous may look for, and the punishments which the wicked have to
fear, he at least helped, though unintentionally, to vindicate
Christianity from the charge of self-seeking, and to place morality upon
its proper basis. If Tindal attributed an unorthodox sense to the
assertion that 'Christianity was as old as the Creation,' he brought out
more distinctly an admission that there was an aspect in which it is
undoubtedly true.

One of the most striking features of this strange controversy was its
sudden collapse about the middle of the century. The whole interest in
the subject seems to have died away as suddenly as it arose fifty years
before. This change of feeling is strikingly illustrated by the flatness
of the reception given by the public to Bolingbroke's posthumous works
in 1754. For though few persons will be inclined to agree with Horace
Walpole's opinion that Bolingbroke's 'metaphysical divinity was the best
of his writings,' yet the eminence of the writer, the purity and
piquancy of his style, the real and extensive learning which he
displayed, would, one might have imagined, have awakened a far greater
interest in his writings than was actually shown. Very few replies were
written to this, the last, and in some respects, the most
important--certainly the most elaborate attack that ever was made upon
popular Christianity from the Deistical standpoint. The 'five pompous
quartos' of the great statesman attracted infinitely less attention than
the slight, fragmentary treatise of an obscure Irishman had done
fifty-eight years before. And after Bolingbroke not a single writer who
can properly be called a Deist appeared in England.

How are we to account for this strange revulsion of feeling, or rather
this marvellous change from excitement to apathy? One modern writer
imputes it to the inherent dulness of the Deists themselves;[180]
another to their utter defeat by the Christian apologists.[181] No doubt
there is f