ge, and amid the
multiplicity of secondary questions of more immediate practical
interest. For a hundred and fifty years after the first breach with
Rome, it may be said that private judgment was most frequently
considered in connection with a power of option between different Church
communions. A man had to choose whether he would adhere to the old, or
adopt the new form of faith--whether he would remain staunch to the
reformed Anglican Church, or cast in his lot with the Puritans, or with
one or other of the rising sects,--whether Episcopacy or Presbyterianism
most conformed to his ideas of Church government. When at last these
controversies had abated, the full importance of the principles involved
in this new liberty of thought began to be fully felt. Their real scope
and nature, apart from any transient applications, engaged great
attention, first among the studious and thoughtful, among philosophers
and theologians, but before long throughout the country generally. Locke
among philosophers, Tillotson and Chillingworth among divines, addressed
their reasonings not to the few, but to the many. Their arguments
however would not have been so widely and actively discussed, had it not
been for the Deists. Free-thought in reference to certain ecclesiastical
topics had been for several generations familiar to every Englishman;
but just at a time when reflecting persons of every class were beginning
to inquire what was implied in this liberty of thought and choice, the
term was unhappily appropriated by the opponents of revelation, and, as
if by common consent, conceded to them. Notwithstanding all that could
be urged by a number of eminent and influential preachers and writers,
freethinking became a term everywhere associated with Deism and
disbelief. It was a suicidal error, which rapidly gained ground, and
lingers still. The Deists gained great advantage from it. They started
as it were with an unchallenged verbal assumption that the most
fundamental principle of correct reasoning was on their side. All
inquiries as to truth, all sound research, all great reforms, demand
free thought; and they were the acknowledged Freethinkers. A name could
not have been chosen more admirably adapted to create, especially in
young and candid minds, a prejudice in their favour. For the same
reason, all who asserted the duty of fearless investigation in the
interests of Christianity could only do so under penalty of incurring
from many qu