appear to have
been violent Rationalists, while the larger class would seem to have
held the moderate opinions which Bretschneider himself professes to
adopt. The contrary is the fact, as any one at all acquainted with the
number of theological writers of the period in question can determine.
The spirit of the Rationalistic literature of the time was decidedly
violent and destructive.

In glancing at some of the general causes which have made Rationalism so
successful in its hold upon the popular mind, we find that it has
possessed many advantages over almost any other form of skepticism that
has appeared during the history of the church.

Prominent among these causes were its multiplied affiliations with the
church. It had thus a fine vantage-ground on which to wage deadly war
against the text and doctrines of the Bible. The first antagonists of
Christianity came from without; and they dealt their heaviest blows with
a deep and thorough conviction that the whole system they were combating
was absolutely false, absurd, and base. And, in fact, many later enemies
of Revelation have come from without the pale of Christianity. But the
great Coryphaei of Rationalism have sprung from the very bosom of the
church, were educated under her maternal care; and, at the same time
that they were endeavoring to demolish the superstructure of divine
inspiration, they were, in the eyes of the people, its strongest
pillars, the accredited spiritual guides of the land, teaching in the
most famed universities of the Continent, and preaching in churches
which had been hallowed by the struggles and triumphs of the
Reformation.

German Protestantism cannot complain that Rationalism was the work of
acknowledged foes; but is bound to confess, with confusion of face, that
it has been produced by her own sons; and that English Deism and French
Atheism were welcomed, and transmuted into far more insidious and
destructive agencies than they had ever been at home. The Rationalists
did not discard the Bible, but professed the strongest attachment to it.
They ever boasted that their sole object was the defence and elevation
of it. "Because we love it," they said, "we are putting ourselves to all
this trouble of elucidating it. It grieves us beyond measure to see how
it has been suffering from the vagaries of weak minds. We are going to
place it in the hands of impartial Reason; so that, for once at least,
it may become plain to the masses. We will