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 wit. But one
great Christian Apologist fairly captured the guns of the
free-thinking array, and turned their batteries upon themselves.
Speculative "infidelity" of the eighteenth century type was mortally
wounded by the _Analogy_; while the progress of the historical and
psychological sciences brought to light the important part played by
the mythopoeic faculty; and, by demonstrating the extreme readiness of
men to impose upon themselves, rendered the calling in of sacerdotal
cooperation, in most cases, a superfluity.