that the unjust and cruel God of Revelation could not be the God of nature; Butler pointed to nature and said, There you behold cruelty and injustice.  The argument was perfectly good against the optimism of Shaftesbury, but it plainly admitted of the conclusion—­opposite to that which Butler wished to establish—­that a just and beneficent God does not exist.  Butler is driven to fall back on the sceptical argument that we are extremely ignorant; that all things

[152] are possible, even eternal hell fire; and that therefore the safe and prudent course is to accept the Christian doctrine.  It may be remarked that this reasoning, with a few modifications, could be used in favour of other religions, at Mecca or at Timbuctoo.  He has, in effect, revived the argument used by Pascal that if there is one chance in any very large number that Christianity is true, it is a man’s interest to be a Christian; for, if it prove false, it will do him no harm to have believed it; if it prove true, he will be infinitely the gainer.  Butler seeks indeed to show that the chances in favour amount to a probability, but his argument is essentially of the same intellectual and moral value as Pascal’s.  It has been pointed out that it leads by an easy logical step from the Anglican to the Roman Church.  Catholics and Protestants (as King Henry IV of France argued) agree that a Catholic may be saved; the Catholics assert that a Protestant will be damned; therefore the safe course is to embrace Catholicism. [3]

I have dwelt at some length upon some of the English deists, because, while they occupy an important place in the history of

[153] rationalism in England, they also supplied, along with Bayle, a great deal of the thought which, manipulated by brilliant writers on the other side of the Channel, captured the educated classes in France.  We are now in the age of Voltaire.  He was a convinced deist.  He considered that the nature of the universe proved that it was made by a conscious architect, he held that God was required in the interests of conduct, and he ardently combated atheism.  His great achievements were his efficacious labour in the cause of toleration, and his systematic warfare against superstitions.  He was profoundly influenced by English thinkers, especially Locke and Bolingbroke.  This statesman had concealed his infidelity during his lifetime except from his intimates; he had lived long as an exile in France; and his rationalistic essays were published (1754) after his death.  Voltaire, whose literary genius converted the work of the English thinkers into a world-force, did not begin his campaign against Christianity till after the middle of the century, when superstitious practices and religious persecutions were becoming a scandal in his country.  He assailed the Catholic Church in every field with ridicule and satire.  In a little work called The Tomb of Fanaticism (written 1736,