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Meanwhile, new breaches were made in those citadels of my creed which had not yet surrendered.

One branch of the Christian Evidences concerns itself with the history and historical effects of the faith, and among Protestants the efficacy of the Bible to enlighten and convert has been very much pressed.  The disputant, however, is apt to play “fast and loose.”  He adduces the theory of Christianity when the history is unfavourable, and appeals to the history if the theory is impugned.  In this way, just so much is picked out of the mass of facts as suits his argument, and the rest is quietly put aside.

I. In the theory of my early creed, (which was that of the New Testament, however convenient it may be for my critics to deride it as fanatical and not Christian,) cultivation of mind and erudition were classed with worldly things, which might be used where they pre-existed, (as riches and power may subserve higher ends,) but which were quite extraneous and unessential to the spiritual kingdom of Christ.  A knowledge of the Bible was assumed to need only an honest heart and God’s Spirit, while science, history, and philosophy were regarded as doubtful and dangerous auxiliaries.  But soon after the first reflux of my mind took place towards the Common Understanding, as a guide of life legitimately co-ordinate with Scripture, I was impressed with the consideration that Free Learning had acted on a great scale for the improvement of spiritual religion.  I had been accustomed to believe that the Bible[8] brought about the Protestant Reformation; and until my twenty-ninth year probably it had not occurred to me to question this.  But I was first struck with the thought, that the Bible did not prevent the absurd iniquities of the Nicene and Post Nicene controversy, and that the Church, with the Bible in her hands, sank down into the gulf of Popery.  How then was the Bible a sufficient explanation of her recovering out of Popery?

Even a superficial survey of the history shows, that the first improvement of spiritual doctrine in the tenth and eleventh centuries, came from a study of the moral works of Cicero and Boethius;—­a fact notorious in the common historians.  The Latin moralists effected, what (strange to think!) the New Testament alone could not do.

In the fifteenth century, when Constantinople was taken by the Turks, learned Greeks were driven out to Italy and to other parts of the West, and the Roman Catholic world began to read the old Greek literature.  All historians agree, that the enlightenment of mind hence arising was a prime mover of religious Reformation; and learned Protestants of Germany have even believed, that the overthrow of Popish error and establishment of purer truth would have been brought about more equably and profoundly, if Luther had never lived, and the passions of the vulgar had never been stimulated against the externals of Romanism.