CHAPTER 1 - ( CHRISTIAN LEADERS OF THE 18TH CENTURY ) - { PT. 8 }


 CHAPTER  1  -  ( CHRISTIAN LEADER OF THE 18TH CENTURY )  -  { PT.  8 } - My difficulty is not so much to find witnesses as to select them. This was the period about which Archbishop Secker said, in one of his exhortations: In this we cannot be mistaken, that an open and professed disregard of Christianity is become, through a variety of unhappy causes, the distinguishing character of the age. Such are the corruption and contempt of principle in the higher part of the world, and the excess, lack of moderation, and boldness of committing crimes in the lower part that must, if the torrent of impiety does not stop, become absolutely fatal. Christianity is ridiculed and criticized with very little restraint, and the teaches of it without any at all. This was the period when Bishop Joseph Butler, in his preface to the Analogy of Religion, used the following remarkable words. It has com to be taken for granted that Christianity is no longer a subject to inquiry, but that it is now at last considered to be ficttious. And accordingly, it is treated as if, in the present age, this were a point agreed upon among all people of discernment, and nothing remained except to sit it up as a main topic for mirth and ridicule. These types of complaints were not just confined to Churchmen.                                                                          ______________________________________________________  

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