A Short History of Freethought Ancient and Modern, Volume 2 of 2 by J. M. Robertson

conventional orthodoxy in English life. From about the middle of the century the balance gradually changes. In 1852 we find the publisher Henry Bohn reissuing the worthless apologetic works of the Rev. Andrew Fuller, with a "publisher's preface" in which they are said to "maintain an acknowledged pre-eminence," though written "at a period of our national history when the writings of Volney and Gibbon, and especially of Thomas Paine, fostered by the political effects of the French Revolution, had deteriorated the morals of the people, and infused the poison of infidelity into the disaffected portion of the public." We have here still the note of early-nineteenth-century Anglican respectability, not easily to be matched in human history for hollowness and blatancy. Fuller is at once one of the most rabid and one of the most futile of the thousand and one defenders of the faith. A sample of his mind and method is the verdict that "If the light that is gone abroad on earth would permit the rearing of temples to Venus, or Bacchus, or any of the rabble of heathen deities, there is little doubt but that modern unbelievers would in great numbers become their devotees; but, seeing they cannot have a God whose worship shall accord with their inclinations, they seem determined not to worship at all." [1695] In the very next year the same publisher began the issue of a reprint of Gibbon, with variorum notes, edited by "An English Churchman," who for the most part defended Gibbon against his orthodox critics. This enterprise in turn brought upon the pious publisher a fair share of odium. But the second half of the century, albeit soon darkened by new wars in Europe, Asia, and America, was to be for England one of Liberalism alike in politics and in thought, free trade, and relatively free publication, with progress in enlightenment for both the populace and the "educated" classes.