In the meantime the word "rationalist," which in English has latterly tended to become the prevailing name for freethinkers, had made its appearance, without securing much currency. In a London news-letter dated October 14, 1646, it is stated, concerning the Presbyterians and Independents, that "there is a new sect sprung up among them, and these are the rationalists; and what their reason dictates to them in Church or State stands for good until they be convinced with better." [30] On the Continent, the equivalent Latin term (rationalista) had been applied about the beginning of the century to the Aristotelian humanists of the Helmstadt school by their opponents, [31] apparently in the same sense as that in which Bacon used the term rationales in his Redargutio Philosophiarum--"Rationales autem, aranearum more, telas ex se conficiunt." Under this title he contrasts (as spiders spinning webs out of themselves) the mere Aristotelean speculators, who framed à priori schemes of Nature, with empiricists, who, "like ants, collect something and use it," preferring to both the "bees" who should follow the ideal method prescribed by himself. [32] There is here no allusion to heterodox opinion on religion. [Bishop Hurst, who (perhaps following the Apophthegms) puts a translation of Bacon's words, with "rationalists" for rationales, as one of the mottoes of his History of Rationalism, is thus misleading his readers as to Bacon's meaning.] In 1661 John Amos Comenius, in his Theologia Naturalis, applies the name rationalista to the Socinians and deists; without, however, leading to its general use in that sense. Later we shall meet with the term in English discussions between 1680 and 1715, applied usually to rationalizing Christians; but as a name for opponents of orthodox religion it was for the time superseded, in English, by "freethinker." In the course of the eighteenth century the term was adopted in other languages. The first French translation (1714) of Collins's Discourse of Freethinking is entitled Discours sur la liberté de penser; and the term "freethinkers" is translated on the title-page by esprit fort, and in the text by a periphrasis of liberté de penser. Later in the century, however, we find Voltaire in his correspondence frequently using the substantive franc-pensant, a translation of the English term which subsequently gave way to libre penseur. The modern German term Freigeist, found as early as 1702 in the allusion to "Alten Quäcker und neuen Frey-Geister" on the title-page of the folio Anabaptisticum et Enthusiasticum Pantheon, probably derives from the old "Brethren of the Free Spirit"; while Schöngeist arose as a translation of bel esprit. In the middle of the eighteenth century Freidenker came into German use as a translation of the English term.