That freethought at the end of the century was rather driven inwards and downwards than expelled is made clear by the multitude of fresh treatises on Christian evidences. Growing numerous after 1790, they positively swarm for a generation after Paley (1794). Cp. Essays on the Evidence and Influence of Christianity, Bath, 1790, pref.; Andrew Fuller, The Gospel its own Witness, 1799, pref. and concluding address to deists; Watson's sermon of 1795, in Two Apologies, ed. 1806, p. 399; Priestley's Memoirs (written in 1795), 1806, pp. 127-28; Wilberforce's Practical View, 1797, passim (e.g., pp. 366-69, 8th ed. 1841); Rev. D. Simpson, A Plea for Religion ... addressed to the Disciples of Thomas Paine, 1797. The latter writer states (2nd ed. p. 126) that "infidelity is at this moment running like wildfire among the common people"; and Fuller (2nd ed. p. 128) speaks of the Monthly Magazine as "pretty evidently devoted to the cause of infidelity." A pamphlet on The Rise and Dissolution of the Infidel Societies in this Metropolis (London, 1800), by W. Hamilton Reid, describes the period as the first "in which the doctrines of infidelity have been extensively circulated among the lower orders"; and a Summary of Christian Evidences, by Bishop Porteous (1800; 16th ed. 1826), affirms, in agreement with the 1799 Report of the Lords' Committee on Treasonable Societies, that "new compendiums of infidelity, and new libels on Christianity, are dispersed continually, with indefatigable industry, through every part of the kingdom, and every class of the community." Freethought, in short, was becoming democratized. As regards England, Paine is the great popular factor; and it is the bare truth to say that he brought into the old debate a new earnestness and a new moral impetus. The first part of the Age of Reason, hastily put together in expectation of speedy death in 1793, and including some astronomic matter that apparently antedates 1781, [925] is a swift outline of the position of the rationalizing deist, newly conscious of firm standing-ground in astronomic science. That is the special note of Paine's gospel. He was no scholar; and the champions of the "religion of Galilee" have always been prompt to disparage any unlearned person who meddles with religion as an antagonist; but in the second part of his book Paine put hard criticism enough to keep a world of popular readers interested for well over a hundred years. The many replies are forgotten: the Biblical criticism of Paine will continue to do its work till popular orthodoxy follows the lead of professional scholarship and gives up at once the acceptance and the circulation of things incredible and indefensible as sacrosanct.