Compare Whewell, Lectures on the History of Moral Philosophy, ed. 1862, pp. 25-38, where it is affirmed that, after the Reformation, "Since the assertions of the teacher had no inherent authority, he was obliged to give his proofs as well as his results," and "the determination of cases was replaced by the discipline of conscience" (p. 29). There is an interesting progression in English Protestant casuistry from W. Perkins (1558-1602) and W. Ames (pub. 1630), through Bishops Hall and Sanderson, to Jeremy Taylor. Mosheim (17 Cent. sec. ii, pt. ii, § 9) pronounces Ames "the first among the Reformed who attempted to elucidate and arrange the science of morals as distinct from that of dogmatics." See biog. notes on Perkins and Ames in Whewell, pp. 27-29, and Reid's Mosheim, p. 681. But Hobbes passed in two strides to the position that natural morality is a set of demonstrable inferences as to what adjustments promote general well-being; and further that there is no practical code of right and wrong apart from positive social law. [336] He thus practically introduced once for all into modern Christendom the fundamental dilemma of rationalistic ethics, not only positing the problem for his age, [337] but anticipating it as handled in later times. [338] How far his rationalism was ahead of that of his age may be realized by comparing his positions with those of John Selden, the most learned and, outside of philosophy, one of the shrewdest of the men of that generation. Selden was sometimes spoken of by the Hobbists as a freethinker; and his Table Talk contains some sallies which would startle the orthodox if publicly delivered; [339] but not only is there explicit testimony by his associates as to his orthodoxy: [340] his own treatise, De Jure Naturali et Gentium juxta disciplinam Ebræorum, maintains the ground that the "Law of Nature" which underlies the variants of the Laws of Nations is limited to the precepts and traditions set forth in the Talmud as delivered by Noah to his posterity. [341] Le Clerc said of the work, justly enough, that in it "Selden only copies the Rabbins, and scarcely ever reasons." It is likely enough that the furious outcry against Selden for his strictly historical investigation of tithes, and the humiliation of apology forced upon him in that connection in 1618, [342] made him specially chary ever afterwards of any semblance of a denial of the plenary truth of theological tradition; but there is no reason to think that he had ever really transcended the Biblical view of the world's order. He illustrates, in fact, the extent to which a scholar could in that day be anti-clerical without being rationalistic. Like the bulk of the Parliamentarians, though without their fanaticism, he was thoroughly opposed to the political pretensions of the Church, [343] desiring however to leave episcopacy alone, as a matter outside of legislation, when the House of Commons abolished it.