2. =Thomas Hobbes=, A.D. 1588-1679, an acute philosophical and political writer, looked on Christianity as an oriental phantom, and of value only as a support of absolute monarchy and an antidote to revolution. The state of nature is a _bellum omnium contra omnes_; religion is the means of establishing order and civilization. The state should decide what religion is to prevail. Every one may indeed believe what he will, but in regard to churches and worship he must submit to the state as represented by the king. His chief work is “Leviathan; or, The Matter, Form, and Power of a Commonwealth, Ecclesiastical and Civil.” 3. =Charles Blount=, who died a suicide in A.D. 1693, a rabid opponent of all miracles as mere tricks of priests, wrote “Oracles of Reason,” “_Religio Laici_,” “Great is Diana of the Ephesians,” and translated Philostratus’ “Life of Apollonius of Tyana.” 4. =Thomas Browne=, A.D. 1635-1682, a physician, who in his “_Religio Medici_” sets forth a mystical supernaturalism, took up a purely deistic ground in his “Vulgar Errors,” published three years later. Among the opponents of deism in this age the most notable are Richard Baxter (§ 162, 3) and Ralph Cudworth, A.D. 1617-1688, a latitudinarian and Platonist, who sought to prove the leading Christian doctrines by the theory of innate ideas. He wrote “Intellectual System of the Universe” in A.D. 1678. The pious Irish scientist, Robert Boyle, founded in London, in A.D. 1691, a lectureship of £40 a year for eight discourses against deistic and atheistic unbelief.[491]--Continuation, § 171, 1. § 164.4. A tendency similar to that of the English deists was represented in Germany by =Matthias Knutzen=, who sought to found a freethinking sect. The Christian “Coran” contains only lies; reason and conscience are the true Bible; there is no God, nor hell nor heaven; priests and magistrates should be driven out of the world, etc. The senate of Jena University on investigation found that his pretension to 700 followers was a vain boast.--In France the brilliant and learned sceptic =Peter Bayle=, A.D. 1647-1706, was the apostle of a light-hearted unbelief. Though son of a Reformed pastor, the Jesuits got him over to the Romish church, but in a year and a half he apostatised again. He now studied the Cartesian philosophy, as Reformed professor at Sedan, vindicated Protestantism in several controversial tracts, and as refugee in Holland composed his famous “_Dictionnaire Historique et Critique_,” in which he avoided indeed open rejection of the facts of revelation, but did much to unsettle by his easy treatment of them.--Continuation, § 171, 3. THIRD SECTION. CHURCH HISTORY OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY.[492] I. The Catholic Church in East and West.