The churches, naturally, put themselves on the defensive against this spirit, but against the strong general convictions of the age they are unable in the long run to hold out. Protestantism succumbs first, because the elements already within it allow such considerations to find easy access. It carries within itself impulses to rationalism, inherited from Humanism, from Huldreich Zwingli (1484-1531) and from the Italians Lælius (1525-1562) and Faustus Socinus (1539-1604), and these impulses, hitherto suppressed, now find themselves set free._(_30_)_ [pg 093] Catholicism shows itself more capable of resistance. Nothing in its past makes it inclined to enlist under the banner of the spirit of the age: its strong organization serves as a protection against this. Yet it, too, has to yield considerably, and to allow its doctrines to pass, so far as may be, for a symbolic expression of the religion of reason. While utilitarian ethics are on the whole the product of the English spirit, the whole of Europe takes part in the expounding of the religion of reason. Herbert of Cherbury (1582-1648), John Toland (1669-1722), Anthony Collins (1676-1729), Matthew Tindal (1655-1733), David Hume (1711-1776), Pierre Bayle (1647-1706), Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778), Voltaire (1694-1778), Denis Diderot (1713-1784), Hermann Samuel Reimarus (1694-1768), Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646-1716), Christian Wolff (1679-1754), Gotthold Ephraim Lessing (1729-1781), Moses Mendelssohn (1729-1786), and a host of others, whether standing nearer to or further from the Church, and whether or not going further than others in systematic criticism, all bring stones for the erection of the great building in which the piety of illuminated mankind is to live._(_31_)_ The researches in the history of religion made by the Germans, like Johann Salomo Semler (1725-1791), Johann David Michaelis (1717-1791), and Johann August Ernesti (1707-1781), provide scientific data which throw light upon the division between eternal truths and the time-conditioned convictions of religion. The creed of the religion of reason is simply the optimistic-ethical world-view reproduced in a Christian phraseology, that is in one preserving within it the Christian theism, and the belief in immortality. An all-wise and wholly benevolent Creator has produced the world, and he upholds it in [pg 094] corresponding fashion. Men are endowed with free will, and discover in their reason and their heart the moral law which is meant to lead individuals and mankind to perfection, and to accomplish in the world God’s highest purposes. Every man has within him an indestructible soul, which feels his moral life as the highest happiness, and after death enters a state of a pure, spiritual existence.