At the close of this chapter, in which so much has been said respecting the free thought of the Cambridge school, and just as we are on the point of noticing its wider developments, I would seize the opportunity of saying a few words in relation to views of science entertained by more advanced theological inquirers. Aristotle remained a favourite philosophical teacher with the supporters of old-fashioned orthodoxy. The “new learning,” as the investigation of physical phenomena after the Baconian method, came to be termed, inspired an immense degree of suspicion in the minds of a large number of clergymen, who fancied they could detect in it tendencies to Popery, or Socinianism,--they scarcely knew which; and the infant Royal Society, then beginning “to knock at the door where truth was to be found, although it was left for Newton to force it open,”[484] expressed a good deal of indignation on account of its supposed arrogance. It received such treatment as falls to the lot of a pert and conceited child, and old people shook their heads as they prognosticated the end of such folly after a little experience. Gunning, Bishop of Ely, Barlow, Bishop of Lincoln, and South, when orator at the University of Oxford, denounced these new studies as most mischievous; and Henry Stubbe, an intense admirer of Aristotle, raved against the scientific associates with a violence which was perfectly absurd.[485] That jealousy of science, which is not yet extinguished, then burnt with greater fury than it does now; and the Divines who united the inductive study of nature with the more immediate duties of their profession, had to sustain the brunt of a fierce battle. Seth Ward, Bishop of Salisbury, and Wilkins, Bishop of Chester, whilst theologically at variance, were scientifically in unison, and occupied the front rank in the clerical army on the side of intellectual advancement. But the person most zealous and laborious in the defence of the new philosophy was Joseph Glanvill, Rector of Bath, and Chaplain in Ordinary to Charles II., a writer of great ability, who had at his command a racy vigorous English style. It is amusing to find him employing the doctrine of a pre-existence of souls as the key to unlock the grand mysteries of Providence, and defending the possibility and real existence of witches and apparitions; still more amusing to be told by him that Adam needed neither spectacles nor telescope, for his naked eyes saw as much of the celestial world as we can discover with all the advantages of art.[486] Nevertheless the tone of his philosophy on the whole was decidedly sceptical; more so than Descartes, more so than Malebranche. [Sidenote: CAMBRIDGE.--SCIENCE.]