Glanvill, who was a Fellow of the Royal Society, and acted as its Secretary, described and vindicated its character and proceedings, as a noble institution, vouchsafed to the modern world for the communication and increase of knowledge, according to the pregnant suggestion of Lord Bacon, that many heads and hands should unite in making and recording scientific observations, thus gathering up the facts which lie scattered in “the vast champaign of nature,” and bringing them into a common store.[487] But a notice of the way in which Glanvill defended the religious temper and tendencies of the experimental philosophy is more to our purpose; and I may, therefore, state that he executed his task in an ingenious and lively performance which is well worth the attention of certain people in the present day. He shows that God is to be praised in all His works--that His works are to be studied by those that would praise Him for them--that the study of nature in relation to God is very serviceable to religion--and that the ministers and professors of religion ought not to discourage, but promote the knowledge of the ways and works of its Author. He not only points out the connection between science and natural religion, but proves how true philosophy may be a friend of revelation, since it is a maxim of reason, that whatsoever God saith is to be believed, though we cannot apprehend the manner of it or tell how the thing should be.[488] No heterodoxy lurked under the advocacy of this scientific Divine, for he applied his principle to the Trinity and Incarnation, as being defensible on the same grounds as the existence of matter and motion. He moves nearer to the controversies of our own time, and indeed takes up a position in the midst of existing strifes, when he challenges the imputation, that philosophy teaches doctrines contrary to the Word of God. He meets it by saying, philosophy teaches many things which are not revealed in Scripture, for the design of Scripture is to teach religion, not science; no tenet ought to be exploded because some statements in the Divine oracles seem not to comport with it, natural objects being popularly described in the Old Testament; and the free experimental philosophy which the author pursued, and undertook to recommend, ventured, he said, on no peremptory and dogmatical assertions opposed to Divine authority, but confined itself to probabilities, where religion and the Scriptures are not at all concerned.[489] In many of his remarks, Glanvill anticipates the line of defence adopted by modern religious philosophers; and whilst he evinces a freedom of inquiry into natural phenomena which proves that he had burst the trammels of ancient prejudices, he also indicates a profound reverence for the Bible, and never allows his scepticism to utter a syllable inconsistent with belief in Divine revelation. I may add, that he published a discourse upon the agreement between reason