and religion, against infidelity, scepticism, and fanaticisms of all sorts. It is apparent, from what he says, that he had no sympathy with Puritanism, but he had a great respect for Richard Baxter. CHAPTER XVI. The term Latitudinarian, both as a term of praise and a term of reproach, intended by friends to signify that a man was liberal, intended by enemies to denote that he was heterodox, came to be applied to thinkers holding very different opinions. Amongst the Divines, often placed under the generic denomination, very considerable diversities of sentiment existed. Indeed, the name is so loosely used as to be given to some persons whose orthodoxy is above all just suspicion--to others not only verging upon but deeply involved in considerable error. When we examine the essence of Latitudinarianism, and find that it consisted in the elevation of morals above dogmas, in the assertion of charity against bigotry, in abstinence from a curious prying into mysteries, yet in the culture of a spirit of free investigation, we see that there might be lying concealed under much which is truly excellent, elements of a different description. Scepticism might nestle under all this virtue, and all this tolerance--under this love of what is reasonable, and this habit of liberal inquiry. Faith, in that which is most precious, might live in amicable alliance with the distinctive Latitudinarian temper, or scepticism might secretly nestle beneath its wings. From the beginning of the movement, some who took part in it, betrayed a want of sympathy in those strong Gospel convictions, which are of supreme importance, and in connection with it there were entertained, at an early period of its history, curious speculations respecting the pre-existence of souls, the salvation of the heathen, and the state of the body at the resurrection. Though some of these speculations were only fanciful, and others were capable of an orthodox construction, they certainly indicated a mental tendency very apt to resent the restraints of the Church’s faith, and to run into devious, if not dangerous paths. It was more than possible for this habit of rational and free inquiry to slip from under the control of its better principles, and to assume forms of even a disastrous kind. [Sidenote: LATITUDINARIANISM.]