We cannot help recognizing in the movement, one wave amongst many then foaming and breaking over the wide ocean of human thought. Resistance to the strict Calvinistic theory appeared and increased in the French Protestant Church. In the academy of Saumur speculations were rife, undermining the doctrines of imputation and original sin, and pointing to the idea of universal grace.[490] A similar tendency existed in Switzerland, not so manifest but yet operative; for the _Formula Consensus_ adopted in 1675 to exclude Divines, who were not sound in the faith of Geneva, met with violent opposition, and had to be softened down, and explained away. Against orthodox Lutheranism, as expounded in its symbolical books, there had appeared in Germany, in the first half of the century, a scheme in support of union and toleration resting on the basis of the Apostles’ Creed, such a proposal being pronounced by opponents to be _Syncretism_ or a “_Lying medley_;” and in the second half of the same century may be traced the rise of Pietism under Spener, who, although an orthodox believer, exalted spiritual life above theological belief.[491] Even the Roman Catholic Church throbbed with inquisitive impulses perilous to the blind rule which it upheld. The theology of Jansenism, whilst, under one aspect, it appears as an assertion of orthodox Augustinianism,--under another aspect reveals itself as a protest against authority; and the sentiment of Quietism, with its spiritual ardour, tended to the depreciation of what is dogmatical. The Port Royalists and Madame Guyon were, in fact, falling into a current which they did not comprehend. Biblical criticism was looking the same way. It carried in its bosom elements both of faith and scepticism. Inquiries into the state of the sacred text alarmed many of the learned and the good; and Hermeneutical Canons were being followed, which, while soundly Protestant, imperilled ideas venerable for their antiquity.[492] Historical criticism exposed ancient falsehoods. The spuriousness of the Isidorian Decretals, for ages the stronghold of Papal despotism, was demonstrated by the Protestant Controversialist Blondel, and was acknowledged even by the Catholic Canonist Contius. The abandonment of the scholastic method of reasoning, the triumph of modern philosophy in the Universities of Europe, the formation of a fresh secular literature, and the critical study of history in general, with the explosion of old fables and superstitions, were all signs of the times, conveying the impression that a new epoch was at hand in the history of human intelligence.