The evidences of our holy religion were more largely discussed by writers of the Latitudinarian school, as already described; and they also received pre-eminent attention from Puritan authors. Authors of that class were amongst the first keenly to discern the signs of the times in the direction of scepticism, amongst the first to combat the rising evil. Devoted to the study of the Sacred Volume, they also devoted themselves to the examination of the basis of its Divine claims. One reason why the Cambridge and Puritan Divines paid more attention to this branch of study might be, that they thought so much more of Christianity than of the Church, so much more of the former as a system of truth, than of the latter as a scheme of government; and further, which is only another particular effect of the same general cause, they were under the influence of an individualizing power, which is one of the secrets of Protestantism, and which makes each person feel so strongly his own responsibility for the creed which he adopts. In this respect especially, the Puritan differed from the Anglican, who might be said to receive his Christianity from the Church, rather than his Church from Christianity. Two distinguished Puritan writers exhibit the proofs of natural religion,--and two others the proofs of revealed religion. Cudworth’s great work was published in 1678; but nine years before that time, Theophilus Gale presented to the world treatises containing arguments against atheism. _The Court of the Gentiles_--as the expansion of the title shows--is “a discourse touching the original of human literature, both philology and philosophy, from the Scriptures and Jewish Church, in order to a demonstration of the perfection of God’s Word and Church light, the imperfection of nature’s light, and mischief of vain philosophy, the right use of human learning, and especially, sound philosophy.” The title-page describes and exhibits the whole work as a defence of religion. The author’s idea is that the philosophy of the ancients, so far as it is true, constitutes an outer court, leading to the Holy of Holies in the Word of God. All which is valuable in classic writings, according to Gale, had been derived from the chosen people. Pagan ignorance and folly arose from the obstinacy of the human mind in forsaking Divine oracles. The inventiveness of the human intellect added to the mischief, and the degradation of the heathen, proves the need of the Gospel. In this frame-work of evidence, built up in four parts, Gale inserts one book--the second of the fourth part upon Atheism, and the existence of the Deity, in which,--professedly following Plato, but often adding much to the force of his master’s reasoning,--he demonstrates the being of a God from universal consent--from a subordination of second causes to the first, from a _prime Motor_; from the order of the universe; from the connate idea of God in the soul; and from moral arguments founded