One piece of superstition maintained by English Sovereigns received a vigorous check, but not a death-blow. I have described the ceremony of touching for the “king’s evil,” so ostentatiously revived by Charles II. His brother perpetuated the practice. The pecuniary benefit of submitting to the operation, no doubt, made it very popular, since it cost £10,000 a year for silver coins to be hung round the necks of patients. When, at the close of Lent, crowds besieged his doors, William exclaimed, “It is a silly superstition; give the poor creatures some money, and send them away.” Once only could he be prevailed upon to touch a suppliant, when he added, “God give you better health, and more sense.” There were not wanting some to reproach the King as cruel and impious, for refusing to exercise a Divine gift; but the Jacobites turned his conduct to account by saying, he did not dare to pretend to a power which only belonged to the Lord’s anointed. CHAPTER XV. Courses of lectures on doctrinal and devotional themes had been fashionable with the Puritans. Robert Boyle, looking at the spread of infidelity, provided, by his will, for the appointment of a lecturer, to preach eight sermons in a year upon the Evidences of Christianity; and thus set an example which has been followed by Bampton, Hulse, and others. The trustees--Tenison, then Bishop of Lincoln, and John Evelyn being two of them--selected for the first performance of the duty a rising clergyman, already known in University circles by his vast attainments, and afterwards famous throughout the world of letters. Evelyn records the appointment in his _Diary_, by saying “he made choice of one Mr. Bentley, chaplain to the Bishop of Worcester;” and the comparatively obscure student, so described, regarded it in after-life as the greatest honour with which he was ever invested. He determined to follow Cudworth and Cumberland without imitating them, to go down to the basis of all theology, and to confute the opinions of Hobbes and Spinoza. Bentley’s Lectures, entitled, _A Confutation of Atheism_, after exposing the folly of a godless belief, aimed at demonstrating the Divine existence from an inquiry into the faculties of the human soul, the structure of the body, and the frame of the world. It was a movement along the line of rational thought. The Revolution had appealed to reason in matters of government. Without throwing aside traditions--even while appealing to constitutional forms--Englishmen were seeking after fundamental political principles; and reason came now to be earnestly invoked in the service of religion. Philosophy had been employed in attacking Christian beliefs; philosophy now came to the rescue. Faith in an infinite cause, shaken by the human intellect, was to be reinforced by a more vigorous exercise of the same faculty.