was certainly of all divines the one whose argument is most palpably fictitious, if not absolutely insincere. He marks, however, the tendency of the argument to become historical. Like a much acuter writer, Conyers Middleton, he is occupied with the curious problem: how do we reconcile the admission that miracles never happen with the belief that they once happened?--or are the two beliefs reconcilable? That means, is history continuous? But it also means that the problems of abstract theology were passing out of sight, and that speculation was turning to the historical and scientific problems. Hartley was expounding the association principle which became the main doctrine of the empirical school, and Hume was teaching ethics upon the same basis, and turning from speculation to political history. The main reason of this intellectual indifference was the social condition under which the philosophical theory found no strong current of political discontent with which to form an alliance. The middle classes, which are now growing in strength and influence, had been indifferent to the discussions going on above their heads. The more enlightened clergy had, of course, been engaged in the direct controversy, and had adopted a kind of mild common-sense rationalism which implied complete indifference to the dogmatic disputes of the preceding century. The Methodist movement produced a little revival of the Calvinist and Arminian controversy. But the beliefs of the great mass of the population were not materially affected: they held by sheer force of inertia to the old traditions, and still took themselves to be good orthodox Protestants, though they had been unconsciously more affected by the permeation of rationalism than they realised.