The effect of these new influences on religion is very marked. Controversies no longer turned upon questions in which the appeal lay to the common ground of scripture, as in the contest which Churchmen had conducted against Puritans or Romanists, but extended to the examination of the first principles of ethics or politics; such as the foundation of government, whether it depends on hereditary right or on compact, as in the controversy against the nonjurors(389) before the close of the century; or the spiritual rights of the church, and the right of every man to religious liberty and private judgment in religion, as in the Convocation and Bangorian(390) controversy, which marked the early years of the next century. The very diminution also of quotations of authorities is a pertinent illustration that the appeal was now being made to deeper standards. The philosophy of Locke, which attempted to lay a basis for knowledge in psychology, coincided with, where it did not create, this general attempt to appeal on every subject to ultimate principles of reason. This tone in truth marked the age, and acting in every region of thought, affected alike the orthodox and the unbelieving. Accordingly, as we pass away from the speculations which mark the early period of deism to those which belong to its maturity, we find that the attack on Christianity is less suggested by political considerations, and more entirely depends on an appeal to reason, intellectual or moral. The principal phases belonging to this period of the maturity of deism, which we shall now successively encounter, are four: (1) An examination of the first principles of religion, on its dogmatic or theological side, with a view of asserting the supremacy of reason to interpret all mysteries, and defending absolute toleration of free thought. This tendency is seen in Toland and Collins, (2) An examination of religion on the ethical side occurs, with the object of asserting the supremacy of natural ethics as a rule of conduct, and denying the motive of reward or punishment implied in dependent morality. This is seen in Lord Shaftesbury. After the attack has thus been opened against revealed religion, by creating prepossessions against mystery in dogma and the existence of religious motives in morals, there follows a direct approach against the outworks of it by an attack on the evidences, (3) In an examination, critical rather than philosophical, of the prophecies of the Old Testament by Collins, and of the miracles of the New by Woolston. The deist next approaches as it were within the fortress, and advances against the doctrines of revealed religion; and we find accordingly,