This philosophy at first met with much opposition from the pietistic party of Halle.(666) The opposition was not due to any theological incorrectness, for Wolff was an orthodox Christian; but arose from the narrow and unnecessary suspicions which religious men too often have of philosophy, and the sensibility to any attempt to suggest a reconsideration of the grounds of belief, even if the conclusion adopted be the same. But the system soon became universally dominant. Its orderly method possessed the fascination which belongs to any encyclopædic view of human knowledge. It coincided too with the tone of the age. Really opposed, as Cartesianism had been in France, to the scholasticism which still reigned, its dogmatic form nevertheless bore such external similarity to it, that it fell in with the old literary tastes. The evil effects which it subsequently produced in reference to religion were due only to the point of view which it ultimately induced. Like Locke’s work on the reasonableness of Christianity, it stimulated intellectual speculation concerning revelation. By suggesting attempts to deduce _à priori_ the necessary character of religious truths, it turned men’s attention more than ever away from spiritual religion to theology. The attempt to demonstrate everything caused dogmas to be viewed apart from their practical aspect; and men being compelled to discard the previous method of drawing philosophy out of scripture, an independent philosophy was created, and scripture compared with its discoveries.(667) Philosophy no longer relied on scripture, but scripture rested on philosophy. Dogmatic theology was made a part of metaphysical philosophy. This was the mode in which Wolff’s philosophy ministered indirectly to the creation of the disposition to make scriptural dogmas submit to reason, which was denominated rationalism. The empire of it was undisputed during the whole of the middle part of the century, until it was expelled towards the close by the partial introduction of Locke’s philosophy,(668) and of the system of Kant, as well as by the growth of classical erudition, and of a native literature. The second cause which ministered to generate rationalism was English deism. The connexion of England with Hanover had caused several of the works of the English deists to be translated in Germany,(669) and the general doctrines of natural religion, expressed by Herbert and Toland, were soon reproduced, together with the difficulties put forth by Tindal. But the direct effect of this cause has probably been exaggerated by the eagerness of those who, in the wish to identify German rationalism with English deism, have ignorantly overlooked the wide differences in premises, if not in results, which separated them, and the regular internal law of logical development which has presided over the German movement.