They hastened to expose the defects of the Scriptures with as much frankness as they would brand a sentence in Cicero or Seneca to be the interpolation of an impostor. In no nation has theology, as a science, absorbed more literary talent and labor than in Germany. In America and Great Britain the theologian is the patron of his own department of thought. But in Germany, poets, romancists, and scientific men write almost as many works connected with religious questions as on topics within their own chosen vocation. The Teuton considers himself a born theologian. So it was after the announcement of the destructive theories of Semler. All classes of thinkers invited themselves to discuss the Scriptures and their claims with as much freedom as if God had told them it was the true aim of their life. What was the consequence? Semler, having left so much room for doubt, and having rather indicated a direction than supplied a plan, a great number of men adopted the accommodation-theory and each one built his own edifice upon it. But the conclusions arrived at by them were very unlike, and generally incongruous. And such a result was very natural; for, all claiming the unrestricted use of reason, the issue of their thinking was the work of the individual mind. No two intellects are perfectly similar. Set a number of men to write upon a given subject and they will employ a different style, give expression to diverse thoughts, and perhaps reach antipodal conclusions. So when these writers against inspiration plied the pen, and burdened the press with their prolix effusions, there was no harmony in their thoughts. In one opinion they were firmly united, _that the Bible is a human book_. But how much of it was authentic; what was history and what myth; what poetry and what incident; these and a thousand kindred points divided the Rationalists into almost as many classes as there were individuals. There were two principal tendencies which gave a permanence and efficiency to Rationalism quite beyond the expectation of its most sanguine friends and admirers. One was _literary_, and inaugurated by Lessing; the other purely _philosophical_, and conducted by Kant.