Of course the new views aroused many suspicions, and did not escape criticism at the hands of Church authorities, both Protestant and Catholic. And (as we have seen) some early scientists paid very dearly for their allegiance to the spirit of scientific enquiry; but as time went on, actual persecution became impossible, morally and practically. But theologians were never, during the seventeenth century at least, quite reconciled to a science and a philosophy which seemed to them to be leading men towards areas quite uninhabitable for religion. But in spite of suspicions on either side, and the prevalence of some measure of intolerance, it cannot be said that relations between the scientists or philosophers and the theologians were very seriously strained until well on in the eighteenth century. ANTI-RELIGIOUS PROPAGANDA.--That this comparatively pacific state of affairs came to an end was the fault, primarily, at least, neither of the theologians nor of the scientists. A different atmosphere gradually began to envelop and to embitter the controversy. Orthodox religion, especially in Catholic countries, came to be associated with political reaction, and the most envenomed onslaughts began to be made upon what seemed to be the chief stronghold of a discredited regime. Especially was this the case in France, where corrupt political conditions were aggravated by the intense social misery which they had created. Thus France became the cradle of the phenomenon known as anti-clericalism, which is the product not so much of disbelief in a creed as of hatred of a system; it was the correlative of a Church in which religion was extinct, for genuine Catholicism had been rooted out of France early in the eighteenth century, just as Protestantism had been drowned in blood a century before.[15] SCIENCE POPULARISED.--In two respects France, during the second half of the eighteenth century, was far in advance of other countries. No other literature of that age can be compared with the French for the skill and charm with which scientific views were expressed. There was no lack of first-rate propagandists. And not only in the popularisation, but in the systematic teaching of science, France for a long period led the way.[16] Whereas the history of English or German literature of the eighteenth century could be written almost without reference to science, it is with scientific problems that the names of some of the most brilliant French _litterateurs_ are associated. And whereas in England, scientific men worked (in spite of the existence of the Royal Society) more or less in isolation, in France the savants have always been a brotherhood.[17]