The most eminent natural theologian of the time after Ray, and one who would have surpassed Ray in importance if his labours in this department had been more than a brief episode in a busy career, was Richard Bentley, whose power of destructive criticism in other fields proved how formidable a champion he could be on the negative side of any question. Bentley's massive intelligence, however, aptitude for broad commonsense views, and impatience of niceties and subtleties, entirely qualified him to embrace and expound the form in which natural theology commended itself to the vast majority of the thinkers of his day. He dealt solely with the materialism of Hobbes, 'there may be some Spinosists beyond seas,' he says, but to him _de non existentibus, et de non apparentibus, eadem est ratio_. The questions and the answers of a Goethe would have been equally unintelligible to him; if Newman would certainly have thought him shallow, he would as certainly have thought Newman whimsical. He must be judged from the standpoint of his own day, and from this his argument, delivered as the Boyle lecture for 1691 and 1692, must be pronounced a splendid and cogent piece of reasoning. It is particularly remarkable for its absolute reliance on the doctrines of Newton's _Principia_, when Newton had hardly a disciple out of England. FOOTNOTES: [11] On the flyleaf of a copy of Birch's _Life of Tillotson_ in the British Museum is a transcript of a letter from Archbishop Herring to the author, in which, acknowledging his dedication, he says: "I think myself extremely honoured in having my inconsiderable name connected with that of the best of my predecessors. I feel the disparity of the characters, and must submit to the censure which will arise from a comparison so infinitely to my disadvantage. But, as posterity, when the real object is out of sight, may imagine from your picture that there might be some distant shadow of a resemblance, I think I may, I think I ought to enjoy the contemplation." The resemblance was closer than the good archbishop's modesty would admit. CHAPTER XIII. BUNYAN AND OTHER WRITERS OF FICTION. [Sidenote: John Bunyan (1628-1688).]