But, if possible, the theories afloat set in against the existing ecclesiastical system even more strongly than against the political constitution. The natural science of the day afforded far more material for battle on that ground than the other. Astronomy, physiology, and anthropology joined with the efforts of philosophy to demonstrate that miracle was a delusion, revelation unthinkable, and an extra-mundane God unverifiable. Soon numerous voices exalted negation into the positive statement that every idea of God should be rejected, and that the so-called soul in man was only the highest function of organized matter. True, Voltaire remained through life a Deist, and Rousseau declared his faith in God and in the immortality of the soul; but the one all the more resolutely contended against the divine institution of the Church, and the other against the fundamental Christian doctrines of Sin and Justification. However different each may have been from the other, they waged in common a war for life and death against the Church, the war of utterly opposed principles. Tocqueville was wrong in saying that the Revolution was only inimical to the Church as a feudal and aristocratic institution; that after it had lost its wealth and privileges, democratic society recognized how strong a democratic momentum the Church itself contained, and accordingly gave itself up with increased warmth to religious feelings. Here there is no doubt Taine's record is the more correct one. The Revolution knew well that it desired not the wealth only, but the fall of the Church; and not the partisans of the Revolution, but its adversaries, whose numbers were largely swelled by the cruelties of the Terror, have brought about the elevation of the Church in our own century.