On the other hand, Rationalism (which is the logic of Nature) is in attitude and spirit quite the reverse. It observes that numbers are unconvinced of the fact of Revelation, and feel the insufficiency, for their guidance, of that offered to them. To them the pages of Nature seem clearer than those of the Apostles. Reason, which existed before all Religions and decides upon all--else the false can never be distinguished from the true--seems self-dependent and capable of furnishing personal direction. Hence Rationalism instructed by facts, winning secrets by experiments, establishing principles by reflection, is assured of a morality founded upon the laws of Nature. Without the advantage of inductive science to assist discoveries, or the printing press to record corroborations of them, the Pre-Christian world created ethics, and Socrates and Epictetus, and Zoroaster and Confucius, delivered precepts, to which this age accords a high place. Modern Rationalists therefore sought, with their new advantages, to augment and systematize these conquests. They tested the claims of the Church by the truths of Nature. That Freethought which had won these truths applied them to creeds, and criticism became its weapon of Propagandism. Its consciousness of new truth stimulated its aggression on old error. The pretensions of reason being denied as false, and rationalists themselves persecuted as dangerous, they had no alternative but to criticise in order to vindicate their own principles, and weaken the credit and power of their opponents. To attack the misleading dogmas of Theology was to the early Freethinkers well understood self-defence. In some hands and under the provocations of vindictive bigotry, this work, no doubt, became wholly antagonistic, but the main aspiration of the majority was the determination of teaching the people "to be a law unto themselves." They found prevailing a religion of unreasoning faith. They sought to create a religion of intelligent conviction, whose uniformity consisted in sincerity. Its believers did not all hold the same tenets, but they all sought the same truth and pursued it with the same earnestness. It was this inspiration which sustained Vanini, Hamont, Lewes, Kett, Legate, and Wightman at the stake, and which armed Servetus to prefer the fires of Calvin to the creed of Calvin, which supported Annet in the pillory, and Woolston and Carlile in their imprisonments. It was no capricious taste for negations which dictated these deliberate sacrifices, but a sentiment purer than interest and stronger than self-love--it was the generous passion for unfriended truth. XII.