Reimarus, the able author of the Fragments, in his attack upon the evidences of revealed religion, had taken the same ground as Voltaire and the old English deists. And when we have said this, we have sufficiently defined his position, for the tenets of the deists are at the present day pretty well known, and are, moreover, of very little vital importance, having long since been supplanted by a more just and comprehensive philosophy. Reimarus accepted neither miracles nor revelation; but in accordance with the rudimentary state of criticism in his time, he admitted the historical character of the earliest Christian records, and was thus driven to the conclusion that those writings must have been fraudulently composed. How such a set of impostors as the apostles must on this hypothesis have been, should have succeeded in inspiring large numbers of their contemporaries with higher and grander religious notions than had ever before been conceived; how they should have laid the foundations of a theological system destined to hold together the most enlightened and progressive portion of human society for seventeen or eighteen centuries,--does not seem to have entered his mind. Against such attacks as this, orthodoxy was comparatively safe; for whatever doubt might be thrown upon some of its leading dogmas, the system as a whole was more consistent and rational than any of the theories which were endeavouring to supplant it. And the fact that nearly all the great thinkers of the eighteenth century adopted this deistic hypothesis, shows, more than anything else, the crudeness of their psychological knowledge, and their utter lack of what is called "the historical sense."