Now those, continues Cicero, to whom the second place is awarded by unanimous consent, and who do not in turn concede the first place to any--it is those who incontestably deserve that place.

(Sec.62.) * * * * * In all this we notice one constant characteristic of the eighteenth century controversy about revealed religion.

The assailant demands of the defender an answer to all the intellectual or logical objections that could possibly be raised by one who had never been a Christian, and who refused to become a Christian until these objections could be met.
No account is taken of the mental conditions by which a creed is engendered and limited; nor of the train of historic circumstance which prepares men to receive it.

The modern apologist escapes by explaining religion; the apologist of a hundred years ago was required to prove it.
The end of such a method was inevitably a negation.

The objective propositions of a creed with supernatural pretensions can never be demonstrated from natural or rationalistic premisses.