But having an assured faith in those stable laws of thought which are inwoven with the very texture of the human mind, and in the validity and force of that natural evidence to which Theology appeals, we have no fear of the profoundest Metaphysics that can be brought to bear on the question at issue, provided only they be not altogether unintelligible.
Pantheism has appeared in several different forms; and it may conduce both to the fullness and the clearness of our exposition if we offer, in the first instance, a comprehensive outline of the theory of Spinoza, with a brief criticism on its leading principles, and thereafter advance to the consideration of the twofold development of Pantheism in the hands of Materialists and Idealists, respectively.
SECTION I.
THE SYSTEM OF SPINOZA.
The Pantheistic speculations which have been revived in modern times can scarcely be understood, and still less accounted for or answered, without reference to the system of Spinoza.

That system met with little favor from any, and with vigorous opposition from not a few, of the divines and philosophers of the times immediately subsequent to its publication.

It was denounced and refuted by Musaeus, a judicious and learned professor of divinity at Jena; by Mansvelt, a young but promising professor of philosophy at Utrecht; by Cuyper of Rotterdam; by Wittichius of Leyden; by Pierre Poiret of Reinsburg; by Fenelon, Archbishop of Cambray; by Huet, Bishop of Avranches; by John Howe, and Dr.Samuel Clarke, as well as by many others,[119] whose writings served for a time to preserve the Church from the infection of his most dangerous errors.

But gradually these views became an object of speculative interest to Metaphysical inquirers, and found favor even with a growing class of Philosophical Divines;[120] partly by reason of the strong intellectual energy with which they were conceived and announced, and partly, also, there is reason to fear, on account of a prevailing tendency to lower the authority of Scripture, and to exalt the prerogatives of reason, in matters of faith.

The system of Spinoza, as developed in his "Tractatus Theologico-politicus," and, still more, in his "Ethica,"-- a posthumous publication,--may be said to contain the germs of the whole system both of Theological and Philosophical Rationalism which was subsequently unfolded,--in the Church, by Paulus, Wegscheider, and Strauss,--and, in the Schools, by Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel.
Theological Rationalism consists in making Reason the sole arbiter and the supreme judge in matters of faith; in setting aside or undermining the authority of Revelation, partly by denying or questioning the plenary inspiration of Scripture, partly by explaining or accounting for miracles on natural principles, partly by assuming, as Strauss assumes, that whatever is supernatural must necessarily be unhistorical; in reducing every article of the creed, by a new method of critical exegesis, to a mere statement of some natural fact or some moral doctrine, embellished, in the one case, by mythical legends, and accommodated, in the other, to local and temporary prejudices, but amounting substantially to nothing more than a natural development of human thought.