The success of this religious "reaction," as it is called, was aided,
though not caused, by the common belief that the French Revolution had
been mainly due to infidelity; the Revolution was taken for an object
lesson showing the value of religion for keeping the people in order.
There was also a religious "reaction" in France itself. But in both
cases this means not that free thought was less prevalent, but that the
beliefs of the majority were more aggressive and had powerful spokesmen,
while the eighteenth-century form of rationalism fell out of fashion. A
new form of rationalism, which sought to interpret orthodoxy in such a
liberal way as to reconcile it with philosophy, was represented by
Coleridge, who was influenced by German philosophers. Coleridge was a
supporter of the Church, and he contributed to the foundation of a
school of liberal theology which was to make itself felt after the
middle of the century.
[203] Newman, the most eminent of the new High Church party, said that
he indulged in a liberty of speculation which no Christian could
tolerate. The High Church movement which marked the second quarter of
the century was as hostile as Evangelicalism to the freedom of religious
thought.
The change came after the middle of the century, when the effects of the
philosophies of Hegel and Comte, and of foreign Biblical criticism,
began to make themselves felt within the English Church.
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