Note 131 — Chapter XIV · BRITISH FREETHOUGHT IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY

Trinius, Freydenker-Lexicon, 1759, p. 120; Pünjer, i, 291, 300–301. Browne was even called an atheist. Arpe, Apologia pro Vanino, 1712, p. 27, citing Welschius. Mr. A. H. Bullen, in his introduction to his ed. of Marlowe (1885, vol. i, p. lviii), remarks that Browne, who “kept the road” in divinity, “exposed the vulnerable points in the Scriptural narratives with more acumen and gusto than the whole army of freethinkers, from Anthony Collins downwards.” This is of course an extravagance, but, as Mr. Bullen remarks in the Dict. of Nat. Biog. vii, 66, Browne discusses “with evident relish” the “seeming absurdities in the Scriptural narrative.” ↑