Note 26 — Lecture V. Infidelity in France in the Eighteenth Century, and Unbelief in England Subsequent to 1760.

Dr. Conyers Middleton lived from 1683 to 1750. In 1749 he published A Free Inquiry into the Miraculous Powers of the Early Church; “by which it is shown that we have no sufficient reason to believe, upon the authority of the primitive fathers, that any such powers were continued to the church after the days of the apostles.” He was attacked by Dodwell, Church, and Chapman, who described the work as discrediting miracles. The object of it was to place the church in the predicament of denying altogether the authority of the fathers, or else of admitting the truth of the Romish doctrine of miracles. Gibbon, when young, chose the latter horn of the dilemma. A list of Middleton's works in chronological order will be found in vol. i. of his Miscellaneous Works (1752). The one which created disputes in theology besides the above was, An Anonymous Letter to Waterland, 1731, in reference to his reply to Tindal's work; which was answered by Bishop Pearce. His posthumous work on The Variations or Inconsistencies which are found among the Four Evangelists, (Works, vol. ii. p. 22); his essay on The Allegorical Interpretation of the Creation and Fall (ii. 122); and his criticism in 1750 on bishop Sherlock's Discourses on Prophecy, may cause Middleton to be regarded as a rationalist. See his Works, ii. 24, 131, and iii. 183.