EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY may be divided broadly into two great classes, viz., external evidences, or the body of historical testimonies to the Christian revelation; and internal evi dences, or arguments drawn from the nature of Christianity itself as exhibited in its teachings and effects, in favor of its divine origin.
In the 16th and 17th centuries the in fluences of the Renaissance and the Reformation gave rise to a spirit of in quiry and criticism which developed English deism as represented by Herbert and Hobbes in the 17th century, and Collins and Bolingbroke in the 18th. The general position of English deism was the acceptance of the belief in the exis tence of God, and the profession of natural religion along with opposition to the mysteries and special claims of Christianity. It was in confutation of this position that the great English works on the evidences of Christianity of Butler, Berkeley, and Cudworth were written. In France the new spirit of inquiry was represented by Diderot.
D'Holbach, and the encyclopaedists, who assailed Christianity mainly on the ground that it was founded on imposture and superstition, and maintained by sacerdotal trickery and hypocrisy. No reply of any great value was produced in the French Church, though in the pre vious age Pascal in his "Thoughts" had brought together some of the profound est considerations yet offered in favor of revealed religion. The 19th century
was distinguished by the strongly ration alistic spirit of its criticism. The works of such writers as Strauss, Bauer and Feuerbach, attempting to eliminate the supernatural and mysterious in the origin of Christianity, were answered by the works of Neander, Ebrard, and Ullmann on the other side. The historical method of investigation, represented alike by the Hegelian school and the Positivists in philosophy, and by the Evolutionists in science, is the basis of the chief attacks of the present time against the super natural character of Christianity, the tendency of all being to hold that, while Christianity is the highest and most per fect development to which the religious spirit has yet attained, it differs simply in degree of development from any other religion. Notable among later apologists of Christianity have been Paley (Natural Theology), Chalmers (Natural Theol ogy), Manse], Liddon, and others, lec turers of the Bampton Foundation; in Germany Luthardt, Ewald, Baumstark, and others.