As to the different forms of Naturalism, theologians say there are
three; the first, which they call Pelagianism, and which considers human
dispositions and notions as perfectly pure and clear by themselves, and
the religious knowledge derived from them as sufficiently explicit. A
grosser kind denies all particular revelation; and the grossest of all
considers the world as God. As to Rationalism, this word was used in the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries by those who considered reason as
the source and norm of faith. Amos Comenius seems first to have used
this word in 1661, and it never had a good sense. In the eighteenth
century it was applied to those who were in earlier times called by the
name of Naturalist."[5]
Of all writers on the subject of Rationalism we give the palm of
excellence to the devout and learned Hugh James Rose, of Cambridge
University. As far as we know he was the first to expose to the
English-speaking world the sad state to which this form of skepticism
had reduced Germany. Having visited that country in 1824, he delivered
four discourses on the subject before the university, which were
afterward published under the title of _The State of Protestantism in
Germany_.
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