This taught Christians to boast of the hostility of the wise and prudent, and in every controversy ensured that the party which had the merit of mortifying reason most signally should be victorious.

Hence, the downward career of the Church into base superstition was determined and inevitable from her very birth; nor was any improvement possible, until a reconciliation should be effected between Christianity and the cultivated reason which it had slighted and insulted.
Such reconciliation commenced, I believe, from the tenth century, when the Latin moralists began to be studied as a part of a theological course.

It was continued with still greater results when Greek literature became accessible to churchmen.

Afterwards, the physics of Galileo and of Newton began not only to undermine numerous superstitions, but to give to men a confidence in the reality of abstract truth, and in our power to attain it in other domains than that of geometrical demonstration.

This, together with the philosophy of Locke, was taken up into Christian thought, and Political Toleration was the first fruit.