Feb 9, 2017
the spread of what Europeans in the early eighteenth century would have described as a more rational approach to Christianity marginalised for the educated Christian that mental world of wonders and providences which had been so widely shared around 1600 but which by the time of the early Enlightenment was becoming regarded as more appropriate to the vulgar masses. At the same time, the old notions of the "godly commonwealth" were becoming redundant in many European states. The witch-hunts ceased when "the establishment of the kingdom of God ceased to be a political objective and was replaced by the pursuit of liberty, the defence of property, the belief in progress, enlightenment, patriotism, and other secular alternatives
