their lives; and all of them at mortal enmity with the Puritanical Precisians. Free-thinking on religious topics was then, as it has been deemed since, a mark of the man of spirit and of the world,—a fashionable vice. It may be remarked, that more heterodoxical books were then printed in England than in any other part of Europe; the works of Giordano Bruno, and Servetus, with others of the same stamp, first issued into light from the London press, under the countenance of men of eminence for their rank and talent in the court of Elizabeth.
It is possible, though the evidence is equivocal, that Marlow may have been led by the influence of evil example, in thoughtlessness and gaiety of spirits "to sport with sacred subjects; more perhaps from the preposterous ambition of courting the casual applause of profligate and unprincipled companions, than from any systematic disbelief of religion," he may have ventured upon
