The concluding volume of Maurice Cowling's magisterial sequence examines three related strands of thought--latitudinarianism, the Christian thought that has assumed that latitudinarianism gives away too much, and the post-Christian thought that has assumed that Christianity is irrelevant or anachronistic. Cowling conducts his argument through a series of encounters with individual thinkers, including Burke, Disraeli, the Arnolds, and Tennyson in the first half, and Darwin, Keynes, Orwell and Leavis in the second.