In the Hulsean Lectures for 1827, astronomer and clergyman Temple Chevallier spoke of the harmful consequences of astrology, which encouraged the credulous to set too much store by their own importance while filling them with anxious and useless forebodings. Scientific method had cured much of this, but also brought new dangers through its dismissive attitude to matters of morality.

Chevallier warned that the Enlightenment had made mankind intellectually proud, to the point that it felt it could do without God. Religious doubts that arose from ignorance could easily be cured; those that were an excuse for immorality soon disgraced themselves; but doubts spread by respected men of science were deadly because the public hung on their every word.

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