It is evident that he carried rationalism in religion to an extent that seems hardly consistent with his position as a priest of the English Church.
Up to the revolutionary year 1830 his religious views had remained strongly tinged with rationalism, Hegel remaining his guide in religion as in practical politics and the treatment of history.
His critical principles are explained in the preface, where he dwells on the necessity of starting as much as possible from trustworthy contemporary sources, or at least from those nearest to antiquity - the touchstone by which verbal traditions can be tested being contemporary poems. He inclines to rationalism, rejecting the marvellous and recasting legends containing it in a more historical spirit; but he makes an exception in the accounts of the introduction of Christianity into Norway and of the national saint St Olaf.
The creeds and confessions do not formulate any authoritative doctrine of angels; and modern rationalism has tended to deny the existence of such beings, or to regard the subject as one on which we can have no certain knowledge.
His philosophical standpoint may be characterized as a reaction from the pantheistic tendency of Hegel's idealistic rationalism towards a more pronouncedly theistic position.
