ation
on the strange tragical death of Regulus, and proved it a Roman
legend. A greater paradox might have been his projected speculation on
Job, to demonstrate that only the dialogue was genuine; the rest being
the work of some idle Rabbin, who had invented a monstrous story to
account for the extraordinary afflictions of that model of a divine
mind. Speculations of so much learning and ingenuity are uncommon in a
young man; but Toland was so unfortunate as to value his own merits
before those who did not care to hear of them.

Hardy vanity was to recompense him, perhaps he thought, for that want
of fortune and connexions, which raised duller spirits above him.
Vain, loquacious, inconsiderate, and daring, he assumed the
dictatorship of a coffee-house, and obtained easy conquests, which he
mistook for glorious ones, over the graver fellows, who had for many a
year awfully petrified their own colleges. He gave more violent
offence by his new opinions on religion. An anonymous person addressed
two letters to this new Heresiarch, solemn and monitory.[111] Toland's
answer is as honourable as that of his monitor's. This passage is
forcibly conceived:--

"To what purpose should I study here or elsewhere, were I an _atheist_
or _deist_, for one of the two you take me to be? What a condition to
mention virtue, if I believed there was no God, or one so impotent
that could not, or so malicious that would not, reveal himself! Nay,
though I granted a Deity, yet, if nothing of me subsisted after death,
what laws could bind, what incentives could move me to common honesty?
Annihilation would be a sanctuary for all my sins, and put an end to
my crimes with myself. Believe me I am not so indifferent to the evils
of the present life, but, without the expectation of a better, I
should soon suspend the mechanism of my body, and resolve into
inconscious atoms."

This early moment of his life proved to be its crisis, and the first
step he took decided his after-progress. His first great work of
"Christianity not Mysterious," produced immense consequences. Toland
persevered in denying that it was designed as any attack on
Christianity, but only on those subtractions, additions, and other
alterations, which have corrupted that pure institution. The work, at
least, like its title, is "Mysterious."[112] Toland passed over to
Ireland, but his book having got there before him, the author beheld
himself anathematized; the pulpits thundered, an