the second edition, published the same year, the
author discovered himself to be a young Irishman of the name of John
Toland, who had been brought up a Roman Catholic. Leland passes over
this work with a slight notice; but it marked a distinct epoch in
Deistical literature. For the first time, the secular arm was brought to
bear upon a writer of this school. The book was presented by the Grand
Jury of Middlesex, and was burnt by the hands of the hangman in Dublin
by order of the Irish House of Commons. It was subsequently condemned as
heretical and impious by the Lower House of Convocation, which body felt
itself bitterly aggrieved when the Upper House refused to confirm the
sentence. These official censures were a reflex of the opinions
expressed out of doors. Pulpits rang with denunciations and confutations
of the new heretic, especially in his own country. A sermon against him
was 'as much expected as if it had been prescribed in the rubric;' an
Irish peer gave it as a reason why he had ceased to attend church that
once he heard something there about his Saviour Jesus Christ, but now
all the discourse was about one John Toland.[148]

Toland being a vain man rather enjoyed this notoriety than otherwise;
but if his own account of the object of his publication be correct (and
there is no reason to doubt his sincerity), he was singularly
unsuccessful in impressing his real meaning upon his contemporaries. He
affirmed that 'he wrote his book to defend Christianity, and prayed that
God would give him grace to vindicate religion,' and at a later period
he published his creed in terms that would satisfy the most orthodox
Christian.

For an explanation of the extraordinary discrepancy between the avowed
object of the writer and the alleged tendency of his book we naturally
turn to the work itself. After stating the conflicting views of divines
about the Gospel mysteries, the author maintains that there is nothing
in the Gospel contrary to reason nor above it, and that no Christian
doctrine can be properly called a mystery. He then defines the functions
of reason, and proceeds to controvert the two following positions, (1)
that though reason and the Gospel are not in themselves contradictory,
yet according to our conception of them they may seem directly to clash;
and (2) that we are to adore what we cannot comprehend. He declares that
what Infinite Goodness has not been pleased to reveal to us, we are
either sufficiently cap