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 capable of discovering ourselves or need not understand at all.  He affirms that ‘mystery’ in the New Testament is never put for anything inconceivable in itself or not to be judged by our ordinary faculties; and concludes by showing that mysteries in the present sense of the term were imported into Christianity partly by Judaisers, but mainly by the heathen introducing their old mysteries into Christianity when they were converted.

The stir which this small work created, marks a new phase in the history of Deism.  Compared with Lord Herbert’s elaborate treatises, it is an utterly insignificant work; but the excitement caused by Lord Herbert’s books was as nothing when compared with that which Toland’s fragment raised.  The explanation may perhaps be found in the fact that at the later date men’s minds were more at leisure