The works of Woolston were, however, in one way important, inasmuch as they called the public attention to the miracles of our Lord, and especially to the greatest miracle of all—­His own Resurrection.  The most notable of the answers to Woolston was Thomas Sherlock’s ’Tryal of the Witnesses of the Resurrection of Jesus.’  This again called forth an anonymous pamphlet entitled ‘The Resurrection of Jesus considered,’ by a ‘moral philosopher,’ who afterwards proved to be one Peter Annet.  In no strict sense of the term can Annet be called a Deist, though he is often ranked in that class.  His name is, however, worth noticing, from his connection with the important and somewhat curiously conducted controversy respecting the Resurrection, to which Sherlock’s ’Tryal of the Witnesses’ gave both the impulse and the form.  Annet, like Woolston, was prosecuted for blasphemy and profanity; and if the secular arm should ever be appealed to in such matters, which is doubtful, he deserved it by the coarse ribaldry of his attacks upon sacred things.

It has been thought better to present at one view the works which were written on the miracles.  This, however, is anticipating.  The year after the publication of Woolston’s discourses, and some years before Annet wrote, by far the most important work which ever appeared on the part of the Deists was published.  Hitherto Deism had mainly been treated on its negative or destructive side.  The mysteries of Christianity, the limitations to thought which it imposes, its system of rewards and punishments, its fulfilment of prophecy, its miracles, had been in turn attacked.  The question then naturally arises, ’What will you substitute in its place?’ or rather, to put the question as a Deist would have put it, ’What will you substitute in the place of the popular conception of Christianity?’ for this alone, not Christianity itself, Deism professed to attack.  In other words, ’What is the positive or constructive side of Deism?’

This question Tindal attempts to answer in his ’Christianity as old as the Creation.’  The answer is a plain one, and the arguments by which he supports it are repeated with an almost wearisome iteration.  ’The religion of nature,’ he writes, ’is absolutely perfect; Revelation can neither add to nor take from its perfection.’  ’The law of nature has the highest internal excellence, the greatest plainness, simplicity, unanimity, universality, antiquity, and eternity.  It does not depend upon the uncertain meaning of words and phrases in dead languages, much less upon types, metaphors, allegories, parables, or on the skill or honesty of weak or designing transcribers (not to mention translators) for many ages together, but on the immutable relation of things always visible to the whole world.’  Tindal is fond of stating the question in the form of a dilemma.  ‘The law of nature,’ he writes, ’either is or is not a perfect law; if the first, it is not capable of additions; if the last, does it not argue