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f his work which is valuable to the philosopher, who watches the influence exercised at that time by psychological speculations; and he proposes to show that the doctrines of the gospel are neither contrary to reason nor above it. He exhibits the impossibility of believing statements which positively contradict reason;(398) and contends that if they do not really contradict it, but are above it, we can form no intelligible idea of them. He tries further to show that reason is neither so weak nor so corrupt as to be an unsafe guide,(399) and that scripture itself only professes to teach what is intelligible.(400) Having shown that the doctrines of the gospel are not contrary to reason, he next proceeds to show that they do not profess to be above it; that they lay claim to no mystery,(401) for that mystery in heathen writers and the New Testament does not mean something inconceivable, but something intelligible in itself, which nevertheless was so veiled "that it needed revealing;"(402) and that the introduction of the popular idea of mystery was attributable to the analogy of pagan writers, and did not occur till several centuries after the foundation of Christianity.(403) It is possible that the book may have been a mere paradox,(404) the effort of a young mind going through the process through which all young men of thought pass, and especially in an age like Toland's, of trying to understand and explain what they believe. But students who are thus forming their views ought to pause before they scatter their half-formed opinions in the world. In Toland's case public alarm judged the book to have a most dangerous tendency; and he was an outcast from the sympathy of pious men for ever. If he was misunderstood, as he contended, his fate is a warning against the premature publication of a paradox. The question accordingly which Toland thus suggested for discussion was the prerogative of reason to pronounce on the contents of a revelation, the problem whether the mind must comprehend as well as apprehend all that it believes. The other question which he opened was the validity of the canon.(405) Here too he claimed that his views were misunderstood. It was supposed that the mention made by him concerning spurious works attributed to the apostles, referred to the canonical gospels. Accordingly, if in his former work he has been considered to have anticipated the older school of German rationalists, in the present he has been
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