coarseness and irreverence so singular,
even in the attacks of that age, that it were well if they could be
attributed to insanity. They contain the most undisguised abuse which had
been uttered against Christianity since the days of the early heathens.
Occasionally, when wishing to utter grosser blasphemies than were
permissible by law, or compatible with his assumed Christian stand-point,
he introduced a Jewish rabbi, as Celsus had formerly done, and put the
coarser calumnies into his mouth,(435) as difficulties to which no reply
could be furnished except by figurative interpretation. The humour which
marked these pamphlets was so great, that the sale of them was immense.
Voltaire, who was in England at the time, and perhaps imbibed thence part
of his own opinions, states the immediate sale to have exceeded thirty
thousand copies;(436) and Swift describes them as the food of every
politician.(437) The excitement was so great, that Gibson, then bishop of
London, thought it necessary to direct five pastorals to his diocese in
reference to them,(438) and, not content with this, caused Woolston to be
prosecuted; and the unhappy man, not able to pay the fine in which he was
condemned, continued in prison till his death.(439)

In classifying Woolston with later writers against miracles, he may be
compared in some cases, though with striking differences of tone, with
those German rationalists like Paulus who have rationalized the miracles,
but in more cases with those who like Strauss have idealized them. His
method however is an appeal to general probability rather than to literary
criticism.

The next form that Deism assumed has reference more to the internal than
the external part of Christianity, the doctrines rather than the
evidences. Less critical than the last-named tendency, it differs from the
earlier one of Toland in looking at religion less on the speculative side
as a revelation of dogma, and more on the practical as a revelation of
duties. While it combined into a system the former objections, critical or
philosophical, the great weapon which it uses is the authority of the
moral reason, by which it both tests revelation and suggests a substitute
in natural religion, thus using it both destructively and for
construction.

Dr. Tindal,(440) the first writer of this class, had early given offence
to the church by his writings; but it was not till 1730, in his extreme
old age, that he published his celebrated dia