ised at the fate he met with.
Supposing that _any_ blasphemous publication deserved punishment--a
supposition which in Woolston's days would have been granted as a matter
of course--it is impossible to conceive anything more outrageously
blasphemous than what is found in Woolston's wild book. The only strange
part of the matter was that it should have been treated seriously at
all. 30,000 copies of his discourses on the miracles were sold quickly
and at a very dear rate; whole bales of them were sent over to America.
Sixty adversaries wrote against him; and the Bishop of London thought it
necessary to send five pastoral letters to the people of his diocese on
the subject.

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 substit