for authentic, though to others in several places they seem very much strained;” impatient of contradiction, treating their opponents with “disrespect and roughness.” “May it not be suspected,” he asks, “that this so visible a warmth in their present circumstances, and zeal for their orthodoxy, would (had they the power) work in them as it does in others? They, in their turn, would, I fear, be ready with their set of fundamentals, which they would be as forward to impose on others, as others have been to impose contrary fundamentals on them.”[444] [Sidenote: WORKS ON CHRISTIAN EVIDENCES.] Bentley and Locke added what was of the highest value to the literature of the Evidences. On a far lower intellectual level appeared Leslie, the Nonjuror, who, eschewing paths of reason, prepared to enter the path of history, and addressed himself to those of his countrymen who have little time for study and less capacity for reflection. In 1696 he published _A Short and Easy Method with the Deists_, in which are laid down certain rules as to the truth of historical statements; and he contends that when they all meet, statements cannot be false. The rules are: “That the matter of fact be such, as that men’s outward senses, their eyes and ears, may be judges of it; that it be done publicly, in the face of the world; that not only public monuments be kept up in memory of it, but some outward actions to be performed; that such monuments and such actions or observances be instituted and do commence from the time that the matter of fact was done.” These rules, Leslie insists, could be successfully applied to the facts connected with the origin of the religion of Moses and the religion of Christ, pointing to the institution and observance of Baptism and of the Lord’s Supper as memorials of the latter. Mohammedanism, he said, lacks such evidence, and he challenged Deists to show any action that is fabulous, in support of which all the four marks can be alleged. The work is of a very slight description, and is composed in a loose and inaccurate style. It could not meet the case of any who have adopted the principles of historical inquiry laid down by Voltaire and developed by Niebuhr, and by them applied to classical annals; nor could the method be applied by any critical student without great modification, and at the expense of an amount of learning, which would render the argument useless for popular purposes.