The second stage of this controversy appears in London. The Calvinism of the Commonwealth had by no means perished. Old books bearing its impress, old preachers repeating its echoes, remained, and wherever sympathies with it continued to thrive, of course the Northamptonshire pastor found advocates. Just at this moment an insignificant incident fanned the flame. A son of the noted Dr. Tobias Crisp reprinted his father’s works, with additions from unpublished papers; and very artfully, the editor procured the names of some well-known Divines, simply, as he said, to attest the genuineness of the MSS.--a thing perfectly superfluous--really, as he must have meant, to promote the sale of the new edition. Crisp was a Predestinarian of the first water, and maintained the doctrine of Election and the limitation of the Atonement in the narrowest and most repulsive form. [Sidenote: NONCONFORMISTS.] The excitement produced by this book, in connection with the disturbance created by Davis, was wonderful. The advocates of High Calvinism hailed it as the commencement of a millennium; they talked and preached and wrote with renewed vigour, and those who opposed them were denounced as legalists. On both sides bitterness increased. The more Crisp’s book was condemned, the more it was read. Its circulation was greatest amongst the uneducated, who praised the author up to the skies. The editor informs us that, in so unlikely a place as Guildhall, at one of the livery meetings, he was accosted by a citizen, who wrung him by the hand, and, with tears in his eyes, thanked him for reprinting his father’s sermons. Daniel Williams, a Presbyterian minister, formerly of Dublin, and at the time of the Revolution presiding over a numerous congregation at Hand Alley, in Bishopsgate Street, was then rising into eminence; and being a moderate Calvinist, he determined to oppose the circulation of Crisp’s work. Consequently, in 1692, he published his _Gospel Truth Vindicated_, in which Crisp’s dogmas are arranged, errors are separated from truths, and confutations supplied, not only from Scripture, but also from other writings of that very Divine. Prefixed to Williams’ book is a list of approving theologians, including Bates, Howe, Alsop, and Lorimer. [Sidenote: 1688–1702.]