That which we have here summarized as the general position of deism, gained gradual expression through the regular development and specialization of deistic ideas in individual representatives of the movement. The chief points and epochs were marked by Toland's _Christianity not Mysterious_, 1696; Collins's _Discourse of Freethinking_, 1713; Tindal's _Christianity as Old as the Creation_, 1730; and Chubb's _True Gospel of Jesus Christ_, 1738. The first of these demands a critique of revelation, the second defends the right of free investigation, the third declares the religion of Christ, which is merely a revived natural religion, to be the oldest religion, the fourth reduces it entirely to moral life. The deistic movement was called into life by Lord Herbert of Cherbury (pp. 79-80) and continued by Locke, in so far as the latter had intrusted to reason the discrimination of true from false revelation, and had admitted in Christianity elements above reason, though not things contrary to reason. Following Locke, John Toland (1670-1722) goes a step further with the proof that the Gospel not only contains nothing contrary to reason, but also nothing above reason, and that no Christian doctrine is to be called mysterious. To the demand that we should worship what we do not comprehend, he answers that reason is the only basis of certitude, and alone decides on the divinity of the Scriptures, by a consideration of their contents. The motive which impels us to assent to a truth must lie in reason, not in revelation, which, like all authority and experience, is merely the way by which we attain the knowledge of the truth; it is a means of instruction, not a ground of conviction. All faith has knowledge and understanding for its conditions, and is rational conviction. Before we can put our trust in the Scriptures, we must be convinced that they were in fact written by the authors to whom they are ascribed, and must consider whether these men, their deeds, and their works, were worthy of God. The fact that God's inmost being is for us inscrutable does not make him a mystery, for even the common things of nature are known to us only by their properties. Miracles are also in themselves nothing incomprehensible; they are simply enhancements of natural laws beyond their ordinary operations, by supernatural assistance, which God vouchsafes but rarely and only for extraordinary ends. Toland explains the mysteries smuggled into the ethical religion of Christianity as due to the toleration of Jewish and heathen customs, to the entrance of learned speculation, and to the selfish inventions of the clergy and the rulers. The Reformation itself had not entirely restored the original purity and simplicity. Thus far Toland the deist. In his later writings, the five _Letters to Serena_, 1704, addressed to the Prussian queen, Sophia Charlotte, and the _Pantheisticon_ (Cosmopoli, 1720), he advances toward a hylozoistic pantheism.