The religious altruism, however inadequate, which Berkeley offered in _Alciphron_ made some noise at the time of its appearance, although its theistic argument was too subtle to be popular. The conception of the visible world as Divine Visual Language was “received with ridicule by those who make ridicule the test of truth,” although it has made way since. “I have not seen Dean Berkeley,” Gay the poet writes to Swift in the May following the Dean’s return, and very soon after the appearance of _Alciphron_, “but I have been reading his book, and like many parts of it; but in general think with you that it is too speculative.” Warburton, with admiration for Berkeley, cannot comprehend his philosophy, and Hoadley shewed a less friendly spirit. _A Letter from a Country Clergyman_, attributed to Lord Hervey, the “Sporus” of Pope, was one of several ephemeral attacks which the _Minute Philosopher_ encountered in the year after its appearance. Three other critics, more worthy of consideration, are mentioned in one of Berkeley’s letters from London to his American friend Johnson at Stratford: “As to the Bishop of Cork’s book, and the other book you allude to, the author of which is one Baxter, they are both very little considered here; for which reason I have taken no public notice of them. To answer objections already answered, and repeat the same things, is a needless as well as disagreeable task. Nor should I have taken notice of that Letter about Vision, had it not been printed in a newspaper, which gave it course, and spread it through the kingdom. Besides, the theory of Vision I found was somewhat obscure to most people; for which reason I was not displeased at an opportunity to explain it(25).” The explanation was given in _The Theory of Visual Language Vindicated_, in January, 1733, as a supplement to _Alciphron_. Its blot is a tone of polemical bitterness directed against Shaftesbury(26). Although Berkeley “took no public notice” of “the Bishop of Cork’s book(27)” it touched a great question, which periodically has awakened controversy, and been the occasion of mutual misunderstanding among the controversialists in past ages. “Is God knowable by man; or must religion be devotion to an object that is unknowable?” In one of his first letters to Lord Percival, as we saw, Berkeley animadverted on a sermon by the Archbishop of Dublin, which seemed to deny that there was goodness, or understanding God, any more than feet or hands. An opinion somewhat similar had been attributed to Bishop Browne, in his answer to Toland, and afterwards in 1728, in his _Procedure and Limits of Human Understanding_.