John Toland's Christianity Not Mysterious: Text, Associated Works and Critical Essays

On 18 September 1697, "Christainity not Mysterious" was burned in Dublin by order of Parliament. This edition of the text is now available 300 years later and also includes John Toland's defences of the work and eight critical essays. Toland's work argues that "there is nothing in the Gospels contrary to reason" and that the so-called Christian mysteries are merely the inventions of competing sects. This view threatened the very basis of the supremacy of the Established Church over the other churches in Ireland. Toland was forced to leave Ireland and spent the remainder of his life on the European continent, "Christianity not Mysterious" was rather more successful as well as influential. Toland's defence of reason over revelation in Christian belief went farther than Locke and other previous rationalists had dared, and so provoked a distinguished Irish counter-tradition that included Swift, Berkeley, King, Burke and many others.