Note i-439 — INTRODUCTION (continued 2)

London (4th ed.), 1724. A despiser of authoritarianism in religion, intrigued by the physico-deistic thought of his day, Lyons (with a vituperative force akin to Thomas Paine's) damns those who damn men for revolting against divine and absolute revelation (p. 25). "Men have Reason sufficient to find out proper and regular ways for improving and perfecting their laws." Faith he calls "an unintelligible Chymæra of the Phantasie" (p. 92). The doctrine of the Trinity "is one of the most nice Inventions that ever the subtlest Virtuoso constru'd to puzzle the Wit of Man with" (p. 112). Through faith people make of God "only a confus'd unintelligible Description of a Heterogeneous Monster of their own Making" (p. 117). Deistically he opines that "we shall soon see that the Object of True Religion, and all Rational Mens Speculations, is an Eternal, Unchangeable, Omnipotent Being, infinitely Good, Just and Wise" (p. 123). Like Toland he urges, "To pretend to Believe a Thing or the Working of a Miracle, is a stupid and gaping Astonishment" (p. 195). Although he enjoyed Franklin's dissertation, he does not in his work hold to Franklin's necessitarianism: "Nothing interrupts Men, but only as they interrupt one another" (p. 238). Religion to Lyons is remote from books, but is found in the "unalterable laws of Nature, which no Authority can destroy, or Interpolator corrupt" (p. 252).