While Mr. Chandler was minister at Peckham, some gentlemen of different denominations of dissenters came to a resolution to set up and support a weekly evening lecture at the old Old Jewry for the winter half-year. The subjects to be treated of in this lecture were the evidences of natural and revealed religion, with answers to the principal objections against them. Among the ministers to whom the conduct of this lecture was entrusted were Chandler and Lardner; and the discourses delivered by both these eminent men seem to have served as the foundation, or to have suggested the idea, of performances of much greater extent and importance for which they were afterwards deservedly celebrated. After some time Mr. Lardner ceased to have any connexion with the plan, which it was supposed might be conducted with more consistency of reasoning and uniformity of design by a single person; and it was accordingly undertaken by Mr. Chandler, whose talents besides were, doubtless, of a character better adapted to the conduct of a popular lecture.
In the discharge of this duty he preached some sermons on the confirmation which miracles give to the divine mission of Christ and the truth of his religion; and vindicated the argument against the objections advanced by Collins in his ‘Discourse on the Grounds and Reasons of the Christian Religion.’ These sermons he afterwards enlarged and threw into the form of a regular treatise, which was published in 1725, under the title of ‘A Vindication of the Christian Religion, in two parts; first, a Discourse on the Nature and Use of Miracles; and, secondly, an Answer to a late Book entitled ’
