LELAND, John (1691-1766). Presbyterian minister and theological writer.
Autograph Letter Signed to 'R[everen]d and D[ea]r S[i]r', 2 pages 8vo, Liverpool, 9 October 1739. Apologising for the delay in writing, a result of ill health, protesting that he wishes to carry on a correspondence.
Leland also makes reference to his tract against Thomas Morgan:

'... I assure you that it will be a great pleasure to me to maintain a Correspondence which you have so honourably begun. It cannot but be a satisfaction to me that my answer to Morgan has your approbation, since I know you to be a good judg[e]. I wish the Reply to his last Book which is now in the Press may also please you. I shall be glad to know what you are now engaged in. Probably you are employing your thoughts upon the first Epistle of Peter, an Epistle which I think to be noble and admirable, but attended with considerable Difficulties. ...'

'A diligent pastor, Leland was also the foremost theological writer among eighteenth-century Irish dissenters. After two early pieces against the papacy (a sermon on the anniversary of the Gunpowder Plot in 1728 and an account of a debate with Francis Lehy, `a popish priest', in 1730) his published work was devoted largely to defences of the Christian religion, conceived in non-sectarian terms. It was undertaken in two phases: the first, a critical exposition of the arguments and strategies of deistic writers, is presented in a series of works beginning with tracts against Matthew Tindal (1734), Thomas Morgan (1739), and Henry Dodwell the younger (1744); it culminates in A View of the Principal Deistical Writers that have Appeared in England in the Last and Present Century (1754), in the form of letters ostensibly for Thomas Wilson, rector of St Stephen Walbrook.' [Victor Nuovo and M A Stewart in Oxford DNB].
[No: 21684]