In Remarks Upon a Late Disingenuous Discourse, Writ by one T.D.… Marvell undertook to support a theological argument (on the absolute prescience of God and man's moral accountability) enunciated in 1677 by the dissenting minister John Howe against the attack of a fellow-dissenter and former fellow-student at Cambridge, Thomas Danson. Published anonymously in 1678 (the title page reads simply ‘By a Protestant’), Marvell's castigating (and scarce) pamphlet seems to have evoked scant comment at the time and very little subsequently. In his Memoirs of the Life of … Howe in 1724, Edmund Calamy, the grandson of one of the group of Presbyterian authors known as ‘Smectymnuus,’ contributed a single observation: ‘I know not that Mr. Howe took any notice of him; tho the ingenious Andrew Marvel Esq; made a very witty and entertaining Reply to him’ (p. 68).
Licensed 17 April 1678, scarcely four months before Marvell's death, the Remarks shows little of its author's characteristic humour. Since only the initials ‘T.D.’ appear on the title page of his opponent's treatise, Marvell mockingly assumes that they refer to ‘The Discourse’ and consequently derides his opponent throughout as ‘it.’