He engaged in the deistical controversy with "Scripture Vindicated" (Cambridge, 1730–2, 3 pts.), a reply to Matthew Tindal's "Christianity as Old as the Creation". To Edmund Law's "Enquiry into the Ideas of Space, Time, Immensity, and Eternity" (1734), Waterland contributed an appendix "A Dissertation upon the Argument a priori for proving the Existence of a First Cause", in which, with reference to Clarke, he tried to dispose of the ontological argument in the supposed interests of orthodoxy. "The Importance of the Doctrine of the Holy Trinity Asserted", London, 1734,; 3rd ed. Cambridge, 1800; and "Review of the Doctrine of the Eucharist as laid down in Scripture and Antiquity", Cambridge, 1737, were other major works. A reprint of the latter appeared at Oxford in 1868; new ed. 1896. Waterland's "Discourse of Fundamentals" (1736) is often regarded as an important contribution to Protestant thought on the doctrine of fundamental articles (i.e. the articulation and defense of the idea that there are "essential" versus "non-essential" truths of special revelation).