Freethought and Freedom: The English Deists

During its heyday in the eighteenth century, deism was closely affiliated with classical liberalism; and more than a few deists, such as John Toland, were active in the radical wing of liberalism, sometimes called radical (or real) whiggism, or (in the case of those liberals who rejected monarchy altogether) radical republicanism. For example, two writers familiar to many libertarians—John Trenchard and Thomas Gordon, authors of the libertarian classic Cato’s Letters—wrote many anticlerical tracts, most of which appeared in their journal The Independent Whig. And though, like most deists of their time, Trenchard and Gordon never expressly repudiated Christianity, they called for a return to “primitive Christianity,” that is, a return to the moral teachings of Jesus, which every deist praised. (Paul was the favorite New Testament target of deists, primarily because he developed the doctrine of original sin.) According to this typical deistic agenda, we should reject the irrational doctrines and practices that had been added to primitive Christianity by self-​serving priests and theologians; instead we should embrace the pure, undefiled moral teachings of Jesus. According to the deists, the essence of Christianity is moral behavior, not belief in dogmas about “mysteries,” such as the Trinity, that no one can understand or rationally justify.

In 1754 the English Presbyterian minister John Leland published A View of the Principal Deistical Writers, a book that he later expanded into two volumes. In this work, which became the standard secondary source on deism for many years, Leland traced the label “deist” to 1563, when it was used in a book by the Swiss Calvinist Peter Viret. Leland got his information from the massive and highly influential Historical and Critical Dictionary, by the infamous skeptic Pierre Bayle (1647-1706). Bayle’s Dictionary (which today would be called an encyclopedia) provided a goldmine of information for Enlightenment freethinkers, including information about some very obscure figures. In the article on “Viret” Bayle quoted a lengthy passage written by Viret in which he lamented the rise of a new species of unbelievers in France who called themselves “deists.” This passage reads, in part:

Viret was distressed because some of the self-​styled “deists” also called themselves “Christians,” despite their total rejection of supernatural revelation. (This practice would persist throughout the history of deism, thereby generating the problem of who was really a Christian and who was not.) Viret was also puzzled because many of the deists were highly educated.

Viret had ridiculed the beliefs of Catholics and Muslims, but he sensed that the deists would not be so easy to dispose of, especially since they explicitly repudiated atheism—a position that virtually no one in the sixteenth century would embrace. The ongoing conflict between Protestants and Catholics gave Europeans two religions from which to choose, and Viret had no doubt that Protestantism had the upper hand from a biblical perspective. (Islam, which Viret condemned as a type of idolatry, was not a realistic candidate.) But the deists had muddied the waters by offering the third option of no religion at all, in effect, despite their belief in a God of nature.

Deism became popular in England around the same time as in France and Holland. In one of the best histories of deism ever written, The Dynamics of Religion (2^nd ed., 1926), the freethought historian J.M. Robertson attributed the rise of deism to a widespread disillusionment with the practical effects of Christianity. Many people had become sick of the incessant internecine conflicts among Christians themselves—the intolerance, cruel persecutions of heretics, witch-​hunts, and bloody wars that had plagued Europe since the Reformation. Robertson (pp. 65-66) wrote:

Although deism emerged simultaneously in several countries, it was English deism that was destined to exert the most influence. Whereas many French freethinkers veered in the direction of outright atheism, especially during the eighteenth-​century Enlightenment, the majority of eighteenth-​century English freethinkers took the less disturbing route of defending the existence of a benevolent God who created the universe but who thereafter adopted a laissez-​faire policy, leaving the universe alone to operate according to natural laws. It was this English tradition that influenced leading American deists, such as Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and Benjamin Franklin; and when Thomas Paine published his notorious defense of deism, The Age of Reason (published in two parts, 1794, 1795; with a third part—a criticism of biblical prophecies—added in 1807), he drew heavily from his English predecessors, such as Anthony Collins.

Edward Herbert (Lord Cherbury) has traditionally been called the “father” of English deism. In 1624, while serving as England’s ambassador to France, Herbert published De Veritate (On Truth). This book lamented the disunion and disarray of Christianity, which had splintered into a “multitude of sects, divisions, sub-​divisions, and cross-​divisions.” Herbert proposed a solution: five “common notions” which, he argued, are found in all great religions and which would therefore unite them in a common cause. Without these common notions, “it is impossible to establish any standard in revelation or even in religion.” These common notions enable us to pare down all religions to their essentials and thereby eliminate many needless and divisive dogmas: “Some doctrines due to revelation may be, some of them ought to be, abandoned.” Herbert’s attempt to isolate the core precepts of a true religion, and his disdain for superfluous doctrines supposedly based on divine revelation, became recurring themes in later deistic writings.

Herbert spurned some common claims about religion—for example, that reason must be abandoned to make room for faith, that the church is infallible, that one should not trust one’s own judgment in religious matters, that to doubt religious claims is sinful, and so forth. Such precepts, Herbert pointed out, will support false doctrines as readily as they support true doctrines.

According to Herbert, clergymen who “base their beliefs upon the disordered and licentious codes of superstition” are like “people who with the purpose of blinding the eyes of the wayfarer with least trouble to themselves offer with singular courtesy to act as guides on the journey.” In religion as elsewhere we should follow our own reason, not the judgments or commands of others. Indeed, God “requires every individual to render an account of his actions in the light, not of another’s belief, but of his own.” This call for independent judgment would become the hallmark of deism and of freethought generally.

Herbert’s five common notions functioned as standards to judge alleged revelations as true or spurious, so that “the genuine dictates of Faith may rest on that foundation as a roof supported by a house.” His five notions were as follows:

(1) “There is a Supreme God.” Even in polytheism, Herbert contended, a supreme god is recognized. This supreme god is blessed, the cause of all things, good, just, and wise. (2) “This Sovereign Deity ought to be Worshipped.” (3) The only indispensable features of religion are virtue and piety. (4) Sins must be expiated by repentance (and, by implication, predestination is incompatible with the justice of God—a slap at Calvinism.). (5) “There is Reward or Punishment after this life.”

According to Herbert, if a religion does not conform to these five notions, then it is not good, nor does it provide a means to salvation. The key to salvation is moral conduct, not belief in sundry dogmas. “For how could anyone who believes more than is necessary, but who does less than he ought, be saved?”

Although some of Herbert’s five notions were embraced by later deists, some were not. (Some deists did not believe in an afterlife, for example.) Moreover, in some respects the later writings of John Locke, especially his empiricist theory of knowledge, exercised a far greater influence on deistic thought than Herbert ever did. Nevertheless, Herbert got the ball rolling, especially with his argument that the function of religion, first and foremost, is to serve as a guide for moral conduct. For the first several decades of the eighteenth century the debate between deists and Christians was the most contentious and most widely discussed issue in England. And that debate, as we shall see, was chock-​full of political implications.