Deism In The 17th Century

Deism was about the “religion of nature” and was a form of rational theology that emerged among Europeans in the 17th and 18th centuries. As Puritanism began to fade away in the 17th century Deism started to gain traction. Deism, like Puritanism, revolved around the belief in God as the Creator, but Deists believed in free will, whereas the Puritans believed in predestination. Deists rejected all the supernatural elements of Christianity, such as, miracles, prophecies, and divine portents and believed in natural religion. The origins of English deism show up in the first half of the 17th century. English statesman, Lord Edward Herbert of Cherbury, set the foundation for the basic deist creed in a series of works beginning with De Veritate …show more content…
Due to the fact that this creed was based on reason which was shared by all men Herbert hoped it would be acceptable to everyone regardless of their religious background. He considered deism the essential core religious belief of all men throughout history. Despite Herbert’s efforts, deism had very little impact in England for most of the 17th century. But at the very height of the English Enlightenment, deism became a major source of controversy and discussion in English religion. Figures like Charles Blount, Anthony Collins, John Toland, Henry St. John, William Wollaston, Matthew Tindal, Thomas Woolston, and Thomas Chubb contributed to the cause of deism and in doing so; they sparked theological disputes that spread across the Atlantic. These Enlightened deists capitalized on two critical ideas in the late 17th century to further the case for the religion of nature. The first was to change how people understood nature itself. The ground breaking work of physicists like Galileo, Kepler, and, especially, Newton resulted in a vision of the world that was much more precise in its connection to universal mathematical laws than people had thought before. The Newtonian universe is often compared to a clock because of …show more content…
Paine attacked the superstitions of Christianity and vilified the priest craft that supported it. More than simply irrational, Christianity was the last great obstacle to the coming of the Age of Reason. Only when it was vanquished could human happiness and perfectibility be achieved. Paine’s impact was due as much to the punchy power of his prose and the extreme radicalism of his views, as evidenced by this denunciation of the Old Testament: “Whenever we read the obscene stories, the voluptuous debauches, the cruel and tortuous executions, the unrelenting vindictiveness, with which more than half the Bible is filled, it would be more consistent that we called it the word of a demon, than the word of God. It is a history of wickedness, that has served to corrupt and brutalize mankind; and for my part, I sincerely detest it, as I detest everything that is