Deism in the 18th Century

Fénelon has precisely described the scope and nature of the deist movement which, in the first generations of the 18th century, especially in England and France, was so important: “The great fashion of the libertines of our time is not to follow Spinoza’s system. They pride themselves on recognizing a creator God, whose wisdom is evident in his works; but, according to them, this God would be neither good nor wise if he had given man free will, that is to say, the power to sin, to stray from his ultimate end, to overturn order, and to be eternally lost. […] Following this system, by removing all real freedom, one rids oneself of all merit, all blame, and all hell, one admires God without fearing him, and one lives without remorse according to one’s passions. » (Fénelon 1718, chap. Lettre V) Reading these words, leaving aside the nuance of blame the bishop utters for the new spirit, it is clear that a conception of man is introduced here that is completely incompatible with the Christian faith: we discover in nature the architect God who produces and maintains an admirable order in the universe; we refuse to admit the God of the Christian drama, this God who left to Adam the “power to sin and to overthrow order.” God is in nature and no longer in history; he is in the marvels that naturalists and biologists analyze and no longer in the innermost being, with the feelings of sin, of decline or of grace that accompany his presence; he leaves to man the care of his own destiny.

This is how the Anglican Bishop Gastrell defines the deist, highlighting the new morality with which he replaces that of the inner self: “The deist is one who, admitting a God, denies Providence or at least restricts it in such a way that he excludes all revelation and believes himself obliged to duty only for reasons of public or private interest, without consideration of another life.” (Burnet 1740, bk. 1)

The situation could appear all the more serious to the defenders of the faith because there is no longer anyone among them to oppose the claims of reason with pure and simple fideism: all are partisans of a natural religion whose dogmas are demonstrated by reason; the question between them and their adversaries is whether, as they believe, natural religion leads of itself to revealed religion. Gastrell, for example, posits that, if the deist is not, at bottom, an enemy of natural religion, it is impossible, in a Christian country, for him not to admit revealed religion. A Samuel Clarke who perfectly represents this spirit is not content, like the rationalists of the seventeenth century, to expound the rational truths concerning God and the soul in themselves, only to see later whether they will agree with revelation; he is constantly on the frontiers of reason and faith, and, despite the apparent rigor of his demonstrations, he strives to erase these frontiers as much as possible.

The result is the quite singular situation that, in England especially, deists and orthodox believers use the same weapons, or rather, that the deists only have to draw on their adversaries. It was an orthodox theologian, Sherlock, who said in a sermon in 1705: “The religion of the Gospel is the true religion originating in reason and nature; its precepts make known to us this original religion which is as ancient as creation.” These words, which are in such complete agreement with Locke’s reasonable Christianity, express one of those ideas which will be a favorite theme of all the deists in the eighteenth century. They will make a game of opposing the simplicity, the naturalness of Jesus’ morality to the theological superstructures from which so many conflicts were to arise for humanity, sometimes so bloody, but in any case insoluble. We have already had an example of this in Toland (p. 258), with his primitive Christianity, solely reasonable, without tradition or priest. The same theme is found in The True Gospel of Jesus Christ (1738) by Thomas Chubb, who makes the teaching of Jesus a teaching of fundamental truths, like that of Socrates, or in The Moral Philosopher (1737-1741) by Thomas Morgan, who seeks the true religion in primitive Christianity.

Referințe

Burnet, Gilbert. 1740. Defense de la religion tant naturelle que révélée contre les infideles et les incredules: Extraite des Ecrits publiés pour la Fondation de Mr. Boyle, par les plus habiles Gens d’Angleterre; & traduites de l’anglois de Mr. Gilbert Burnet. Chez Pierre Paupie.
Fénelon, François de. 1718. Lettres sur divers sujets concernant la religion et la Métaphysique par feu Messire François de Salignac de La Motte Fénelon,… chez Jacques Estienne.