Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 4.djvu/759

 DEIFERUS

679

DEISM

O'Lavertt, Down and Connor (Dublin, 1880), II; Storks, Early ChrUtian Art in Ireland (London, 1887).

W. H. Grattan-Flood. Deiferus. Sco Dikr.

Dei gratia; Dei et ApostoUcee Sedis gratia (By

the grace of (ioil; liy the grace of God and llie Apos- tolic See), forraula? added to the titles of ecclesiastical dignitaries. The first (.V. Dei gratid Episcopus .V.) ha-s been used in that form or in certain equivalents since the fifth century. Among the signatures of the Councils of Ephesus (431) and Chalcedon (451) we find names to which are added: Dei grati/i, per gratiam Dei, Dei mi^ralinne Episcopus A'. (Mansi, Sacr. Cone. Coll., IV, 1213; VII, 1.37, 1.39, 429 sqq.). Though afterwards eini)luyed occasionally, it did not become prevalent until the eleventh century. The second form (.V. Dei et Apostoliea" Sedis gralid Episcopus X.) is current since the ele\'enth century-; but came into general use by archbishops and bishops only since the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. The first formula expresses the Divine origin of the episcopal office; the second exhibits the union of the bishops and their submissioi\ to the See of Rome. Temporal rulers since King Pepin the Short, in the eighth cen- tury, also made use of the first formula; from the fif- teenth it was employed to signify complete and inde- pendent sovereignty, in contradistinction to the sov- ereignty conferred by the choice of the people. For this reason the bishops in some parts of Southern Ger- many (Baden, Bavaria, \\'urtemberg) are not al- lowed to u.se it, but must say instead: Dei Misera- tione el Apostolicw Sedis gratid.

BiNTERiM in Katholik (1823). VII, 129 sqq.; Idem, Denk- wiirdigknten (Mainz, 1838), t; Thomassin, Discipline dc I't'lllise (Bar-le-Duc, 1864), I; Permaneder in Kirchenlex., s. v. D*n gratid; Hefele in Kirchenlex., s. v. Aposlolicce Sedis

FrANCI.S J. SCHAEFER.

Deism (Lat. Deus, God), the term used to denote certain doctrines apparent in a tendency of thought and criticism that manifested itself principally in Eng- land towards the latter end of the seventeenth century. The doctrines and tendency of deism were, however, by no means entirely confined to England, nor to the seventy years or so dvu-ing which most of the deistical productions were given to the world; for a similar spirit of criticism aimed at the nature and content of traditional religious belief.s, and the substitution for them of a rationalistic naturalism has frefpiently ap- peared in the coiu-se of religious thought. Thus there nave been French and German deists as well as Eng- lish; while Pagan, Jewish, or Mohammedan deists might be found as well as Christian. Because of the individualistic standpoint of independent criticism which they adopt, it is difficult, if not impos.sil)le, to class together the representative writers who contril> uted to the literature of English deism as forming any one definite school, or to group together the posi- tive teachings contained in their writings as any one .systematic expression of a concordant philosophy. The deists were what nowadays would be called frecthinkirs, a name, indeed, by which they were not infn-quently known; and they can only be cla.ssed to- gctlier wholly in the main attitud(that they adopted, viz. in agreeing to cast off the trammels of authorita- ti\e religious teaching in favour of a free and purely rationalistic .speculation. Many of them were frankly materialistic in their doctrines; while the French thinkers who subsequently built >ipon the foundations laid by the English delists were almost exclusively .so. Others rested content with a criticism of ecclesiastical authority in teaching the inspiration of the Sacred Scriptures, or the fact of an external revelation of su- pernatural truth given by God to man. In this last point, while there is a considerable divergence of method and procedure obser\'able in the writings of

the various deists, all, at least to a very large extent, seem to concur. Deism, in its every manifestation, was opposed to the ciurent and traditional teaching of revealed religion.

In England the deistical movement seems to be an almost necessary outcome of the political and religious conditions of the time and country. The Renaissance had fairly swept away the later scholasticism and with it, very largely, the constructive philosophy of the Middle Ages. The Protestant Reformation, in its open revolt against the authority of the Catholic Church, had inaugurated a slow revolution, in which all religious pretensions were to be involved. The Bible as a substitute for the living voice of the Church and the State religion as a substitute for Catholicism might stand for a time; but the verj- mentality that brought them into being as substitutes could not logi- cally rest content with them. The jirinciple of private judgment in matters of religion had not run its full course in accepting the Bible as the Word of God. A favourable opportunity would spur it forward once more; and from such grudging acceptance as it gave to the Scriptures it would proceed to a new examina- tion and a final rejection of their claims. The new life of the empirical sciences, the enormous enlarge- ment of the phj'sical horizon in such discoveries as those of astronomy and geography, the philosophical doubt and rationalistic method of Descartes, the ad- vocated empiricism of Bacon, the political changes of the times — all these things were factors in the prepara- tion and arrangement of a stage upon which a criti- cism levelled at revelational religion might come for- ward and Jilay it.s part with some chance of success. And though the first essays of deism were somewhat veiled and intentionally indirect in their attack upon revelation, with the revolution and the civil and relig- ious liberty consequent upon it, with the spread of the critical and empirical spirit as exemplified in the philosophy of Locke, the time was ripe for the full re- hearsal of the case against Christianity as expounded by the Establishment and the sects. The wedge of private judgment had been dri%'en into authority. It had already split Protestantism into a great number of conflicting sects. It was now to attempt the wreck of revealed religion in any sliape or form.

The deistical tendency passed through several more or less clearly defined phases. All the forces possible were mustered against its advance. Parliaments took cognizance of it. Some of the productions of the de- ists were publicly burnt. The bishops and clergy of the Establishment were strenuous in resisting it. For every pamphlet or book that a deist wrote, several "answers" were at once put before the public as anti- dotes. Bishops addressed pastoral letters to their dioceses warning the faithful of the danger. AVool- ston's "Moderator" provoked no less than five such pastorals from the Bishop of Ijondon. All that was ecclesiastically official and respectable was ranged in opposition to the movement, ami the deists were lield up to general detestation in the strimgest terms. When tile critical iirineiples and freethouglit spirit fil- tered dowii to the middle classes and the masses, when such men as Woolston and I'liulib put pen to paper, a perfect storm of counter-criticism arose. As a matter of fact, not a few educated and cultured men were really upon the .side of a broad toleration in matters of religion. The "wit and ridicule" by which the Earl of Shaftesbury would h.ive all testeil meant, as Brown rightly notes, no more than urbanity and good nature. But Shaft esburj- himself would by no means allow that lie was a deist, except in the sense in which the term is interchangeable with theist; and Herbert of Cherbury, by far the most cultured representative of the move- ment, is noted as having been the most moderate and the lea.st opposed of them all to the teachings of Chris- tianity. One phase through which deism maybe said to have pa.ssed was that of a critical examination of