Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 4.djvu/760

 DEISM

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DEISM

the first principles of religion. It asserted its right to perfect tolerance on the part of all men. Freethought was the right of the individual; it was, indeed, but one step in advance of the received principle of private judgment. Such representatives of deism as Toland and Collins may be taken as typical of this stage. So far, while critical and insLsting on its rights to com- plete toleration, it need not be, though as a matter of fact it undoubtedly was, hostile to religion. A second phase was that in which it criticised the moral or ethi- cal part of religious teaching. The Earl of Shaftes- bury, for example, has much to urge against the doc- trine of future rewards and pimishments as the sanc- tion of the moral law. Such an attitude is obviously incompatible with the accepted teaching of the Churches. Upon this follows a critical examination of the writings of the Old and New Testaments, with a particular regard to the verification of prophecy and to the miraculous incidents therein recorded. Antony Collins performed the first part of this task, while Woolston gave his attention principally to the latter, applying to Scriptiu-al records the principles put for- ward by Blount in his notes to the "ApoUonius Ty- anceus". Lastly, there was the stage in which nat- ural religion as such was directly opposed to revealed religion. Tindal, in his "Christianity as old as the Creation", reduces, or attempts to reduce, revelation to reason, making the Christian statement of revela- tional truths either superfluous, in that it is contained in reason itself, or positively harmful, in that it goe? beyond or contradicts reason.

It is thus clear that, in the main, deism is no more than an application of critical principles to religion. But in its positive aspect it is something more, for it offers as a substitute for revealed truth that body of truths which can be built up by the tmaided efforts of natural reason. The term deism, however, has come in the course of time to have a more specific meaning. It is taken to signify a peculiar metaphysical doctrine supposed to have been maintained by all the deists. They are thus grouped together roughly as members of a quasi-philosophical school, the chief and distin- guishing tenet of which is the relationship asserted to obtain between the imiverse and God. God, Ln this somewhat inferential and constructive thesis, is held to be the first cause of the world, and to be a personal God. So far the teaching is that of the theists, as con- trasted with that of atheists and pantheists. But, further, deism not only distinguishes the world and God as effect and cause ; it emphasizes the transcend- ence of the Deity at the sacrifice of His indwelling and His providence. He is apart from the creation which He brought into being, and unconcerned as to the tie- tails of its working. Having made Nature, He allows it to run its own course without interference on His part. In this point the doctrine of deism differs clearly from that of theism. The verbal distinction between the two, which are originally convertible terms — deism, of Latin origin, being a translation of the Greek theism — seems to have been introduced into English literature by the deists themselves, in order to avoid the denomination of naturalists by which they were commonly known. As naturalism was the epi- thet generally given to the teaching of the followers of the Spinozistic philosophy, as well as to the so-called atheists, deism seemed to its professors at once to fiu-- nish a disavowal of princijiles and doctrines which they repudiated, and to mark off their own position clearly from that of the theists. The word seems, however, to have been first employed in France and Italy about the middle of the sixteenth century, for it occurs in the epistle dedicatory prefixed to the second volume of Viret's "Instruction Chretienne" (1563), where the reforming divine speaks of some persons who had called themselves by a new name — deists. It was principally upon accoimt of their methods of in- vestigation and their criticism of the traditional Prot-

estant religious teaching that they had also come to to be called rationalists, opposing, as has been pointed out, the findings of unaided reason to the truths held on faith as having come from God through external revelation. Whether it was by ignoring thLs alto- gether, or by attempting actively to refute it and pro\-e its wort.hlessness, rationalism was the obvious term of their procediu-e. And it was also, in very much the same mamier, by their claimmg the freedom to discuss on these lines the doctrines set forth in the Bible and taught by the Chiu-ches, that they earned for themselves the no less commonly given title of freethinkers.

There are notable distinctions and divergences among the English deists as to the whole content of truth given by reason. The most important of these dLstinctions is undoubtedly that by which they are classed as "mortal" and "immortal" deists; for, while many conceded the philosophical doctrine of a futvu'e life, the rejection of futiu-e rewards and punish- ments carried with it for some the denial of the im- mortality of the himian soul. The five articles laid down by Lord Herbert of Cherbury, however, with their expansion into si.x (and the addition of a seventh) by Charles Bloimt, may be taken — and especially the former — as the formal professions of deism. They contain the following doctrines: (1) that there exists one supreme God, (2) who Ls chiefly to be worshipped; (3) that the principal part of such worship consists in piety and virtue; (4) that w^e must repent of our sins and that, if we do so, God will pardon us; (5) that there are rewards for good men and pimishments for evil men both here and hereafter. Blount, while he enlarged slightly upon each of these doctrines, broke one up into two and added a .seventh in which he teaches that God governs the world by His providence. This can hardly be accepted as a doctrine common to the deists; while, as has been said, future rewards and punishments were not allowed by them all. In gen- eral they rejected the miraculous element in Scripture and ecclesiastical tradition. They would not admit that there was any one "peculiar people", such as the Jews or the Christians, singled out for the reception of a truth-message, or chosen to be the recipients of any special grace or supernatural gift of God. They de- nied the doctrine of the Trinity and altogether refused to admit any mediatorial character in the person of Jesus Clirist. The atonement, the doctrine of the "imputed righteousness" of Christ — especially popu- lar with orthodoxy at the time — shared the fate of all Christological doctrines at their hands. And above all things and upon every occasion — but with at least one notable exception — they raised their voices against ecclesiastical authority. They never tired of inveigh- ing against priestcraft in every shape or form, and they went so far as to assert that revealed religion was _ an imposture, an invention of the priestly caste to sub-lij( due, and so the more easily govern and exploit, the ig'|k norant.

As deism took its rise, in the logical sequence o events, from the principles asserted at the Protest ant Reformation, so it ran its short and \iolent cours' in a development of those principles and ended in ^Bfifg philosophical scepticism. For a time it caused aifcj| e.xtraordinary commotion in all circles of thought iwgjt: England, provoked a very large and, in a sense, inteill, esting polemical literature, and penetrated from thM|:^ highest to the lowest strata of society. Then it felj-, ( flat, whether because the controversy had lost th " keen interest of its acuter stage or because people i general were drifting with the current of criticisil towards the new views, it would be difficult to sa;i AVith most of the arguments of the tleists we are novj adays quite familiar, thanks to the efforts of model freethought and rationalism to keep them before tli public. Though caustic, often clever, and sometiml^ extraordinarily blasphemous, we open the shabby littH^,'

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