"Deism" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... doctrine gives unto men a negative over the Holy One of Israel, it also opens a wide door for introducing and enforcing the cause of deism, already too prevalent: for, if all who are set up by civil society, however wicked, and void of the qualifications God has required, while they are acknowledged and submitted to by their constituents, must be equally regarded as God's ...
— Act, Declaration, & Testimony for the Whole of our Covenanted Reformation, as Attained to, and Established in Britain and Ireland; Particularly Betwixt the Years 1638 and 1649, Inclusive • The Reformed Presbytery
... order to sow the earth afresh with a young and better community, became apparent. At each proposition unfolded by Bache, such as labour rendered agreeable by police regulations, phalansteria organised like barracks, religion transformed into pantheist or spiritist deism, he gently shrugged his shoulders. What could be the use of such childishness, such hypocritical repairing, when the house was falling and the only honest course was to throw it to the ground, and build up the substantial edifice of ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... poet, historian, critic, and brilliant converser, all in one. In religion, a scoffer not only at superstition, but at all beliefs and rites which imply revelation, he still clung to the belief in a personal God. His creed was deism, Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778) was, like Voltaire, a deist in his creed; but in religion, as in all his mental action, there was a vein of sentiment. By the fascination of his style, he was able, in his various writings, including ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... cultivated nations was being brought up to this alternative—Christ, the Revealer of God, or no knowledge of God at all. The old dreams of heathenism are impossible for us; modern agnosticism will make very quick work of a deism which does not cling to the Christ as the Revealer of the Godhead. And I, for my part, believe that there is one thing, and one thing only, which will save modern Europe from absolute godlessness, and that is the ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... could find in Montaigne the traditional deism of the pagan and Christian world, without any colour of specifically Christian faith, and with a direct lead to unbelief in a future state. But, whether we suppose Shakspere to have been already led, as he might ...
— Montaigne and Shakspere • John M. Robertson
... Pichon (Les derniers ecrivains profanes, Paris, 1906) has recently shown how the eloquence of the panegyrists unconsciously changed from paganism to monotheism. See also Maurice, Comptes Rendus Acad. Inscriptions, 1909, p. 165.—The vague deism of Constantine strove to reconcile the opposition of heliolatry and Christianity (Burckhardt, Die Zeit Constantins, pp. 353 ff.) and the emperor's letters addressed to Arius and the community of Nicomedia (Migne, P. G., LXXXV, col. 1343 ff.) are, as shown by Loeschke ...
— The Oriental Religions in Roman Paganism • Franz Cumont
... to show how the Johannine Logos-doctrine, which is the basis of Christian Mysticism, differs from Asiatic Pantheism, from Acosmism, and from (one kind of) evolutionary Idealism. Of course, speculative Mysticism is nearer to Pantheism than to Deism; but I think it is possible heartily to eschew Deism without falling into ...
— Christian Mysticism • William Ralph Inge
... supported him energetically, and used as arguments against Lincoln that his wife was a Presbyterian, that most of her family were Episcopalians, that Lincoln himself belonged to no church, and that he had been suspected of deism, and, finally, that he was the candidate of the aristocracy. This last charge so amazed Lincoln that he was unable to frame any satisfactory answer to it. The memory of his flat-boating days, of his illiterate youth, even of his deer-skin breeches shrunken by rain and exposure, ...
— Abraham Lincoln: A History V1 • John G. Nicolay and John Hay
... Autobiography, and its details have been carefully supplemented by his latest editor, Mr. Lee. His literary activity was various and considerable. His greatest work—a treatise which has been rashly called the foundation of English deism, but which rather expresses the vague and not wholly unorthodox doubt expressed earlier by Montaigne, and by contemporaries of Herbert's own, such as La Mothe le Vayer—was written in Latin, and has never been translated into English. He was an English verse writer of some merit, though inferior ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... declared it was the "only solid basis of public liberty and happiness." General Washington said it was "one of the great pillars of human happiness, and the firmest prop of the duties of men and citizens." What could we gain by exchanging it for Deism, or Atheism, or Ingersollism? Infidelity proposes to break down the altars of prayer, take away our Bibles and our days of worship, shut up the doors against all our Sunday-schools and turn more than a million of children ...
— The Christian Foundation, May, 1880
... the first day of our acquaintance. There was at that time in Paris a certain lady (whose name, then well known in the grand and gay world, I must beg leave to conceal) who had imbibed the principles of deism, and valued herself much upon being an avowed advocate for them. The major, with his usual frankness, (though I doubt not with that politeness of manners which was so habitual to him, and which he retained throughout his whole life,) answered her ...
— The Life of Col. James Gardiner - Who Was Slain at the Battle of Prestonpans, September 21, 1745 • P. Doddridge
... Brahmas, the other new Mahomedan sect, in the modern rational spirit, have refined away their faith to a theism or deism purged of the supernatural. Mahomed's inspiration and miracles are rejected. These represent the modern rationalising spirit in religion; reason is their standard, and "reason alone is a sufficient guide." According ...
— New Ideas in India During the Nineteenth Century - A Study of Social, Political, and Religious Developments • John Morrison
... 'tolerant' Richard Watson, Lord Bishop of Llandaff, wrote with contemptuous bitterness of 'Atheistical madmen,' and in his Apology for the Bible, assured Deistical Thomas Paine, Deism was so much better than Atheism, he (Bishop Watson) meant 'not to say anything to ...
— An Apology for Atheism - Addressed to Religious Investigators of Every Denomination - by One of Its Apostles • Charles Southwell
... reference to religion again very uncertain. It seems that Darwin in his theology is not only inclined to theism, but, following the traditions of his countrymen of the last century, to a quite cool and superficial deism, and that he permits himself to be too much impressed by the anti-teleological deductions of many of his followers, and to be induced to separate in his later publications the Creator and his work more ...
— The Theories of Darwin and Their Relation to Philosophy, Religion, and Morality • Rudolf Schmid
... liberally to sustain his poor parishioners, on one occasion selling his library to help them. The Life of Philip Skelton, by Samuel Burdy, first published in 1792, still makes entertaining and interesting reading. Richardson met Skelton when he visited London in 1748 to publish Ophiomaches, or Deism Revealed. On David Hume's recommendation Andrew Millar published the work; and Richardson also seems to have played some part in getting the book accepted (Forster ...
— Clarissa: Preface, Hints of Prefaces, and Postscript • Samuel Richardson
... Lamb's writings had no reference whatever to political subjects; they were, on the contrary, as the first writings of a young man generally are, serious,—even religious. Referring to Coleridge, it is stated that he "was dishonored at Cambridge for preaching Deism, and that he had since left his native country, and left his poor children fatherless, and his wife destitute:" ex his disce his friends Lamb and Southey. A scurrilous libel of this stamp would now be rejected by ...
— Charles Lamb • Barry Cornwall
... course of religious teaching, irregularly attended and not comprehended, I had at the time of my confirmation by Schleiermacher, on my sixteenth birthday no belief other than a bare deism, which was not long free from pantheistic elements. It was at about this time that I, not through indifference, but after mature consideration, ceased to pray every evening, as I had been in the habit of doing ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke
... after wave of skepticism surged over her soul, until the image of a great personal God was swept from its altar. But atheism never yet usurped the sovereignty of the human mind; in all ages, moldering vestiges of protean deism confront the giant specter, and every nation under heaven has reared its fane to the "unknown God." Beulah had striven to enthrone in her desecrated soul the huge, dim, shapeless phantom of pantheism, and had turned eagerly to the system of Spinoza. The heroic ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans
... Christians know it or not), that the giving up witchcraft is, in effect, giving up the Bible. And they know, on the other hand, that, if but one account of the intercourse of men with separate spirits be admitted, their whole castle in the air (Deism, Atheism, Materialism) falls to the ground. I know no reason, therefore, why we should suffer even this weapon to be wrested out of our hands. Indeed, there are numerous arguments besides, which abundantly confute their vain imaginations. But we need not be hooted ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... Deism maintains that God, while the Creator of the world, yet sustains no further relations to it. He made it just as the clock-maker makes a self-winding clock: makes it and then leaves it to run itself without ...
— The Great Doctrines of the Bible • Rev. William Evans
... artistic point of view he is not an uninteresting figure to contemplate. And although his attempts to awaken persecution were reprehensible, yet his ardour in defending what he believed to be vital truth is none the less to be respected. He had the acuteness to see that Lessing's refutation of deism did not make him a Christian, while the new views proposed as a substitute for those of Reimarus were such as Goetze and his age could in ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske
... put forward by the present writer will be seen to differ from that of John Stuart Mill, as the idea of self-limitation differs from that of a limitation ab extra—in other words, as Theism differs from Deism. ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer
... of purer eyes than to behold iniquity—not as He whom I was required to glorify in my body and in my spirit, being bought with a price, to be no longer my own but his; no, my religion was a very attractive sort of Deism, which recognized the Creator of all those things wherein I delighted, and thought to render him great honor by such recognition. Thomson's "Hymn on the Seasons" was my body of divinity; and Pope's atrocious "Universal Prayer" ...
— Personal Recollections • Charlotte Elizabeth
... omnipotent as well as perfectly just and benevolent maker and ruler of such a world as this, can say little against Christianity but what can, with at least equal force, be retorted against themselves. Finding, therefore, no halting place in Deism, he remained in a state of perplexity, until, doubtless after many struggles, he yielded to the conviction, that concerning the origin of things nothing whatever can be known. This is the only correct statement of his opinion; for dogmatic atheism he looked upon ...
— Autobiography • John Stuart Mill
... the former age, arising from overstrained pretensions to piety, had much propagated the spirit of irreligion; and many of the ingenious men of this period lie under the imputation of Deism. Besides wits and scholars by profession, Saftesbury, Halifax, Buckingham, Mulgrave, Sunderland Essex, Rochester, Sidney, Temple, are supposed to have adopted ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part F. - From Charles II. to James II. • David Hume
... because he does so, kindles into the most fearful wrath and dooms him and all his posterity to temporal, spiritual, and eternal death. Such is the doctrine which is advanced, in order to secure the omnipotence of God, and to exalt his sovereignty. But is it not a great leading feature of deism itself, that it exalts the power of God at the expense of his infinite moral perfections? So we have understood the matter; and hence, it seems to us, that Christian divines should be more guarded in handling the attribute of omnipotence. "The rigid theologians," ...
— A Theodicy, or, Vindication of the Divine Glory • Albert Taylor Bledsoe
... ideal that Benjamin Franklin, in whose life and writings it finds best expression, became the most influential American of his time and won in two continents the veneration that men accord to saints and prophets. At the age of sixteen some books against Deism came his way; but "the arguments of the Deists, which were quoted to be refuted, appeared to me to be stronger than the refutations; [and] I soon became a thorough Deist." Yet experience straightway led this original pragmatist to the conclusion that, ...
— Beginnings of the American People • Carl Lotus Becker
... Kant, indicated by a note in Part II. The discovery already mentioned, that Part I. was written at least fourteen years before Part II., led me to compare the two; and it is plain that while the earlier work is an amplification of Newtonian Deism, based on the phenomena of planetary motion, the work of 1795 bases belief in God on "the universal display of himself in the works of the creation and by that repugnance we feel in ourselves to bad actions, and disposition ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... must either accept Deism or Atheism. Deism admits the existence of a God of infinite power and intelligence. A Deist need have no trouble in believing a miracle. The question with him is not, can God work miracles, and thereby ...
— The Christian Foundation, Or, Scientific and Religious Journal, - Volume I, No. 9. September, 1880 • Various
... principles he had defended since the close of the constituent assembly. This sect derived its origin from the eighteenth century, certain opinions of which it represented. In politics, its symbol was the absolute sovereignty of the Contrat social of J.J. Rousseau, and for creed, it held the deism of la Profession de foi du Vicaire Savoyard; at a later period it succeeded in realizing these for a moment in the constitution of '93, and the worship of the Supreme Being. More fanaticism and system existed in the different epochs of the ...
— History of the French Revolution from 1789 to 1814 • F. A. M. Mignet
... if you will, for his "deism" meant no more to him than a distant blue sky giving the world space and perspective and free air; but a materialism that renders men kind and courteous, urbane and sweet-tempered, honest and clear-headed, is better than a spirituality that leads to ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... not without imminent danger that the priest baptized the infant, joined the hands of lovers, or listened to the confession of the dying. The absurd worship of the Goddess of Reason was, indeed, of short duration; but the deism of Robespierre and Lepaux was not less hostile to the Catholic faith than the atheism of ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... put me in mind of the Catholics, Lutherans, and Calvinists, and are equally zealous against one another. But the most prevailing opinion, if you search into the secret of the effendis, is, plain deism. This is indeed kept from the people, who are amused with a thousand different notions, according to the different interest of their preachers.—There are very few amongst them (Achmet-beg denied there were any) so absurd, as to set up ...
— Letters of the Right Honourable Lady M—y W—y M—e • Lady Mary Wortley Montague
... in a chieftain or a lord. As it had the simplest sort of religion, monotheism, so it had the simplest sort of government, monarchy. There was exactly the same direct spirit in its despotism as in its deism. The Code, the Common Law, the give and take of charters and chivalric vows, did not grow in that golden desert. The great sun was in the sky and the great Saladin was in his tent, and he must be obeyed unless he were assassinated. Those who complain ...
— The New Jerusalem • G. K. Chesterton
... secrecy to his mother and sisters, at Field Place, of which a very interesting record is left in the narrative of Mr. Kennedy, occupied the interval between July, 1813, and March, 1814. The period was not productive of literary masterpieces. We only hear of a "Refutation of Deism", a dialogue between Eusebes and Theosophus, which attacked all forms ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley • John Addington Symonds
... descendants of the Puritans were generally educated, but their ancestors were rigid predestinarians, and as they were sometimes favored with a little light on their moral powers, and could just 'see men as trees walking,' they jumped into Deism, Universalism, Unitarianism, etc., etc. I verily believe it was the best school I ever entered. They waked me up on all sides; Methodism was feeble, and I had to battle or run, and I ...
— Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made • James D. McCabe, Jr.
... eighteenth century. Johnson and Goldsmith continued the traditions of social and polite literature which had been established by the Queen Anne men. Warburton and a whole host of apologists carried on the battle against deism and infidelity. Hume, after furnishing the arsenal of scepticism with a new array of deadlier engines and more abundant ammunition, had betaken himself placidly to the composition of history. What is remarkable in Burke's first performance is his discernment of the important fact, that behind ...
— Burke • John Morley
... world had made so deep an impression upon the Stoics, and on Plato before them, that they believed the whole world to be an animal, but a rational and wise animal—in short, the Supreme God. This philosophy reduced Polytheism, or the multitude of gods, to Deism, or one God, and that one God to Nature, which according to them was eternal, infallible, intelligent, omnipotent, and divine. Thus philosophers, by striving to keep from and rectify the notions of poets, dwindled again at last into poetical fancies, ...
— The Existence of God • Francois de Salignac de La Mothe- Fenelon
... especial interest, standing as it does at the end of a long period of theological and ecclesiastical disintegration and prophesying a reconstruction of society on a purely rational and naturalistic basis. The anti-theistic movement has been so obscured by the less thoroughgoing tendency of deism and by subsequent romanticism that the real issue in the eighteenth century has been largely lost from view. Hence it has seemed fit to center this study about the man who stated the situation with the most unmistakable ...
— Baron d'Holbach - A Study of Eighteenth Century Radicalism in France • Max Pearson Cushing |
