Soldier and diplomat, peer, poet, and philosopher, Edward, Lord Herbert of Cherbury, was far more celebrated in his day than his younger brother, the now-familiar devotional poet George Herbert. Whereas the younger brother presented himself as a quiet country parson, the elder boldly developed a creed that carefully evaded, where it did not artfully undermine, the doctrines and practices of revealed religion--Christianity in particular. Herbert's philosophy of religion, embodied in books published during and after his lifetime, informs all his various volumes of history, poems, and autobiography (1764)--the last his most widely appreciated work. He would long be remembered as a founder of the rationalist view of religion known as deism.

The oldest of seven sons among the ten children of Richard Herbert, Esquire, sheriff of Montgomeryshire, Wales, and Magdalen Newport Herbert, Edward Herbert was born in Eyton-on-Severn, Shropshire, on 3 March 1582. After private studies with tutors in fields...