it to the prejudices of those to be converted, in whose eyes the simplicity of the new doctrine would have been no recommendation for it.  The Jew sought in it an echo of the Law, the heathen longed for his festivals and his occult philosophy; so it was burdened with unprofitable ceremonial observances and needless profundity, it was Judaized and heathenized.  It was inevitable that the doctrines of original sin, of satisfaction and atonement should prove especially objectionable to the purely rational temper of the deists.  Neither the guilt of others (the sin of our ancestors) nor the atonement of others (Christ’s death on the cross) can be imputed to us; Christ can be called the Savior only by way of metaphor, only in so far as the example of his death leads us on to faith and obedience for ourselves.  The name atheism, which, it is true, orthodoxy held ready for every belief incorrect according to its standard, was on the contrary undeserved.  The deists did not attack Christian revelation, still less belief in God.  They considered the atheist bereft of reason, and they by no means esteemed historical revelation superfluous.  The end of the latter was to stir the mind to move men to reflection and conversion, to transform morals, and if anyone declared it unnecessary because it contains nothing but natural truths, he was referred to the works of Euclid, which certainly contain nothing which is not founded in the reason, but which no one but a fool will consider unnecessary in the study of mathematics.

That which we have here summarized as the general position of deism, gained gradual expression through the regular development and specialization of deistic ideas in individual representatives of the movement.  The chief points and epochs were marked by Toland’s Christianity not Mysterious, 1696; Collins’s Discourse of Freethinking, 1713; Tindal’s Christianity as Old as the Creation, 1730; and Chubb’s True Gospel of Jesus Christ, 1738.  The first of these demands a critique of revelation, the second defends the right of free investigation, the third declares the religion of Christ, which is merely a revived natural religion, to be the oldest religion, the fourth reduces it entirely to moral life.

The deistic movement was called into life by Lord Herbert of Cherbury (pp. 79-80) and continued by Locke, in so far as the latter had intrusted to reason the discrimination of true from false revelation, and had admitted in Christianity elements above reason, though not things contrary to reason.  Following Locke, John Toland (1670-1722) goes a step further with the proof that the Gospel not only contains nothing contrary to reason, but also nothing above reason, and that no Christian doctrine is to be called mysterious.  To the demand that we should worship what we do not comprehend, he answers that reason is the only basis of certitude, and alone decides on the divinity of the Scriptures, by a consideration of their contents.