Thomas Morgan, the Welsh deist, dissenting minister, doctor of medicine, freethinker, and religious controversialist, was born of a poor family but received a free education from the Reverend John Moore, a dissenter. Morgan was ordained in 1714 and became minister of Burton two years later and subsequently of Marlborough; in 1720 he was dismissed from this last post for his growing unorthodoxy. He then took up the study of medicine and produced several books on that subject—Philosophical Principles of Medicine (1725), The Mechanical Practice of Physic (1735), Letter to Dr. Cheyne in defence of the "Mechanical Practice" (1738).

Morgan is chiefly remembered, however, for his deistical tracts, or "Christian deistical," as he preferred to call them, in which he described himself as "M.D. and Moral Philosopher." The Moral Philosopher, in a Dialogue between Philalethes, a Christian Deist, and Theophanes, a Christian Jew (1737) is his major work. Controversy...