"Deism" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... produces, he destroys; if he gives life, he takes it away; if he grants abundance, riches, prosperity, and peace, he permits or sends scarcity, poverty, calamities, and wars. How then can we receive as a model of permanent beneficence, the God of Deism or natural religion, whose favourable dispositions are every instant contradicted by all the effects we behold? Morality must have a basis less tottering than the example of a God, whose conduct varies, and who cannot be called good, unless we obstinately shut our eyes against the evil which ...
— Good Sense - 1772 • Paul Henri Thiry, Baron D'Holbach
... greatness of a too august nature. The man, on the other hand, rising in this to that higher stature which was truly his, felt himself carried out into nature on the wave of his own boundless emotion. That cold Deism he had held so loosely broke into passion. The humblest phrases of worship, of entreaty, swept ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... of Nature, cannot be adequately appreciated unless taken in connexion with the circumstances of the period at which it appeared. It was intended as a defence against the great tide of deistical speculation (see DEISM), which in the apprehension of many good men seemed likely to sweep away the restraints of religion and make way for a general reign of licence. Butler did not enter the lists in the ordinary way. Most of the literature evoked by the controversy on either side was devoted ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... all Christian history there, and much of profane history. Neither is he a Mahometan; but he nevertheless makes a hero of Mahomet, whom he loves for his Ishmaelite fierceness, bravery, and religious sincerity,—and because he taught deism, or the belief in one God, instead of the old polytheism, or the belief in many gods,—and gave half the East his very good book, called the Koran, for his followers to live ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various
... strictest 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
... of February 1746. Chubb is interesting mainly as showing that the rationalism of the intellectual classes had taken considerable hold upon the popular mind. Though he acquired little renown in England he was regarded by Voltaire and others as among the most logical of the deist school (see DEISM). His principal works are A Discourse Concerning Reason (1731), The True Gospel of Jesus Christ (1739), and Posthumous Works, 2 vols. (1748), the last containing "The Author's Farewell to ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various
... elderly people, and the half-bourgeois, the overlookers, foremen, and the like. But among the masses there prevails almost universally a total indifference to religion, or at the utmost, some trace of Deism too undeveloped to amount to more than mere words, or a vague dread of the words infidel, atheist, etc. The clergy of all sects is in very bad odour with the working-men, though the loss of its influence is recent. At present, however, the mere ...
— The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844 - with a Preface written in 1892 • Frederick Engels
... represent the doctrines of the church of England as deductions from any abstract philosophy. But the traditions were not regarded as having any mysterious authority. Abstract philosophy might lead to deism or infidelity. Paley and his like rejected such philosophy in the spirit of Locke or even Hume. But it was always possible to treat a tradition like any other statement of fact. It could be proved by appropriate evidence. The truth of Christianity was ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume I. • Leslie Stephen
... and inspired ideas, and which clearly indicates to me that a discussion and exchange of basic concept would be fruitless. I'm rather hurt that you question my integrity with the statement about the "slick, calculating, career-minded cult of Ph. Deism." Moreover, I would appreciate, if possible, the return of my ...
— On Handling the Data • M. I. Mayfield
... fundamental truths of natural religion, faith in God and in immortality, amid (p. 190) sore trials of heart, he no doubt clung to, and has forcibly expressed. But there is nothing in his poems or in his letters which goes beyond sincere deism—nothing which is in any way ...
— Robert Burns • Principal Shairp
... perhaps put these thoughts in a more striking light. If you think the most important of the discussions of our day to be that between natural and revealed religion, between deism and the Gospel, you have not well discerned the signs of the times. The fundamental discussion is now between men who believe in God, in the soul, and in truth, and men, who, denying truth, deny at the same time the soul and God. When these high problems are in question, periodicals and other ...
— The Heavenly Father - Lectures on Modern Atheism • Ernest Naville |
