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Notes
1 I thank Justin Champion, Gordon DesBrisay, Paul Jenkins, Warren Johnston and two anonymous referees for many helpful comments and suggestions. Research for this project was supported through a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada Post‐doctoral Fellowship which I held in the History Department, Dalhousie University.
2 On the continuing importance of lessons taken from the Bible, especially the fate of Adam and Eve, in the Enlightenment, see C. Hill, The English Bible and the Seventeenth‐Century Revolution (London: Penguin, 1993), 3–44; P. Harrison, The Bible, Protestantism and the Rise of Natural Science (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 211–13; J. I. Israel, Radical Enlightenment: Philosophy and the Making of Modernity 1650–1750 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 380–8; P. C. Almond, Adam and Eve in Seventeenth‐century Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 214.
3 J. E. Force, ‘Biblical Interpretation, Newton, and English Deism’, in Scepticism and Irreligion in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries, edited by R. H. Popkin and A. Vanderjagt (Leiden: Brill, 1993), 282. See also Chapter 7 ‘The Elusiveness of Deism’, in R. E. Sullivan, John Toland and the Deist Controversy: A Study in Adaptations, (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press 1982). I thank Justin Champion for making me think carefully about this issue, which I hope to explore more fully elsewhere.
4 See M. Hunter, ‘The Problem of “Atheism” in Early‐modern England’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 35 (1985), 135–57; idem, ‘Science and Heterodoxy: An Early Modern Problem Reconsidered’, in Reappraisals of the Scientific Revolution, edited by D. C. Lindberg and R. S. Westman (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 437–60; English Radicalism 1550–1850, edited by G. Burgess and M. Festenstein (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007); J. G. A. Pocock, ‘Within the Margins: The Definition of Orthodoxy’, in The Margins of Orthodoxy: Heterodox Writings and Cultural Response 1660–1750, edited by R. D. Lund (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 33–53.
5 P. Gay, The Enlightenment. An Interpretation: The Rise of Modern Paganism (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1967); idem, The Enlightenment An Interpretation: The Science of Freedom (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1969); Israel, Radical Enlightenment; idem, Enlightenment Contested: Philosophy Modernity, and the Emancipation of Man 1670–1752 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006). Earlier examples include S. G. Hefelbower, The Relation of John Locke to English Deism (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1918); N. Torrey, Voltaire and the English Deists (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1930); E. R. Pike, Slayers of Superstition: A Popular Account of Some of the Leading Personalities of the Deist Movement (London: Watts & Co., 1931).
6 J. G. A. Pocock, ‘Enthusiasm: The Antiself of Enlightenment’, The Huntington Library Quarterly, 60 (1997), 26.
7 Sullivan, John Toland and the Deist Controversy; S. H. Daniel, John Toland: His Methods, Manners, and Mind (Montreal: McGill‐Queen’s University Press, 1984); R. R. Evans, Pantheisticon: The Career of John Toland (New York: Peter Lang, 1991); J. Champion, Republican Learning: John Toland and the Crisis of Christian Culture, 1696–1722 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2003); D. Fouke, Philosophy and Theology in a Burlesque Mode John Toland and the Way of Paradox (New York: Humanities Press, 2007); M. Brown, A Political Biography of John Toland (London: Pickering & Chatto, 2009).
8 T. L. Bushell, The Sage of Salisbury: Thomas Chubb (1679–1747) (New York: Philosophical Library, 1967).
9 J. G. A. Pocock, ‘The Variety of Whiggism from Exclusion to Reform: A History of Ideology and Discourse’, in Virtue, Commerce and History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), 215–310.
10 E. Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France: A Critical Edition, edited by J. C. D. Clark (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2001), 253. William Whiston had compiled his own list of deists with the same names a generation earlier. See W. Whiston, Memoirs of the Life and Writings of Mr. William Whiston (London, 1749), 109.
11 J. R. Wigelsworth, Deism in Enlightenment England: Theology, Politics, and Newtonian Public Science (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2008), 196–7, 204–8.
12 Leicestershire Record Office, Barker MSS: Whiston Papers fol. 125 verso. Whiston to George Whiston, 30 September 1738.
13 Bushell, The Sage of Salisbury, 4–13. Bushell’s main source is Chubb’s autobiography The Author’s Account of Himself in Posthumous Works of Mr. Thomas Chubb (London, 1748), i–viii. Another account of Chubb is found in the anonymous A Short and Faithful Account of the Life and Character of the Celebrated Mr. Thomas Chubb (London, 1747), 1–25. Whiston’s comments are found in Memoirs of the Life and Writings of Mr. William Whiston, 276–7. On visitors coming to see Chubb and engage him in philosophical discussions, see British Library, Additional MS 4478b fol. 71 recto. Conyners Middleton to Earl of Oxford, 25 August 1733.
14 N. Billingsley, A Sermon Preach’d at the Ordination of Mr. Thomas Morgan (London, 1717), iii–x. R. K. Webb, ‘The Emergence of Rational Dissent’, in Enlightenment and Religion: Rational Dissent in Eighteenth‐Century Britain, edited by K. Haakonssen (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 27–8. On the debates more generally, see R. Thomas, ‘The Non‐subscription Controversy amongst Dissenters in 1719’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 4 (1953), 162–86.
15 Information about Morgan is found in D. Patrick, ‘Two English Forerunners of the Tübingen School: Thomas Morgan and John Toland’, The Theological Review, 14 (1877), 562–603 (564); J. Van den Berg, ‘Thomas Morgan versus William Warburton: A Conflict the Other Way Round’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 42 (1991), 82–3; idem. ‘English Deism and Germany: The Thomas Morgan Controversy’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 59 (2008), 48–61; R. E. Schofield, Mechanism and Materialism: British Natural Philosophy in an Age of Reason (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1970), 128 n28; A. Guerrini, ‘Newtonianism, Medicine and Religion’, in Religio Medici: Medicine and Religion in Seventeenth‐Century England, edited by O. P. Grell and A. Cunningham (Aldershot: Scolar Press, 1996), 305–6; idem, Obesity and Depression in the Enlightenment: The Life and Times of George Cheyne (Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 2000), 153–4. Only a single manuscript mention of Morgan exists: a poetic assessment of his Moral Philosopher and dates to c.1737. See BL Add. MS 5822 fol. 92 recto, ‘To the Moral Philosopher’.
16 T. Chubb, The Supremacy of the Father Asserted, second edition (London, 1718), 1, 2, 7, 9, 18; see also Bushell, The Sage of Salisbury, 17; M. Pelli, ‘The Impact of Deism on the Hebrew Literature in the Enlightenment in Germany’, Eighteenth‐Century Studies, 6:1 (1972), 35–59 (39).
17 Chubb, The Posthumous Works of Mr. Thomas Chubb, ii. M2, 147 (NB the page numbers for this section are out of sequence with the rest of the book.)
18 Philalethes [T. Morgan], The Friendly Interposer: or, The True Scripture Doctrine of the Trinity, Stated (London, 1719), 8. On Morgan’s unitarian writings, see Van den Berg, ‘Thomas Morgan versus William Warburton’, 83.
19 On Clarke’s Arianism, see J. P. Ferguson, An Eighteenth Century Heretic: Dr. Samuel Clarke (Kineton: Roundwood Press, 1976), 51, 53–5, 83; L. Stewart, ‘Samuel Clarke, Newtonianism, and the Factions of Post‐revolutionary England’, Journal of the History of Ideas, 42:1 (1981), 53–72 (56, 59); S. Snobelen, ‘Caution, Conscience and the Newtonian Reformation: The Public and Private Heresies of Newton, Clarke and Whiston’, Enlightenment and Dissent, 16 (1997), 151–84 (161).
20 [Morgan], The Friendly Interposer, 8–9; idem, The Nature and Consequences of Enthusiasm Consider’d, in some short Remarks in the Doctrine of the Blessed Trinity, (London, 1719), 34.
21 T. Morgan, The Moral Philosopher, 3 vols (London, 1737–1740), vol. 1, 364.
22 T. Chubb, The True Gospel of Jesus Christ Vindicated (London, 1739), 50; idem, The True Gospel of Jesus Christ Asserted (London, 1738), 197–8, 204.
23 T. Chubb, A Discourse on Miracles, Considered as Evidence to Prove the Divine Original of a Revelation (London, 1741), 38; Bushell, The Sage of Salisbury, 24, 27.
24 The History of the Works of the Learned, January 1738, 134–5.
25 T. Morgan, Physico‐theology: or, a Philosophico‐moral Disquisition Concerning Human Nature, Free Agency, Moral Government, and Divine Providence (London, 1741), 77. Morgan’s uncertainty about revelation is in The Moral Philosopher, vol. 3, 146.
26 Morgan, Physico‐theology, 315.
27 Morgan, The Moral Philosopher, vol. 1, 186, 188.
28 R. Porter, Enlightenment: Britain and the Creation of the Modern World (London: Allen Lane, 2000), 125; J. Miller, ‘“A Suffering People”: English Quakers and their Neighbours c.1650–c.1700’, Past and Present, 188:1 (2005), 71–103 (100, 103); M. Mullett, ‘From Sect to Denomination? Social Developments in Eighteenth‐century English Quakerism’, Journal of Religious History, 13:2 (1984), 168–91 (184, 187); L. E. Klein, ‘Sociability, Solitude, and Enthusiasm’, The Huntington Library Quarterly, 60:1–2 (1997), 153–77 (172).
29 Wigelsworth, Deism in Enlightenment England.
30 J. Trenchard and T. Gordon, Cato’s Letters, edited by R. Hamowy, sixth edition, 2 vols (1755, reprinted Indianapolis, IN: Liberty Classics, 1995), vol. 2, 527.
31 Trenchard and Gordon, Cato’s Letters, vol. 2, 527–8.
32 Trenchard and Gordon, Cato’s Letters, vol. 2, 528.
34 Trenchard and Gordon, Cato’s Letters, vol. 2, 529.
33 Trenchard and Gordon, Cato’s Letters, vol. 2, 529.
35 Trenchard and Gordon, Cato’s Letters, vol. 2, 529–30.
36 Trenchard and Gordon, Cato’s Letters, vol. 2, 530.
37 Trenchard and Gordon, Cato’s Letters, vol. 2, 531.
38 T. Chubb, An Examination of Mr. Barclay’s Principles in A Collection of Tracts, on Various Subjects. Written by Mr. Thomas Chubb (London, 1730), 304.
39 Chubb, An Examination of Mr. Barclay’s Principles, 304–5, 306; Bushell, The Sage of Salisbury, 70.
40 Chubb, An Examination of Mr. Barclay’s Principles, 308, 311, 312; Bushell, The Sage of Salisbury, 98–9.
41 Chubb, An Examination of Mr. Barclay’s Principles, 317.
42 J. C. D. Clark, ‘Providence, Predestination and Progress: Or, did the Enlightenment Fail’, Albion, 35 (2003), 576–79; Q. Skinner, Reason and Rhetoric in the Philosophy of Hobbes (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 378–81; L. Damrosch, Jr, ‘Hobbes as Reformation Theologian: Implications of the Free‐will Controversy’, Journal of the History of Ideas, 40:3 (1979), 339–52.
43 BL, Add. MS 4292 fol. 265 verso. Thomas Chubb to John Clayton, 1720.
44 Royal Society, Early Letters and Papers, vol. 23 (1), fol. 36. Thomas Chubb to Royal Society [James Jurin], 10 August 1723. On the controversy, see A. A. Rusnock, Vital Accounts: Quantifying Health and Population in Eighteenth‐Century England and France (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 49–70. An example of Jurin’s request for reports of inoculations is found in J. Jurin, An Account of the Success of Inoculating the Small Pox in Great Britain, for the Year 1724 (London, 1725), 31 verso. ‘All Persons concern’d in the Practice of inoculating the Small Pox, are desired to keep a Registry of the Names and Ages of every Person inoculated […] They are intreated to send these Accounts, or an Extract from them […] to Dr. Jurin Secretary to the Royal Society, some Time in January […].’ Chubb’s participation in this and Morgan’s engagement with Newtonian natural philosophy mentioned above cast doubt over J. C. D. Clark’s recent assertion that deists were ‘distant from the latest developments in the natural sciences’. See Clark, ‘Providence, Predestination and Progress’, 571. For more on deist engagement with contemporary natural philosophy, see Wigelsworth, Deism in Enlightenment England, chs 3 and 5.
45 W. Penn, The Papers of William Penn, edited by M. S. Wokeck et al., 5 vols (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1986), vol. 3, 436–7.
46 T. Beaven, Supernatural Influences Necessary to Salvation … In Answer to Thomas Chubb’s Treatise (London, 1726), ii, 18.
47 Beaven, Supernatural Influences Necessary to Salvation, 34.
48 Beaven, Supernatural Influences Necessary to Salvation, 43.
49 T. Chubb, Human Natural Vindicated: or, a Reply to Mr. Beaven’s Book (London, 1726), 4–5.
50 Chubb, Human Natural Vindicated, 14.
51 BL, Add. MS 32556 fol. 134 recto. Thomas Chubb to Dr Cox Macro, 6 October 1718.
52 Chubb, Human Natural Vindicated, 30.
53 D. Outram, The Enlightenment, second edition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 119–20. As her evidence, Outram cites Peter Gay, a further example of his lasting influence in studies of deism. Ironically, early in her book, Outram explains that Gay’s interpretation of the Enlightenment is outdated.
54 T. Morgan, A Letter to Mr. Thomas Chubb (London, 1727), 4–5.
55 Morgan, A Letter to Mr. Thomas Chubb, 7.
56 Morgan, A Letter to Mr. Thomas Chubb, 9.
57 Morgan, A Letter to Mr. Thomas Chubb, 10–11.
58 Morgan, A Letter to Mr. Thomas Chubb, 11–12, 13.
59 Morgan, A Letter to Mr. Thomas Chubb, 29–30.
60 Morgan, A Letter to Mr. Thomas Chubb, 32.
61 Billingsley, A Sermon Preach’d at the Ordination of Mr. Thomas Morgan, 52, 61. See also 63.
62 T. Chubb, Some Short Remarks upon Dr. Morgan’s Tract, Entitled, A Letter to Mr. Chubb in A Collection of Tracts, on Various Subjects. Written by Mr. Thomas Chubb (London, 1730), 342, 343.
63 Chubb, Some Short Remarks upon Dr. Morgan’s Tract, 344, 346.
64 T. Morgan, A Farther Vindication of Mr. Barclay’s Scheme, In Reply to Mr. Chubb’s Remarks (London, 1727), 6, 7.
65 Morgan, A Farther Vindication of Mr. Barclay’s Scheme, 13–14.
66 Morgan, A Farther Vindication of Mr. Barclay’s Scheme, 14.
67 Morgan, A Farther Vindication of Mr. Barclay’s Scheme, 20.
68 Morgan, A Farther Vindication of Mr. Barclay’s Scheme, 29, 35.
69 Morgan, The Moral Philosopher, vol. 1, 392, 143, 394. This belief too may be traced to his ordination and his statements of faith found there. See Billingsley, A Sermon Preach’d at the Ordination of Mr. Thomas Morgan, 62.
70 S. Lalor, Matthew Tindal Freethinker: An Eighteenth‐Century Assault on Religion (London: Continuum, 2006), 148; Sullivan, John Toland and the Deist Controversy, 207; Israel, Radical Enlightenment, 472.
72 Chubb, Scripture Evidence Consider’d, 8.
71 T. Chubb, Scripture Evidence Consider’d, in a View of the Controversy betwixt the Author and Mr. Barclay’s Defenders, viz. Mr. Beaven and Dr. Morgan (London, 1728), 9.
73 Chubb, Scripture Evidence Consider’d, 8–9.
74 T. Chubb, A Discourse Concerning Reason, with regard to Religion and Divine Revelation (1732; facsimile reprint, New York: Garland Publishing, 1978), 6–7.
75 Chubb, A Discourse Concerning Reason, 8; Almond, Adam and Eve, 194.
76 On Morgan’s distaste of ‘natural deism’, see The Moral Philosopher, vol. 1, 413–14.
77 J. Sheehan, The Enlightenment Bible: Translation, Scholarship, Culture (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005), 27–8, 31–3. Sheehan does point to Chubb as being emblematic of a general deist disdain of the Bible and of a desire to consign ‘biblical text to the dustheap’ (119). Morgan, however, does not appear in the book. D. S. Katz, God’s Last Words: Reading the English Bible from the Reformation to Fundamentalism (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2004), 146–7. Chubb does not appear in Katz’s book. Neither Sheehan, nor Katz examines the publications of Chubb and Morgan presented in this article. Although, it must be admitted that the analysis of Sheehan and Katz is several orders of magnitude higher than the dismissive and condescending remarks found in The Cambridge History of the Bible, 3 vols (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1963), vol. 3, 248. See also H. G. Reventlow, The Authority of the Bible and the Rise of the Modern World (London: Fortress Press, 1985), 384–406.