ew 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 L