Deism in Enlightenment England
Deism in Enlightenment England: Theology, politics, and Newtonian public science
JEFFREY R. WIGELSWORTH
Series: Politics, Culture and Society in Early Modern Britain
Copyright Date: 2009
Published by: Manchester University Press
Pages: 256
https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt155j6x8
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Book Info
Deism in Enlightenment England
Book Description:

This is the first complete study of English deists as a group in several decades and it argues for a new interpretation of deism in the English Enlightenment. While there have been many recent studies of the deist John Toland, the writings of other contemporary deists have been forgotten. With extensive analysis of lesser known figures such as Anthony Collins, Matthew Tindal, Thomas Chub, and Thomas Morgan, in addition to unique insights into Toland, *Deism in Enlightenment England * offers a much broader assessment of what deism entailed in the eighteenth century. Readers will see how previous interpretations of English deists, which place these figures on an irreligious trajectory leading towards modernity, need to be revised. This book uses deists to address a number of topics and themes and theme in English history and will be of particular interest to scholars of Enlightenment history, history of science, theology and politics, and the early modern era.

eISBN: 978-1-84779-356-0
Subjects: History
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  1. Front Matter
    Front Matter (pp. i-iv)
  2. Table of Contents
    Table of Contents (pp. v-v)
  3. Acknowledgements
    Acknowledgements (pp. vi-vii)
  4. Abbreviations, dates, and quotations
    Abbreviations, dates, and quotations (pp. ix-x)
  5. Introduction: the importance of deist theology
    Introduction: the importance of deist theology (pp. 1-13)

    ‘When I wrote my treatise about our Systeme I had an eye upon such Principles as might work with considering men for the beliefe of a Deity & nothing can rejoyce me more then to find it usefull for that purpose’. Sir Isaac Newton wrote this assessment of his own work in 1692 to Richard Bentley, classical scholar, deliverer of the inaugural Boyle Lecture, and furture Master of Trinity College, Cambridge. That someone had found the apologetic purpose which was encoded within hisPhilosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica(1687) pleased Newton greatly. However, not everyone who read thePrincipiaand saw...

  6. Chapter 1 The meaning of 1689: politics and theology, 1694–1700
    Chapter 1 The meaning of 1689: politics and theology, 1694–1700 (pp. 14-43)

    Throughout the 1690s England was a nation still struggling to interpret the turbulent political events of 1688–89 and the resulting Revolutionary Settlement. When James II was deemed by Parliament to have abdicated the crown and William, Prince of Orange, and his wife Mary Stuart, daughter of James, were installed as king and queen, many issues regarding the governance of England remained at best unsettled and at worst divisive. The immediate concern related to what form the new government would take: constitutional or divine right monarchy, Low or High Church. Even more problematic, James did not fade away quietly. He...

  7. Chapter 2 The issue of succession: politics and theology, 1701–09
    Chapter 2 The issue of succession: politics and theology, 1701–09 (pp. 44-70)

    Although William III had been seen as a providential gift from God to secure Protestantism in England upon his arrival in 1688, he was never a greatly loved monarch. His death in 1702, tragic at the age of fifty-one though it was, did not stir the nation into a collective outpouring of grief. William’s final years had been marked by anticipating war with France – over the succession in Spain – and determining a method to finance it. As per the Act of Settlement (1701) Queen Anne, daughter of James II, came to the throne after a lifetime as a princess who...

  8. Chapter 3 Matter, motion, and Newtonian public science, 1695–1714
    Chapter 3 Matter, motion, and Newtonian public science, 1695–1714 (pp. 71-108)

    ‘The manner, in which Sir Isaac Newton has published his philosophical discoveries, occasions them to lie very much concealed from all, who have not made the mathematics particularly their study’, concluded Henry Pemberton, editor of the third edition of thePhilosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica(1726), regarding the contents of a book he knew better than perhaps only Newton himself. Newton’s refusal to explain hisPrincipia,and in later years hisOpticks,to a public that hung on his every word created an opportunity for others. Public science was born as a response to this demand. Indeed, it was through the...

  9. Chapter 4 The spectre of High Church: politics and theology, 1709–19
    Chapter 4 The spectre of High Church: politics and theology, 1709–19 (pp. 109-141)

    Queen Anne’s husband, Prince George of Denmark, died in October 1708. For the queen, whose health had never been robust, the added strain left her susceptible to manoeuvring on the part of her ministers – Whigs temporarily regained the royal ear. Whig resurgence, however, was short-lived as the continuing expense of participating in the War of the Spanish Succession frustrated both Anne and tax-hating Tories such as Robert Harley. Tories saw encouragement for the Whig-supported war and the financing of it as tied to support for Dissenters because many Whigs seemed to embrace a Latitudinarian stance towards religion, which meant a...

  10. Chapter 5 Matter, motion, and Newtonian public science, 1720–41
    Chapter 5 Matter, motion, and Newtonian public science, 1720–41 (pp. 142-166)

    By the time Sir Isaac Newton died in 1727 contemporary enthusiasm for natural philosophy had ensured that it had crossed the threshold of the rooms at the Royal Society to become firmly established as part of a national discourse. We need only look at the newspapers of the day to see how far natural philosophy had captured imaginations and created a market niche. Advertisements offered consumers the opportunity to hold the world figuratively in their hands. Pocket globes and larger models contained ‘the newest Observations, communicated to the Royal Society at London, and the Royal Academy’. Such natural philosophical instruments...

  11. Chapter 6 The age of Walpole: politics and theology, 1720–41
    Chapter 6 The age of Walpole: politics and theology, 1720–41 (pp. 167-203)

    Robert Walpole was the most renowned and yet most reviled political figure in England during the early eighteenth century. He seized the opportunity which events – and his return to government following the failure of the Peerage Bill (1719) – provided and charted a course through the turbulent political waters in the wake of the South Sea Bubble in August of 1720. Within two years both of his chief rivals, the earls of Stanhope and Sunderland, would be dead, and Walpole would stand alone at the helm of England’s government.¹ Following the successful returns of the 1722 election, the Walpolean Whigs, styled...

  12. Conclusion: radical no more
    Conclusion: radical no more (pp. 204-208)

    In a classic article Steven Shapin described the interlocking spheres of intellectual enquiry in early modern England. Theology, politics, and natural philosophy overlapped, he wrote, ‘because they were connected in legitimations, justifications, and criticisms, especially in the use of conceptions of God and nature to comment upon political order’.¹ It is these relationships that I have sought to present in this book by reconstructing the intertwined erudite endeavours of John Toland, Anthony Collins, Matthew Tindal, Thomas Chubb, and Thomas Morgan. These were the deists specifically named by William Whiston and Edmund Burke.² While there were undoubtedly other persons in England...

  13. Bibliography
    Bibliography (pp. 209-232)
  14. Index
    Index (pp. 233-246)
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