THE PLAN of this book was, I believe, suggested to me by Mr. Pattison's essay upon the 'Tendencies of Religious Thought in England from 1688 to 1750.' I thought that it might be worth while to give a more detailed and systematic account of the movement so admirably characterised in that essay. The history of the deistical controversy, which is the chief product of eighteenth-century theology, has been several times written. The first account of it is in Leland's View of the Deistical Writers' (1754-6), a book which has still a certain historical value, but which shows of course the narrowness and unfairness of contemporary controversy. It is in no sense philosophical. By far the best accounts of the deists, so far as I know, is Lechler's excellent 'Geschichte des Englischen Deismus' (Stuttgart, 1841). Lechler is a very candid, competent, and painstaking writer; and I am glad to refer to him for more detailed accounts of many of the deists than has been compatible with my own. plan. Lechler's book, however, is devoted chiefly to the writers known distinctively as deists, to the comparative neglect of the more orthodox writers, who in reality represent a superficial modification of |