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The Piety of the English Deists: Their Personal Relationship with an Active God

This paper challenges the current consensus about the religious views of the English deists and will argue that they had a pious and personal relationship with a deity who repeatedly intervened in human affairs. My argument contributes to recent efforts that question whether the Enlightenment should be seen as an inevitable march towards secularization, in which the atheism of Parisian radicals like Baron d’Holbach and Diderot are taken as exemplary for defining the period. My thesis is in line with the findings of B.W. Young, Roy Porter, and others that the English Enlightenment was not secular. While most other scholars who situate the English deists in a more pious Enlightenment see them as an outgrowth of Anglican rationalism, I agree with Justin Champion that the early deists were heavily influenced by the piety of the classical thinkers, especially Cicero and the Stoics. Even when scholars of the period have noticed that some of the English deists believed in miracles, they fail to see how active the deist God was. For example, Jeffrey R. Wigelsworth has recently argued that the English deists believed in miracles and divine