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Updated: June 10, 2025
He confessed that, along from 1725 to 1730 he was immoral, and was sometimes led astray; but his conscience made him much trouble, and, finally, it asserted its supremacy, and he came off conqueror over his evil propensities. A change from skepticism or deism to a decided belief in the Christian Religion, no doubt exerted the strongest influence in making him a better man.
There were, indeed, mystics like the author of the immortal De Imitatione, in whom the special qualities of Christian doctrine seem to have grown pale in a brighter flood of devout aspiration towards the perfections of a single Being. But this was not the deism with which either Christianity on the one side, or atheism on the other, had ever had to deal in France.
One of his tutors, however, in a religious argument found himself so incompetent to defend the Catholic church, that in his anger he exclaimed, "You will become the Coryphaeus of Deism." On leaving college the young man entered into Paris society. Louis XIV. was in his dotage, and at this time paid little attention to men of genius.
It was not without imminent danger that the priest baptized the infant, joined the hands of lovers, or listened to the confession of the dying. The absurd worship of the Goddess of Reason was, indeed, of short duration; but the deism of Robespierre and Lepaux was not less hostile to the Catholic faith than the atheism of Clootz and Chaumette.
The probability or even possibility of the thing is all that we ought to know; for if we knew it as a fact, we should be the mere slaves of terror; our belief would have no merit, and our best actions no virtue. Deism then teaches us, without the possibility of being deceived, all that is necessary or proper to be known. The creation is the Bible of the deist.
To give this belief the full opportunity of force, it is necessary that it acts alone. This is deism. It might as well have said a goose; the creatures are equally harmless, and the one is as much a nonsensical lie as the other. Acts, ii. 2, 3, says, that it descended in a mighty rushing wind, in the shape of cloven tongues: perhaps it was cloven feet.
In the South the deism which had influenced the generation led by Washington and Jefferson had given way to the stern faith of the Calvinists, for whether one were Presbyterian, Baptist, Methodist, or Campbellite, the essentials of his religion were the same. Wealthy planters, small farmers, and negro slaves sought the salvation of their souls in the same churches and under the same preachers.
North Africa is wonderfully homogeneous in the matter of religion. The people, indeed, have but one religion. Even the extraneous Judaism is the same in its Deism depression of the female circumcision and many of the religious customs, festivals and traditions.
Why, Sir, it is vain to talk about the destructive tendency of such a system; to argue upon it is to insult the understanding of every man; it is mere, sheer, low, ribald, vulgar deism and infidelity! It opposes all that is in heaven, and all on earth that is worth being on earth.
They sometimes instruct them in morals, and talk to them of the goodness of what they call Providence; for the Christian mythology has five deities: there is God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Ghost, the God Providence, and the Goddess Nature. How different is this to the pure and simple profession of Deism!
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