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Updated: June 3, 2025
Carlyle is no Deist," said Miss Staunton; "and I am sure, that unless the truths of Christianity contrive soon to get themselves justified by the laws of science, the higher orders will believe in them as little as Mr. Locke informs us that the working classes do." "You prophesy confidently, my darling." "Oh, Eleanor is in one of her prophetic moods to-night," said Lillian, slyly.
If there were no God, said the eighteenth century Deist, it would be necessary to invent Him. Now this XVIII century god was deus ex machina, the god who helped those who could not help themselves, the god of the lazy and incapable. The nineteenth century decided that there is indeed no such god; and now Man must take in hand all the work that he used to shirk with an idle prayer.
He walked slowly in a direction from which he could see the procession of communicants, and distinguish his little Ursula brilliant with exaltation beneath her veil. She gave him an inspired look, which knocked, in the stony regions of his heart, on the corner closed to God. But still the old deist held firm.
Their Jupiter, the Zeus of the Greeks, the Jehovah of the Phœnicians, was always considered as the master of the secondary gods. This great truth can not be too forcibly inculcated.” Voltaire was a Deist. Lucretius, according to Voltaire, denied design in nature. Voltaire said, in philosophy, he was very far behind a college porter or a parish beadle. Spinosa was a Pantheist.
He wrote voluminously, on many subjects, and was devoted to a literary life. He rejected the superstitions of his country, and looked upon the ritualism of religion as a mere fashion. In his own belief he was a deist; but though he wrote fine ethical treatises, he dishonored his own virtues by a compliance with the vices of others. He saw much of life, and died at fifty-three.
But here, too, he was mistaken; after about two years he rebelled against the stifling of all free inquiry; on this rebellion the flood-gates of scepticism were opened, and he was soon battling with unbelief. He then fell in with one who was a pure Deist, and was shorn of every shred of dogma which he had ever held, except a belief in the personality and providence of the Creator.
He ventured to call Middleton an 'apostate priest'; and Middleton retorted that if he alluded to a priest as the 'accuser, everyone would understand that he meant to refer to Mr. Venn. In fact, Venn had the credit of having denounced Thomas Bundle, who, according to Pope, 'had a heart, and according to Venn was a deist in disguise.
At the bare name of atheist the superstitious man quakes; the deist himself is alarmed; the priest enters the judgement chair with fury glaring in his eyes; tyranny prepares his funeral pile, the vulgar applaud the punishments which irrational, partial laws, decree against the true friend of the human species.
Neither by syllogism nor by crucible could Bacon himself have made the "Form" of Carlyle to confess itself. But call him what we will essential Calvinist or recalcitrant Neologist, Mystic, Idealist, Deist or Pantheist, practical Absolutist, or "the strayed reveller" of Radicalism he is consistent in his even bigoted antagonism to all Utilitarian solutions of the problems of the world.
But you are offended at certain things in revelation.... Well, I will show you that in your and my admitted system of nature there are just as many difficulties as in the system of revelation." And on this, says Arnold, he does show it, "and by adversaries such as his, who grant what the Deist or Socinian grants, he never has been answered, he never will be answered.
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