The chief names amongst the deists are those of Lord Herbert of Cherbury (1583-1648), Charles Blount (1654-1693), Matthew Tindal (1657-1733), William Wollaston (1659-1724), Thomas Woolston (1669-1733), Junius Janus (commonly known as John) Toland (1670-1722), the 3rd earl of Shaftesbury (1671-1713), Viscount Bolingbroke (1678-1751), Anthony Collins (1676-1729), Thomas Morgan (?-1743), and Thomas Chubb (1679-1747).[2] Peter Annet (1693-1769), and Henry Dodwell (the younger; d. 1784), who made his contribution to the controversy in 1742, are of less importance. Of the eleven first named, ten appear to have been born within twenty-five years of one another; and it is noteworthy that by far the greater part of the literary activity of the deists, as well as of their voluminous opponents, falls within the same half century.
The impulses that promoted a vein of thought cognate to deism were active both before and after the time of its greatest notoriety. But there are many reasons to show why, in the 17th century, men should have set themselves with a new zeal, in politics, law and theology, to follow the light of nature alone, and to cast aside the fetters of tradition and prescriptive right, of positive codes, and scholastic systems, and why in England especially there should, amongst numerous free-thinkers, have been not a few free writers. The significance of the Copernican system, as the total overthrow of the traditional conception of the universe, dawned on all educated men. In physics, Descartes had prepared the way for the final triumph of the mechanical explanation of the world in Newton's system. In England the new philosophy had broken with time-honoured beliefs more completely than it had done even in France; Hobbes was more startling than Bacon. Locke's philosophy, as well as his theology, served as a school for the deists. Men had become weary of Protestant scholasticism; religious wars had made peaceful thinkers seek to take the edge off dogmatical rancour; and the multiplicity of religious sects, coupled with the complete failure of various attempts at any substantial reconciliation, provoked distrust of the common basis on which all were founded. There was a school of distinctively latitudinarian thought in the Church of England; others not unnaturally thought it better to extend the realm of the _adiaphora_ beyond the sphere of Protestant ritual or the details of systematic divinity. Arminianism had revived the rational side of theological method. Semi-Arians and Unitarians, though sufficiently distinguished from the free-thinkers by reverence for the letter of Scripture, might be held to encourage departure from the ancient landmarks. The scholarly labours of P. D. Huet, R. Simon, L. E. Dupin, and Jean Le Clerc (Clericus), of the orientalists John Lightfoot, John Spencer and Humphrey Prideaux, of John Mill, the collator of New Testament readings, and John Fell, furnished new materials for controversy; and the scope of Spinoza's _Tractatus theologico-politicus_ had naturally been much more fully apprehended than ever his _Ethica_ could be. The success of the English revolution permitted men to turn from the active side of political and theological controversy to speculation and theory; and curiosity was more powerful than faith. Much new ferment was working. The toleration and the free press of England gave it scope. Deism was one of the results, and is an important link in the chain of thought from the Reformation to our own day.