This is a cultural and intellectual biography of a neglected but important figure, Thomas Morgan (1671/2–1743). Educated at Bridgewater Academy, he was active as Presbyterian preacher, medical practitioner, and one of the first who called himself a Christian Deist. Morgan was not only a harbinger of the disparagement of the Old Testament, but also a prolific pamphleteer about things religious, and a publisher of medical books. He received praise for his medical work, but a negative press for his theological visions, and he ended as a forgotten figure in history; this book restores an overlooked writer to his due place in history. It is the first modern biography of Morgan and its readership comprises historians of deism, the enlightenment, the eighteenth century, theology and the church, Presbyterianism, and medical history.

"This is a cultural and intellectual biography of a neglected but important figure, Thomas Morgan (1671/2-1743). It is the first modern biography of Morgan and its readership comprises historians of deism, the enlightenment, eighteenth century, theology and the church, Presbyterianism, and medical history"--

"This is a cultural and intellectual biography of a neglected but important figure, Thomas Morgan (1671/2-1743). It is the first modern biography of Morgan and its readership comprises historians of deism, the enlightenment, eighteenth century, theology and the church, Presbyterianism, and medical history"--

Anticlerical legacies is the first comprehensive study of the reception of Thomas Hobbes’s ideas by the English deists and freethinkers in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. One of the most important English philosophers of all time, Hobbes’s theories have had an enduring impact on modern political and religious thought. This book offers a new perspective on the afterlife of Hobbes’s philosophy, focusing on the readers who were most sympathetic to his critical and radical ideas in the decades following his death. It investigates how Hobbes’s ideas shaped the English anticlerical campaign that peaked in the early eighteenth century and that was essential for the emergence of the early Enlightenment. The book shows that a large number of writers – Charles Blount, John Toland, Anthony Collins, Matthew Tindal, Thomas Morgan, and many others – were more Hobbesian than has ever been appreciated. Not only did they engage consistently with Hobbes’s ideas, they even invoked his authority at a time when doing so was highly unpopular. Most fundamentally, they carried on Hobbes’s war against the kingdom of darkness and used various Hobbesian weapons for their own war against priestcraft. Analysing the ways in which the deists and freethinkers developed their nuanced theories and conducted their heated dialogues with the orthodoxy, they emerge from this study as sophisticated and valuable theorists in their own right. The case of Hobbes and his successors demonstrates that anticlericalism was a key component of a much larger programme whose primary aim was to secure civil harmony, peace, and stability.

The authors revisit the idea that Enlightenment spearheaded secularization. This book invites all to look at the Enlightenment religiosity as founded on a merger of religious criticism and heterodoxy.

Presents Thomas Jefferson's personal version of the Bible, a document in which he edited and rearranged the books of the Bible to distill the philosophy and teachings of Jesus, while removing all supernatural elements.

A major new biography, illuminating the great mystery of Benjamin Franklin’s faith Renowned as a printer, scientist, and diplomat, Benjamin Franklin also published more works on religious topics than any other eighteenth-century American layperson. Born to Boston Puritans, by his teenage years Franklin had abandoned the exclusive Christian faith of his family and embraced deism. But Franklin, as a man of faith, was far more complex than the “thorough deist” who emerges in his autobiography. As Thomas Kidd reveals, deist writers influenced Franklin’s beliefs, to be sure, but devout Christians in his life—including George Whitefield, the era’s greatest evangelical preacher; his parents; and his beloved sister Jane—kept him tethered to the Calvinist creed of his Puritan upbringing. Based on rigorous research into Franklin’s voluminous correspondence, essays, and almanacs, this fresh assessment of a well-known figure unpacks the contradictions and conundrums faith presented in Franklin’s life.

The essays in this collection focus on eleven of the founders of the American republic and their opinions and thinking about the proper role of religion in public life.