English Deists

Interprets the works of an important group of writers known as 'the English deists'. This title argues that this interpretation reads Romantic conceptions of religious identity into a period in which it was lacking. It contextualizes these writers within the early Enlightenment, which was multivocal, plural and in search of self definition. Chapter 1 Who Were the English Deists?; Chapter 2 Genealogies of Deism; Chapter 3 Herbert of Cherbury; Chapter 4 Charles Blount and His Circle; Chapter 5 Three Writers; conclusion Conclusion;