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Enlightenment and Modernity: the English Deists and Reform, by Wayne Hudson (London: Pickering and Chatto, 2009; Pp BOOK REVIEWS 449 Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/ehr/article/CXXVI/519/449/382103 by guest on 30 September 2021 Enlightenment and Modernity: The English Deists and Reform, by Wayne Hudson (London: Pickering and Chatto, 2009; pp. 225. £60). Eighteenth-century English deism is enjoying something of a renaissance in scholarly interest. After a prolonged silence, historians are once again addressing collectively those controversial figures known as deists who flourished in England’s intellectual life from the late seventeenth to the mid-eighteenth EHR, cxxvi. 519 (April 2011) 450 BOOK REVIEWS century. Edmund Burke identified these notorious thinkers in his lamentations over the increasing chaos encompassing the French Revolution: John Toland, Anthony Collins, Matthew Tindal, Thomas Chubb, and Thomas Morgan. Often added to this list are Charles Blount, the third earl of Shaftesbury, and Lord Bolingbroke. While it is true that our understanding of John Toland is substantial because of the five biographical studies which have been published addressing various aspects of his life and thought, England’s other deists toil in relative obscurity. Deists tend to be placed in histories of the Enlightenment Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/ehr/article/CXXVI/519/449/382103 by guest on 30 September 2021 where they serve as stepping-stones to the more radical French thinkers who themselves act as a bridge to the Revolution of 1789. As historians continue to delineate the nature of a British Enlightenment nourished in, and sustained by, religious thought, the place of deists in this climate requires considerable rethinking. Recently a number of scholars, Diego Lucci and myself included, have undertaken this task, and books appearing in 2008 and 2009 challenge much of what we thought we knew about deism in England. Wayne Hudson’s two-volume history forms part of this process. In Volume One, The English Deists: Studies in Early Enlightenment (2009), he argued that deists need to be placed within their intellectual climate rather than outside it, and that multiple deisms existed in the early modern era. Hudson’s second volume, with which this review is concerned, takes his account into the Walpolean era. Hudson begins by rejecting facile attempts to create ‘over-unified conceptions’ of deists and outlining how his study ‘introduces a more contextual interpretation which emphasizes the multiple personae these writers exercised and the diversity of their contributions to the Enlightenment’ (p. 1). By this is meant placing deists into the climate of their day, which was deeply Protestant, rather than simply assuming that they sought to exist outside it because they were deists. This concern to place deists among their contemporaries is perhaps the greatest strength of Hudson’s work. Part One of the book explores post- 1720 attempts by deists to question accepted truths regarding Christianity. Here Hudson is careful not to equate interrogations of the Christian religion with atheism or anti-Christian sentiments. The point is further supported through examinations of Thomas Woolston and Conyers Middleton, both of whom are labelled ‘clerical critics’, who shared points of view with more recognised deists. Part Two of the book considers the contribution England’s deists made to Enlightenment and modernity. In these chapters Hudson notes that the deists had little impact in England but that the ‘moral character’ of their writings influenced authors in France, Germany, and America. But this does not mean, as Hudson rightly notes, that deists anticipated how their writings would be used, nor that they would have always agreed with that usage. The book concludes with an appendix which suggests that neither Shaftesbury nor Bolingbroke were truly deists in the sense outlined elsewhere in the book. This important question merits more than the two-and-half pages Hudson devotes to it and one hopes that he will address the issue more fully elsewhere. Hudson points out that almost all of the deists considered themselves to be Protestant, members of the English church, and politically active Whigs. This stands in contrast to many nineteenth-century histories which interpreted England’s deists as paragons of unbelief and secularisation, a label that is proving difficult to dislodge. Deists were active at a particular time, Hudson argues, and attempted to contribute to the intellectual debates—political and theological—as did their more orthodox contemporaries. These writers hoped EHR, cxxvi. 519 (April 2011) BOOK REVIEWS 451 to improve the institutions of England, rather than dismantle them. This multi-layered deism complements Hudson’s reading of the Enlightenment as situated somewhere between J.G.A. Pocock’s claims for multiple Enlightenments and Jonathan Israel’s assertion to the contrary. This is explained by Hudson by accepting that an English variety of the Enlightenment occurred but also that it contained a radical underground which helped that Enlightenment contribute to many modernising institutions and practices of the contemporary world. Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/ehr/article/CXXVI/519/449/382103 by guest on 30 September 2021 There are a few criticisms. On page 5 he claims that Tindal was forced to take Holy Orders at All Souls, Oxford. While it is true that Tindal actively participated in the controversy over priestly requirements for All Souls’ fellows, there is no definitive evidence that he took orders. In discussing the debate between Collins and William Whiston concerning biblical prophecy, Hudson implies that Whiston believed none of the prophecies foretold the coming of Christ due to the corrupt nature of the text, and that Collins and Whiston shared several views regarding prophecy. Without more evidence, this seems a hard case to make, because Whiston, in writings published in 1722, argued that prophecies in the Old Testament literally predict Christ. It was this claim regarding future fulfilment that Collins attempted to rebut in 1724. Toward the end of the book Hudson writes that natural philosophy ‘was still undifferentiated from the natural sciences’ (p. 118), a conclusion which needs to be explained to the reader because it is not immediately obvious what is meant by that comment. That there are only three minor issues speaks to the thoroughness of Hudson’s analysis which results in an important contribution to our understanding of not only deism but also the religious climate of eighteenth- century England. Hudson’s book (and his first volume) should be seen as essential reading for those concerned with placing England’s deists into the British Enlightenment. JEFFREY R. WIGELSWORTH doi:10.1093/ehr/cer005 Mount Royal University, Calgary EHR, cxxvi. 519 (April 2011).
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