Many members of the founding generation of 1776 would have understood the reference to "the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God" as the source of their rights not in terms of orthodox Christianity but in the context of the Enlightenment's discourse of Deism. Deism originated more than a century earlier in England as a somewhat loosely defined pattern of beliefs that had evolved from liberal Christianity, the Newtonian description of a material universe apparently ruled by rational law, and the empirical description by John Locke (1632-1704) of human reason. Deists came in a variety of shades of opinion and belief, from believers in a rational Deity who were content to remain within the confines of a traditional denomination to anticlerical skeptics. There was no Deist church, although the Unitarianism that emerged at the end of the eighteenth century was imbued with much of the Deist spirit, and when Samuel Johnson (1709-1784) came to define "Deist" in his Dictionary (1755), he could only offer the highly generalized description of "a man who follows no particular religion but only acknowledges the existence of God, without any other article of faith."
There was rather more to Deism than that, however, and Deists shared to one extent or another several central beliefs. Common to all Deists was the belief in a rational creator of a rational, orderly universe governed by laws that could be understood by reasoning human beings. The laws of motion of Isaac Newton (1642-1727) suggested for his contemporaries the reality of a universe that operated in predictable, mechanical fashion, like a clock as some saw it, and that consequently seemed to be the work of God as the Supreme Artificer. Christian thinkers were quick to integrate the new science into an older theological worldview by insisting that biblical revealed truth was independent of the truth of the so-called book of nature, which complemented and confirmed it. Thus, Cotton Mather could publish his Christian Philosopher (1720), which praised the rational design of the natural world and at the same time maintained belief in God's direct providential intrusion into the events of the natural world. Deists departed from exponents of natural religion, however, by rejecting the possibility of miracles and other supernatural interventions into the natural, created world. The title of English Deist John Toland's famous work, Christianity Not Mysterious (1696), suggested as much from the very first page and went on to call into question the authority of many parts of the Bible itself. Matthew Tindal's Christianity as Old as the Creation: or, the Gospel a Republication of the Religion of Nature (1730), a book often referred to as "the Deist's bible," seemed to obviate the need for the Bible at all.
Deists followed up on these ideas by asserting that the God of the Creation was the deity worshipped by all religions regardless of sect or denomination. They also insisted, as Anthony Collins did in his Discourse of Free-Thinking (1713), on the right of individuals to think for themselves on matters of religion and to publish their opinions freely. Deists followed Locke in calling for religious toleration, the notion that since religious opinion is a private matter the state, while possibly authorizing an official church, ought to tolerate at least all shades of Christian opinion. In the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom (1786), Thomas Jefferson and James Madison extended this idea to its logical conclusion by demanding that the state separate itself entirely from supporting religion, either by raising taxes to support churches or by compelling people "to frequent or support any religious worship, place, or ministry whatsoever." If Jefferson and Madison were in advance of many of their fellow citizens about the separation of church and state, they were not alone in defending religious toleration. A large number of Virginians, like George Washington and many other members of the gentry, shared liberal notions of a deistical sort. Jefferson had remarked in his Notes on the State of Virginia (1785), "it does me no injury for my neighbour to say there are twenty gods, or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg" (Writings, p. 285). He advised his nephew, Peter Carr, in 1787, to "Read the bible then, as you would read Livy or Tacitus. . . . You must lay aside all prejudice on both sides, & neither believe nor reject anything because other persons or descriptions of persons have rejected or believed it. Your own reason is the only oracle given to you by heaven" (Writings, p. 902). Jefferson may here have been echoing the words of another American Deist, Ethan Allen, whose Reason the Only Oracle of Man had appeared in 1784.
Jefferson's comment in Notes on the State of Virginia about his hypothetical neighbor's faith caused him to be attacked by Federalist ministers in the election of 1800 as an atheist, and the ideas of Deists were often conflated by their critics with those of atheists, as in Richard Bentley's 1692 Boyle lecture, The Folly of Atheism and (What Is Now Called) Deism. Deists could find themselves being led by the oracle of reason into socially inconvenient situations. Benjamin Franklin, perhaps the first notable American Deist, was already questioning his youthful indoctrination into New England orthodoxy when as a typesetter in London he worked on an edition of William Wollaston's The Religion of Nature Delineated (1724). Franklin used Wollaston's own assumptions about an orderly nature as the work of a rational creator to overturn Wollaston's arguments about human agency and ethical responsibility. Franklin's A Dissertation on Liberty and Necessity, Pleasure and Pain (1725) denied human free will and ethical responsibility and argued that "since there is no such Thing as Free-Will in Creatures, there can be neither Merit nor Demerit in Creatures" (Writings, p. 62). At the conclusion of the Dissertation, Franklin admitted that "the Doctrine here advanc'd, if it were to be publish'd, would meet with but an indifferent Reception" (Writings, p. 71). Franklin did publish the dissertation; later, in his Autobiography he admitted that this was one of his youthful "errata."
If Franklin was indeed serious about the ideas in the Dissertation, he backed away from them in later years. However, he did not ally himself to any particular church in Philadelphia but contributed to ministers and congregations of various denominations on the grounds that they all could exert a good influence on public morals and that each paid tribute to the same deity. Deists before the American Revolution did not tend to publicly criticize orthodox forms of Christianity but held their beliefs as a private matter. Jefferson refused to respond to the attacks on his presumed atheism, although he sought to reassure friends that he was indeed, by his own lights at least, a Christian. He sent to a few close friends, including Benjamin Rush (not himself a Deist), the Unitarian Joseph Priestley, and John Adams, who shared Jefferson's Deist inclinations, copies of his "Syllabus of an Estimate of the Merit of the Doctrines of Jesus" (1803), which praised Jesus as a moral philosopher, but he also asked these friends to keep the "Syllabus" to themselves. Earlier Deists in England and America had, as a consequence of their belief in reason as an adequate guide to religious belief, frequently expressed criticism of the Bible, at least in its accounts of miracles that defied the ordinary workings of nature. Jefferson's "Syllabus" and his later scissors edit of the Gospels, "The Life and Morals of Jesus," attempted to build upon this critique of the Bible by presenting Christ as a rational moralist, eliminating the miracles and foregrounding the Sermon on the Mount. Published in the twentieth century as The Jefferson Bible, this text was for his private use during his life or for a few friends who understood and sympathized with his beliefs. He could express his hostility to "priestcraft" in private letters, accusing the "priests" of abusing "the pure and holy doctrines of their master," but like his rational reading of the Bible, he confined his anticlerical comments to private letters.
Other Deists in the years after the Revolution were not so shy about expressing their criticism of the Bible and their anticlerical sentiments. Ethan Allen, the former Green Mountain Boy, interpreted the Bible with the aid only of his own reason and a dictionary. His Reason the Only Oracle of Man found it to be a book full of scientific absurdities, superstitious fancies, and "arbitrary impositions upon the tribes of Israel." More heated controversy resulted from the publication of the two parts of Thomas Paine's The Age of Reason (1794-1795). Paine's text received a much wider circulation than Allen's. It was much more aggressively polemical than Allen's text, and, more important, Paine was a notorious radical closely associated with the French Revolution. The earlier Deists had found their inspiration in the less politically engaged English writers, but critics of Deism in the 1790s saw in Allen and Paine the specter of the French atheism that threatened traditional faith, moral order, and political stability. The most active radical Deist in 1790s America is probably the least familiar. Elihu Palmer, a onetime Presbyterian minister, espoused increasingly liberal interpretations of the Bible and eventually became a sort of Deist circuit rider. He traveled through the eastern seaboard states preaching the Deist message, founding what were called Deistical Societies and editing Deistic newspapers such as The Temple of Reason. Unlike earlier Deists who shrouded their opinions in gentlemanly privacy, Paine and Palmer appealed to artisans and workers, further outraging orthodox Federalist ministers.
Palmer's masterwork, Principles of Nature, or a Development of the Moral Causes of Happiness and Misery among the Human Species (1801), appeared five years before his death. Deism as an active force lasted hardly longer. Jefferson had prophesied that within a generation all Americans would become Unitarians, but rational Christianity had little appeal in the face of the emotional force of the Second Great Awakening, and Palmer's Deistical Societies aside, Deism never found an adequate institutional form. Liberal denominations like the Unitarians and the Universalists adopted some Deist principles, but after Allen, Paine, and Palmer put their stamp on Deism, no religious body would admit to being Deist. The liberal traditions of Deism left their mark on American culture, however, in the form of the principle of separation of church and state and the phenomenon of a pluralistic religious culture.