In 1711 the Earl of Shaftesbury's Characteristicks of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times gathers his essays into the deist era's most elegant statement: virtue is natural to man, enthusiasm is to be answered with ridicule and good humor, and true religion needs neither terror nor priestcraft. Shaftesbury gives natural religion its moral and aesthetic form.
Tagged: Deism
The Event
- Date
- 1711 (exact)
- Era
- The Deist Controversy; Standard periodization of deist history
- Location
- London; today London, England
- Traditions
- Deism
- Streams
- Deism
- Key figures
- Anthony Ashley Cooper, Earl of Shaftesbury
- Key texts
- Characteristicks of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times
Primary Sources
- Shaftesbury, Earl of. Characteristicks of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times. London, 1711.
Secondary Sources
- Barnett, S. J. The Enlightenment and Religion: The Myths of Modernity. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2003.
- Byrne, Peter. Natural Religion and the Nature of Religion: The Legacy of Deism. London: Routledge, 1989.
- Walters, Kerry S. The American Deists: Voices of Reason and Dissent in the Early Republic. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1992.
Provenance: HIST-1361; confidence 0.95; accessed 2026-10-30.
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World View
Deism
Deism holds that reason and nature reveal one Creator who made the world and its laws, then left it to run without miracles or special revelation.