Lord Herbert of Cherbury was one of the first who formed deism into a system. His book _De Veritate_ was published in 1624. He argues against the probability of God’s revealing his will to only a portion of the earth. This he calls “particular religion.” Yet he sought, and according to his own account he received, a revelation from heaven to encourage the publication of his work in disproof of revelation. He “asked for a sign,” and was answered by a “loud though gentle noise from the heavens.” He had the vanity to think his book of such importance to the cause of truth as to extort a declaration of the divine will, when the interests of half mankind could not secure any revelation at all; what God would not do for a nation, he would do for an individual. See Leslie and Leland, Method with the Deists. Deism is the exaggeration of the truth of God’s transcendence. See Christlieb, Modern Doubt and Christian Belief, 190-209. Melanchthon illustrates by the shipbuilder: “Ut faber discedit a navi exstructa et relinquit eam nautis.” God is the maker, not the keeper, of the watch. In Sartor Resartus, Carlyle makes Teufelsdröckh speak of “An absentee God, sitting idle ever since the first Sabbath at the outside of the universe, and seeing it go.” Blunt, Dict. Doct. and Hist. Theology, art.: Deism. “Deism emphasized the inviolability of natural law, and held to a mechanical view of the world” (Ten Broeke). Its God is a sort of Hindu Brahma, “as idle as a painted ship upon a painted ocean”—mere being, without content or movement. Bruce, Apologetics, 115-131—“God made the world so good at the first that the best he can do is to let it alone. Prayer is inadmissible. Deism implies a Pelagian view of human nature. Death redeems us by separating us from the body. There is natural immortality, but no resurrection. Lord Herbert of Cherbury, the brother of the poet George Herbert of Bemerton, represents the rise of Deism; Lord Bolingbroke its decline. Blount assailed the divine Person of the founder of the faith; Collins its foundation in prophecy; Woolston its miraculous attestation; Toland its canonical literature. Tindal took more general ground, and sought to show that a special revelation was unnecessary, impossible, unverifiable, the religion of nature being sufficient and superior to all religions of positive institution.” We object to this view that: (_a_) It rests upon a false analogy.—Man is able to construct a self-moving watch only because he employs preëxisting forces, such as gravity, elasticity, cohesion. But in a theory which likens the universe to a machine, these forces are the very things to be accounted for.