eenth centuries atheist was used in the wildest way as a term
of abuse for freethinkers, and when we read of atheists (except in
careful writers) we may generally assume that the persons so stigmatized
were really deists, that is, they believed in a personal God but not in
Revelation. [1]

Spinoza's daring philosophy was not in harmony with the general trend of
speculation at the time, and did not exert any profound influence on
thought till a much later period. The thinker whose writings appealed
most to the men of his age and were most opportune and effective was
John Locke, who professed more or less orthodox Anglicanism. His great
contribution to philosophy is equivalent to a very powerful defence

[133] of reason against the usurpations of authority. The object of his
Essay on the Human Understanding (1690) is to show that all knowledge is
derived from experience. He subordinated faith completely to reason.
While he accepted the Christian revelation, he held that revelation if
it contradicted the higher tribunal of reason must be rejected, and that
revelation cannot give us knowledge as certain as the knowledge which
reason gives. "He that takes away reason to make room for revelation
puts out the light of both; and does much what the same as if he would
persuade a man to put out his eyes, the better to receive the remote
light of an invisible star by a telescope." He wrote a book to show that
the Christian revelation is not contrary to reason, and its title, The
Reasonableness of Christianity, sounds the note of all religious
controversy in England during the next hundred years. Both the orthodox
and their opponents warmly agreed that reasonableness was the only test
of the claims of revealed religion. It was under the direct influence of
Locke that Toland, an Irishman who had been converted from Roman
Catholicism, composed a sensational book, Christianity Not Mysterious
(1696). He assumes that Christianity is true and argues that there can
be no mysteries in it, because mysteries, that

[134] is, unintelligible dogmas, cannot be accepted by reason. And if a
reasonable Deity gave a revelation, its purpose must be to enlighten,
not to puzzle. The assumption of the truth of Christianity was a mere
pretence, as an intelligent reader could not fail to see. The work was
important because it drew the logical inference from Locke's philosophy,
and it had a wide circulation. Lady Mary Wortley Montagu met a Turkish
Effen