LORD HERBERT, DEISM AND RELIGIOUS FUNDAMENTALS

Like so many seventeenth-century figures, Edward, the first Lord Herbert of Cherbury was a man of contrasts. He has been described variously as ‘a blasphemous Atheist’ (Thomas Halyburton), ‘England's treasure’ (Gassendi), ‘the commander and Oracle of his time’ (Charles Blount), ‘Plato and Don Quixote’ (Walpole), ‘Bodalil-Kant’ (Leslie Stephen). Part of the paradox of Herbert is to do with his quixotic character, exemplified most conspicuously in the autobiography; part is due to his uncertain place in the history of thought.

From those early commentators of deism – Thomas Halyburton and John Leland – comes the standard interpretation of Herbert as the father of deism. In his rather intemperate critique of the deist phenomenon, Halyburton labels Herbert ‘the great Patron of Deism’, claiming that Herbert first brought a recognisable form to the movement. John Leland's more balanced assessment – A View of the Principal Deistical Writers (1745) – gives Herbert a far more sympathetic hearing, but still concludes that he was ‘the first remarkable Deist in order of time’. Despite these judgements, Charles Leslie, writing earlier than either Halyburton or Leland, identified Charles Blount as the leader of the movement.