Henry Melvill, reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p.

But when the question is, 'How shall man be just with God?' reason must be silent, revelation must speak and he who will not hear it assimilates himself to the first deist, Cain he may not kill a brother, he certainly destroys himself.

Let reason count the stars, weigh the mountains, fathom the depths - the employment becomes her, and the success is glorious.

Ethan Allen, Reason: The Only Oracle Of Man (1784) ~ Preface.

I have generally been denominated a Deist, the reality of which I never disputed, being conscious I am no Christian, except mere infant baptism make me one and as to being a Deist, I know not, strictly speaking, whether I am one or not, for I have never read their writings mine will therefore determine the matter for I have not in the least disguised my sentiments, but have written freely without any conscious knowledge of prejudice for, or against any man, sectary or party whatever but wish that good sense, truth and virtue may be promoted and flourish in the world, to the detection of delusion, superstition, and false religion and therefore my errors in the succeeding treatise, which may be rationally pointed out, will be readily rescinded.

Pierre Viret, Instruction Chrestienne (1564).

For in that atheist signifies a person who is without God, they want to make it understood that they are not at all without God, since they certainly believe there is some sort of God, whom they even recognize as creator of heaven and earth, as do the Turks but as for Jesus Christ, they only know that he is and hold nothing concerning him nor his doctrine. I have heard that there are of this band those who call themselves Deists, an entirely new word, which they want to oppose to Atheist.

There are many who confess that while they believe like the Turks and the Jews that there is some sort of God and some sort of deity, yet with regard to Jesus Christ and to all that to which the doctrine of the Evangelists and the Apostles testify, they take all that to be fables and dreams.

John Orr, English Deism: Its Roots and Its Fruits (1934) p.

But the theist taught that god remained actively interested in and operative in the world which he had made, whereas the deist maintained that God endowed the world at creation with self-sustaining and self-acting powers and then abandoned it to the operation of these powers acting as second causes. and agreed that God is personal and distinct from the world.

Both asserted belief in one supreme God, the Creator. … Theologians and philosophers of the seventeenth century began to give a different signification to the words. Prior to the 17th century the terms were used interchangeably with the terms 'theism' and 'theist', respectively.Thomas Paine was a famous deist who wrote The Age of Reasonĭeism is a range of religious belief which asserts that God is reliably discovered by reason and logic (not by revelation or mysticism), and includes beliefs that God created a 'clockwork universe' which operates entirely without God's active intervention.

Deisim beliefs