Note 185 — Chapter XIV · BRITISH FREETHOUGHT IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY

Rationalism of one or the other tint, in fact, seems to have spread in all directions. Deism was ascribed to some of the most eminent public men. Bishop Burnet has a violent passage on Sir William Temple, to the effect that “He had a true judgment in affairs, and very good principles with relation to government, but in nothing else. He seemed to think that things are as they were from all eternity; at least he thought religion was only for the mob. He was a great admirer of the sect of Confucius in China, who were atheists themselves, but left religion to the rabble.”185 The praise of Confucius is the note of deism; and Burnet rightly held that no orthodox Christian in those days would sound it. Other prominent men revealed their religious liberalism. The accomplished and influential George Savile, Marquis of Halifax, often spoken of as a deist, and even as an atheist, by his contemporaries,186 appears clearly from his own writings to have been either that or a Unitarian;187 and it is not improbable that the similar gossip concerning Lord Keeper Somers was substantially true.188