in the opinion of the civilized world in the eighteenth century is
the fact that at the time of the War of Independence the leading
statesmen of the American colonies were deists. Such were Benjamin
Franklin, the diplomatist of the Revolution; Thomas Paine, its prophet
and inspirer; Washington, its commander; and Jefferson, its typical
legislator. But for these four men the American Revolution probably
could not have been accomplished in that age; and they thus represent
in a peculiar degree the power of new ideas, in fit conditions,
to transform societies, at least politically. On the other hand,
the fashion in which their relation to the creeds of their time has
been garbled, alike in American and English histories, proves how
completely they were in advance of the average thought of their day;
and also how effectively the mere institutional influence of creeds
can arrest a nation's mental development. It is still one of the
stock doctrines of religious sociology in England and America that
deism, miscalled atheism, wrought the Reign of Terror in the French
Revolution; when as a matter of fact the same deism was at the head
of affairs in the American.