Cotton Mather's Christian Philosopher (1721) recognizes God in the wonders of the earth and the universe beyond; it is both philosophical and scientific and, ironically, anticipates eighteenth-century Deism, despite his clinging to the old order.

Deism, an unorthodox religious attitude that has found expression among a group of English writers beginning with Edward Herbert (later 1st Baron Herbert of Cherbury) in the first half of the seventeenth century and ending with Henry St. John, 1st Viscount Bolingbroke, in the middle of the eighteenth century, generally refers to what can be called natural religion, the acceptance of a certain body of religious knowledge that is inborn in every person or that can be acquired by the use of reason, as opposed to knowledge acquired through either revelation or the teaching of any church.