Introduction
76 deists were so full of love and adoration for God that they wrote hymns about God.
These hymns pictured God as a caring and generous father. The hymns were like the prayers deists said to God but the hymns were in verse form.
In the early 1770s, the American scientist Ben Franklin and the Welsh deist David Williams wrote dozens of hymns for a deist “church” they were planning on opening in London.
One hymn was entitled, “Confidence in God our Father,” and it proclaimed:
O GOD, on thee we all depend,
On thy paternal care:
Thou wilt the father and the friend
In ev’ry act appear. . . .
Our Father knows what’s good and fit,
And wisdom guides his love:
To thine appointments we submit,
And ev’ry choice approve.
In thy paternal love and care,
With chearful heart we trust,
Thy tender mercies boundless are,
And all thy thoughts are just.[i]
The hymns showed the deists who wrote them deeply loved God. One hymn was written in 1797 by a French deist, Nicolas Benoist-Lamothe.
Part of the hymn went:
Benevolent God, your festival is today.
Sublime author, father of the universe
To adore you, down here all is ready,
Our pious chants to raise in the air.
The earth opens its treasures for your festival
To offer you flowers.
We, in tribute, offer you our hearts…
Good God! receive the homage of mortals.
Of the attributes which form your essence,
Our hearts especially adore your kindness.[ii]
Many hymns were written by French Revolutionary deists to celebrate the way God helped the French Revolutionary armies defeat their enemies.
Jacques Piron wrote a hymn celebrating God’s helping the French, and part of this hymn went:
Let us celebrate the Creator . . .
He accompanies to the field of glory
Our valiant and brave warriors.
He conducts them to victory.
He crowns them with laurels.
In vain the enemy opposes us
With the most numerous legions.
Against all the nations,
The Eternal has taken our cause.
Let us love him with one heart
And let us all chant in unison:
God’s mighty arm
Makes the French victorious.[iii]
Footnotes
[i] David Williams, A Liturgy on the Universal Principles of Religion and Morality (London, 1776), 47-8. For Franklin as writing these hymns with Williams, see J. Dybikowski, On Burning Ground: An Examination of the Ideas, Projects and Life of David Williams (Oxford: The Voltaire Foundation, 1993), 15, 49, 53.
[ii] Nicolas Benoist-Lamothe, Office divin à l’usage des Téophilantropes, ou chrétiens français, composé en grande partie des odes sacrées de J. B. Rousseau (Sens, 1797), 12.
[iii] Jacques Piron, Invocation, hymne, et autres exercices . . . conjugale [Invocation, hymn, and other practices . . . conjugal] (N. p., 1794), 14-5.
Enlightenment Deism 