At a time when the constitutional convention in Philadelphia was deadlocked and appeared on the verge of dissolution, Benjamin Franklin proposed a pause for prayer. The proposal was rejected. It would have looked too much of a sign of desperation and could have done nothing to resolve the crisis; and the delegates, many of whom were influenced by Deism, were men who believed in a God who had created the world, and had endowed its peoples with certain rights, but was not in the habit of intervening to solve human problems which they ought to be able, through his gift of reason, to resolve for themselves. The crisis was resolved by compromise; but the constitution which emerged from Philadelphia was a purely secular instrument of government; unlike the Declaration of Independence it contained no reference to nature's God. In this succinct, clear and myth-dispelling book, David Holmes traces the emergence and advance of Deism in the colonies from the early eighteenth century and finds that four of the first five presidents of the United States began their college studies in the formative years of Deism in the United States. After a brief account of the Anglican tradition in Virginia, the religious records of six of the founders are examined in detail: Washington, it appears, observed most of the outward forms of Anglican devotion, but was never confirmed and always left church before communion; when the pastor remonstrated with him for the example he was setting he responded by ceasing to attend. Martha always remained to take communion. Washington stood in prayer, but never knelt. Franklin hedged his bets, lauded Jesus' moral code but could not subscribe to the divinity of Christ or the resurrection. John Adams, who described himself as ‘a church-going animal’, in fact went to church twice on Sundays; bringing reason to bear on evidence, he thought his way out of his early Calvinism and came to stand somewhere between Christianity and moderate Deism.