This book is an erudite, well-researched, accurate study of the life and work of Thomas Morgan (d. 1743), an eighteenth-century English deist who ‘has been called a modern Marcion’ (p. 39) because of his contemptuous view of the Old Testament and Judaism. A Presbyterian minister turned deist, Morgan indeed distinguished between ‘Jewish Christianity, or Christian Judaism’ and ‘Christian deism’ in his most famous book, The moral philosopher (1737), in which he described the New Testament as restating the religion of nature while rejecting the Law of Moses and the Old Testament altogether. Having authored several excellent articles on Morgan, now Jan van den Berg has offered us a comprehensive monograph on this author, which examines not only The moral philosopher but also Morgan's life and other writings, thereby reconsidering his ideas against the background of English deism and the theological controversies of Enlightenment England. Thus, the book provides a thorough, painstaking, original scrutiny of Morgan's oeuvre, explaining the development of his theological and philosophical position from Presbyterianism to ‘Christian deism’.

After an introduction discussing the ongoing historiographical debate on English deism, the first chapter of this volume presents a meticulous reconstruction of Morgan's life, focusing on his activities as a Presbyterian minister; his controversial relationship with the Dissenting community of Marlborough, which dismissed him for heresy at some point in the mid-1720s; and his last two decades, during which he worked as a physician in London and composed his deistic writings. Chapter ii examines Morgan's early publications, including an Arian pamphlet on the Trinity; his polemical exchange with Thomas Chubb about the impact of the Fall, divine grace and salvation; and his medical writings. The chapters from iii to v contain a detailed analysis of The moral philosopher and of the reactions that this book elicited from Nonconformist theologians as well as Church of England clergymen. These three chapters pay great attention to the attacks made on Morgan by the Presbyterian minister and anti-deist writer John Leland and the Church of England divine John Chapman; William Warburton's disdainful opinion of Morgan's work; and Morgan's replies to his critics, which include the second and third volumes of The moral philosopher and three other defences of this book. As van den Berg has correctly noted, ‘in those answers, Morgan does not alter principally the starting points of The moral philosopher, but the tone in general becomes sharper. He repeats his criticism of miracles, his negation of inspiration and infallibility of the Biblical historians, his moral criticism of various Biblical figures, and his criticism of the Jewish people’ (p. 130). Chapter vi is a concise but precise account of Morgan's traditionally neglected treatise of moral philosophy, Physico-theology (1741), which covers subjects such as human nature, free agency, moral right and divine providence, among others. Chapters vii and viii reconsider the impact of Morgan's work after his death. In this respect, van den Berg observes that, whereas Morgan's biblical criticism generally met with negative reactions in England, this author was ‘a harbinger of the disparagement of the Old Testament’ (p. 162) in Enlightenment Europe – particularly in Germany, where The moral philosopher was widely known among Bible scholars and where Morgan's views exerted some influence on Hermann Samuel Reimarus, who knew Morgan's work although he never cited it.

Jan van den Berg's book on Morgan stands out among the existing monographs on English deists who lived and wrote after John Toland and Anthony Collins. This book indeed presents a well-grounded, convincing reassessment of Morgan's ideas and of the role that his ‘Christian deism’ played in the context of eighteenth-century deism and biblical criticism. However, some of the issues covered in this volume would deserve further analysis. For instance, the book addresses Arianism quite scantily and, in doing so, it relies on the anachronistic notion of Arianism as an ‘archetypal heresy’ and disregards the specificity of different ‘Arian’ theories concerning the Godhead, in the early centuries of Christianity and in Enlightenment England as well. Moreover, the book touches upon the relation between Socinianism and English deism only incidentally, without elaborating on the complexity of this relation and the significant differences between Socinian authors and English deists in matters of biblical authority, morality, salvation and Christology. Furthermore, while van den Berg's investigation of Morgan's anti-Judaism is thorough and accurate, his treatment of other deists’ attitudes to Judaism is quite short and, in some cases, is based on only a few isolated quotations. For instance, the book mentions Matthew Tindal's characterisation of Jews as ‘superstitious’ and ‘cruel’ (p. 91), but ignores the fact that this passage from Tindal's Christianity as old as the creation (1730), far from being part of his evaluation of the Jewish religion in itself, is actually an element of his attack on priestcraft and the corruption of religious truth, which, according to Tindal, started affecting Jews long after the Mosaic revelation and, later, influenced Catholics as well. Likewise, it would be worth paying more attention to the relation between Toland's, Collins's and Tindal's philosophical and historical-religious views and their respective considerations of Judaism. Nevertheless, these are only minor flaws and omissions, regarding mainly Morgan's intellectual context and the theological and philosophical debates of the time. If we consider Jan van den Berg's analysis of Thomas Morgan's life and work and of the reception of his theories among contemporaries and historians as well, we cannot but admit that this book is a solid intellectual biography of a thinker who, before the publication of this volume, had been largely, and undeservedly, underrated by historians of Enlightenment thought. In conclusion, this well-researched and highly readable book is a most welcome contribution to the field of Enlightenment studies and is appealing not only to specialists, but also to all those interested in deism, the history of biblical criticism and the development of anti-Judaism since the Age of Enlightenment.