Thomas Chubb

Thomas Chubb (September 29, 1679 – February 8, 1747) was an English lay Deist writer, born near Salisbury.

Chubb regarded Christ as a divine teacher, but held reason to be sovereign in matters of religion, questioned religions' morality, yet was on rational grounds a defender of Christianity. He had no learning, but was well up in the religious controversies of the time.

Chubb wrote The True Gospel of Jesus Christ, Asserted, wherein he stated that one must distinguish between the teaching of Jesus and that of the Apostles who wrote the Gospels.

Chubb's views concerning free will and determinism, as expressed in his book A Collection of Tracts on Various Subjects (1730) was the subject of extensive criticism by Jonathan Edwards in his book Freedom of the Will (1754).

Works

He published tracts, one of which, The Previous Question with regard to Religion, went through four editions, three in 1725. They were collected in a quarto volume in 1730, and attracted wider notice. (A second edition, in 2 volumes which appeared in 1754 included 35 tracts.) Chubb was encouraged to write further tracts. A disciple of Samuel Clarke, he gradually diverged from Arianism into a modified deism.