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This first edition of this work having met with a more rapid fail than was expected, the author has been induced to accelerate the publication of the second. In this edition there are five new chapters, viz. the 13, 19, 20, 21, and 26. The whole of which is now presented to the public, with a most ardent desire that it may serve to strengthen the great cause of moral virtue, and extend, in some small degree, the empire of human felicity. The establishment of theological systems, claiming divine origin, has been among the most destructive causes by which the life of man has been afflicted. The new chapters contained in this edition, are intended to awaken a spirit of philosophic inquiry, in every description of adherents to the ancient regimen, and to induce them to pass once more in review the religious theories to which they have been so strongly attached. The principal design of the author through the whole of this work, has been to give to moral principle, a basis as durable as time, and as immortal as the specific succession of human existence, and to sender the sentiment of virtue, as far as possible, independent of all the theological reveries of antiquity. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved).

Natural law. --- Palmer, Elihu,

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The first comprehensive biography of Elihu Palmer tells the life story of a freethinker who was at the heart of the early United States' protracted contest over religious freedom and free speech.When the United States was new, a lapsed minister named Elihu Palmer shared with his fellow Americans the radical idea that virtue required no religious foundation. A better source for morality, he said, could be found in the natural world: the interconnected web of life that inspired compassion for all living things. Religions that deny these universal connections should be discarded, he insisted. For this, his Christian critics denounced him as a heretic whose ideas endangered the country.Although his publications and speaking tours made him one of the most infamous American freethinkers in his day, Elihu Palmer has been largely forgotten. No cache of his personal papers exists and his book has been long out of print. Yet his story merits telling, Kirsten Fischer argues, and not only for the dramatic account of a man who lost his eyesight before the age of thirty and still became a book author, newspaper editor, and itinerant public speaker. Even more intriguing is his encounter with a cosmology that envisioned the universe as interconnected, alive with sensation, and everywhere infused with a divine life force.Palmer's "heresy" tested the nation's recently proclaimed commitment to freedom of religion and of speech. In this he was not alone. Fischer reveals that Palmer engaged in person and in print with an array of freethinkers—some famous, others now obscure. The flourishing of diverse religious opinion struck some of his contemporaries as foundational to a healthy democracy while others believed that only a strong Christian faith could support democratic self-governance. This first comprehensive biography of Palmer draws on extensive archival research to tell the life story of a freethinker who was at the heart of the new nation's protracted contest over religious freedom and free speech—a debate that continues to resonate today.

Deism --- Freethinkers --- Free thinkers --- Rationalists --- Rationalism --- Palmer, Elihu, --- A Fourth of July Oration. --- American Enlightenment. --- Deistical Society. --- First Amendment. --- Freedom of speech. --- Prospect, or View of the Modern World. --- The Principles of Nature. --- The Temple of Reason. --- Vitalism.