He was chiefly inspired by 18th - century deism ( rational belief in a transcendent creator god ) and unitarianism ( belief in god ' s essential oneness ) , but some of his writing suggests that he was aware of the religious ideas of the freemasons ( a secret fraternity that espouses some deistic concepts ) 他主要是受到18世纪的自然神论（理性地相信一个超然的创造神）和上帝一位论（相信神本质上是单一的）的影响，但他的一些著作也暗示了他也知道共济会（一个赞成某些自然神观念的秘密兄弟会）的宗教理念。
