Thomas Chubb (29 September 16798 February 1747) was a lay English Deist writer born near Salisbury. He saw Christ as a divine teacher, but held reason to be sovereign over religion. He questioned the morality of religions, while defending Christianity on rational grounds. Despite little schooling, Chubb was well up on the religious controversies. His The True Gospel of Jesus Christ, Asserted sets out to distinguish the teaching of Jesus from that of the Evangelists. Chubb's views on free will and determinism, expressed in A Collection of Tracts on Various Subjects (1730), were extensively criticised by Jonathan Edwards in Freedom of the Will (1754). Life Chubb, the son of a maltster, was born at East Harnham, near Salisbury. The death of his father in 1688 cut short his education, and in 1694 he was apprenticed to a glover in Salisbury, but subsequently entered the employment of a tallow-chandler. He picked up a fair knowledge of mathematics and geography, but theology was his favourite study. His habit of committing his thoughts to writing gave him a clear and fluent style. Chubb spent some years living and working in London at the house of Joseph Jekyll, Master of the Rolls. However, he was drawn back to Salisbury, where by the kindness of friends he was enabled to devote the rest of his days to his studies. Works Chubb made his first appearance as an author in the Arian controversy. A dispute having arisen about William Whiston's argument in favour of the supremacy of the one God and Father, he wrote an essay, The Supremacy of the Father Asserted, which Whiston pronounced worthy of publication, and it was printed in 1715. Another of his published tracts, The Previous Question with Regard to Religion, went through four editions, three in 1725. His tracts were collected in a quarto volume in 1730 and attracted wide notice. (A second, two-volume edition in 1754 included 35 tracts.) Chubb was encouraged to write further tracts. A disciple of Samuel Clarke, he gradually moved from Arianism into a modified Deism. In 1731 he published a Discourse concerning Reason ... [showing that] reason is, or else that it ought to be, a sufficient guide in matters of Religion. Some "reflections" upon "moral and positive duty" were added, as suggested by Clarke's Exposition of the Catechism. In 1732 The Sufficiency of Reason further considered... was appended to an "enquiry" against a