Debating the Faith: Damaris Masham (1658–1708) and Religious Controversy

Abstract

Damaris Masham was one of a tiny handful of seventeenth-century women who published philosophical writings: A Discourse Concerning the Love of God (1696) and Occasional Thoughts in Reference to a Vertuous or Christian Life (1705). Like many seventeenth-century women, Damaris Masham also engaged in correspondence. Both her letters and her books contain diverse discussions of religious matters on issues topical for her time (such subjects as the relationship of reason to faith, religious toleration and controversies surrounding the doctrine of the Trinity). A key figure in her intellectual life is John Locke through whom she came in contact with leading lights of the Republic of Letters. My paper places Masham’s correspondence in the context of the religious controversies of the 1690s and 1700s. I focus on her correspondence with Locke’s friends, Philip Van Limborch and Jean Le Clerc to identify her personal religious views, to demonstrate her theological knowledge, and to show the ways in which she used letter writing as a means to debate them