Deism is essentially the religion of the absentee god, one who created the world, and, having invested it with the "laws of nature," left it to run on its own, intervening once in a while. Deism has no concept of revelation, and what can be known about God is what can be discerned from nature and the senses, i.e., on natural theology.
Many Victorian clerics were, in fact, deist rather than Christian. Charles Darwin, e.g., whom his father had hoped would take up a pastorate before he was offered to sail with the Beagle, was a deist, and remained one all his life.
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