Principles of Nature, also known as The Principles of Nature, or A Development of the Moral Causes of Happiness and Misery among the Human Species, was a work written in 1801 by Elihu Palmer

Elihu Palmer

Elihu Palmer was an author and advocate of Deism in the early days of the United States.-Life:Elihu Palmer was born in Canterbury, Connecticut in 1764. He studied to be a Presbyterian minister at Dartmouth College, whence he graduated in 1787. Soon after his graduation, however, he became a Deist...

. The work was similar to Thomas Paine

Thomas Paine

Thomas "Tom" Paine was an English author, pamphleteer, radical, inventor, intellectual, revolutionary, and one of the Founding Fathers of the United States...

's writings, and focused on "God, Deism, "revealed" religions, etc." It has been considered the Bible

Bible

The Bible refers to any one of the collections of the primary religious texts of Judaism and Christianity. There is no common version of the Bible, as the individual books , their contents and their order vary among denominations...

 of American deism

Deism

Deism in religious philosophy is the belief that reason and observation of the natural world, without the need for organized religion, can determine that the universe is the product of an all-powerful creator. According to deists, the creator does not intervene in human affairs or suspend the...

. Although Palmer first published in America, after his death, in 1819, Principles of Nature was published in England. The bookseller who first published Palmer's work (among other works, including those by Thomas Paine) was fined and jailed for several years.