William Wollaston (March 26th 1659, Cotton Clanford (Staffordshire) - October 29th 1724, London) was a philosophical and a rationalist moralist English. Its doctrines morals influenced the philosophy of the XVIIIe century.

After studies at the university of Cambridge, Wollaston was teaching with Birmingham (1682) and was ordered priest shortly after.

Wollaston is especially known like the thinker of the concept of natural religion , which it developed in his treaty Natural religion delineated (1st ED. 1722; 2nde ED. 1724, 8th ED. 1750), and which had a decisive influence on Jean-Jacques Rousseau and, across, caused the dogma deist of certain French revolutionists (Culte of the supreme Reason and Être).

This book proposes to examine whether there exists a “natural” religion and, in the affirmative, to determine its consistency. Wollaston starts by posing in theory that religion and morals are only one and even thing; then he endeavors to show that the religion is not itself other than “the search of happiness according to the truth and the Reason”. He compared the Evil to the practical negation of Truth, and the Good with his assertion.