The love of truth, virtue, and the happiness of mankind are specious pretexts, but not the inward principles that set divines at w...ork; else why should they affect to abuse human reason, to disparage natural religion, to traduce the philosophers as they universally do?LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The proper office of religion is to regulate the heart of men, humanize their conduct, infuse the spirit of temperance, order, and... obedience; and as its operation is silent, and only enforces the motives of morality and justice, it is in danger of being overlooked, and confounded with these other motives.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The whole of natural theology ... resolves itself into one simple, though somewhat ambiguous proposition, That the cause or causes... of order in the universe probably bear some remote analogy to human intelligence.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I shall venture to affirm, that there never was a popular religion, which represented the state of departed souls in such a light,... as would render it eligible for human kind, that there should be such a state. These fine models of religion are the mere product of philosophy. For as death lies between the eye and the prospect of futurity, that event is so shocking to nature, that it must throw a gloom on all the regions which lie beyond it; and suggest to the generality of mankind the idea of Cerberus and Furies; devils, and torrents of fire and brimstone.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
A person, seasoned with a just sense of the imperfections of natural reason, will fly to revealed truth with the greatest avidity:... while the haughty Dogmatist, persuaded that he can erect a compleat system of Theology by the mere help of philosophy, disdains any further aid, and rejects this adventitious instructor.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Nothing is demonstrable, unless the contrary implies a contradiction. Nothing, that is distinctly conceivable, implies a contradic...tion. Whatever we conceive as existent, we can also conceive as non-existent. There is no being, therefore, whose non-existence implies a contradiction. Consequently there is no being, whose existence is demonstrable.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
If the religious spirit be ever mentioned in any historical narration, we are sure to meet afterwards with a detail of the miserie...s which attend it. And no period of time can be happier or more prosperous, than those in which it is never regarded or heard of.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
It seems certain, that though a man, in a flush of humour, after intense reflection on the many contradictions and imperfections o...f human reason, may entirely renounce all belief and opinion, it is impossible for him to persevere in this total scepticism, or make it appear in his conduct for a few hours.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Were a stranger to drop on a sudden into this world, I would shew him, as a specimen of its ills, an hospital full of diseases, a ...prison crowded with malefactors and debtors, a field of battle strewed with carcases, a fleet foundering in the ocean, a nation languishing under tyranny, famine, or pestilence. To turn the gay side of life to him and give him a notion of its pleasures; whither should I conduct him? to a ball, to an opera, to court? He might justly think, that I was only shewing him a diversity of distress and sorrow.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Labour and poverty, so abhorred by every one, are the certain lot of the far greater number: And those few privileged persons, who... enjoy ease and opulence, never reach contentment or true felicity. All the goods of life united would not make a very happy man: But all the ills united would make a wretch indeed; and any one of them almost (and who can be free from every one), nay often the absence of one good (and who can possess all) is sufficient to render life ineligible.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »