CUDWORTH'S great work--or, at least, the first part, which alone was completed,--_The Intellectual System of the World_, appeared in 1678. In it CUDWORTH deals with atheism on the ground of reason, demonstrating its irrationality. The book is remarkable for the fairness and fulness with which CUDWORTH states the arguments in favour of atheism.英文原著 · 《Bygone Beliefs》
For all the Greek stories can well testify that the very religion of that time stood upon many and many-fashioned gods; not taught so by poets, but followed according to their nature of imitation. Who list may read in Plutarch the discourses of Isis and Osiris, of the cause why oracles ceased, of the Divine providence, and see whether the theology of that nation stood not upon such dreams, which the poets indeed superstitiously observed; and truly, since they had not the light of Christ, did much better in it than the philosophers, who, shaking off superstition, brought in atheism.英文原著 · 《A Defence of Poesie and Poems》
When the church and her ministers, when the Scriptures and their anomalies, and when the faults and failings of Christian men are made the subject of mockery and laughter, the reverence, the fear, the awe, the respect that all enter so largely into religion, and especially into the religion of young people, is too easily destroyed; and not seldom the first seeds of practical and sometimes of speculative atheism are thus sown. The mischief that has been done by mockery and laughter to the souls, especially of the young and the inexperienced, only the great day will fully disclose.英文原著 · 《Bunyan Characters-2》
That mania of saving worlds is itself a piece of the Eighteenth Century with its windy sentimentalism. Let us not follow it too far. For the saving of the _world_ I will trust confidently to the Maker of the world; and look a little to my own saving, which I am more competent to!--In brief, for the world's sake, and for our own, we will rejoice greatly that Scepticism, Insincerity, Mechanical Atheism, with all their poison-dews, are going, and as good as gone.--英文原著 · 《Heroes and Hero Worship》
"'Pardon, madame! But all the earth, though it were full of kind hearts, is but a desolation and a desert place to a mother when her only child is absent. And you, Clement, would leave me for this Virginie,--this degenerate De Crequy, tainted with the atheism of the Encyclopedistes! She is only reaping some of the fruit of the harvest whereof her friends have sown the seed. Let her alone! Doubtless she has friends--it may be lovers--among these demons, who, under the cry of liberty, commit every licence. Let her alone, Clement! She refused you with scorn: be too proud to notice her new.'英文原著 · 《My Lady Ludlow》
Sect. 19.--The bad construction and perverse com- ment on these pair of second causes, or visible hands of God, have perverted the devotion of many unto atheism; who, forgetting the honest advisoes of faith, have lis- tened unto the conspiracy of passion and reason. I have therefore always endeavoured to compose those feuds and angry dissensions between affection, faith, and reason: for there is in our soul a kind of trium- virate, or triple government of three competitors, which distracts the peace of this our commonwealth not less than did that other<25> the state of Rome.英文原著 · 《Religio Medici》
- Christianity 3, atheism 0. - Uh, yes, talking of atheism...美剧 · 《The Good Wife》