Book contents
- Frontmatter
- CONTENTS
- Acknowledgements
- List of Figures and Tables
- Introduction
- 1 Rational Theology: Henry More's An Antidote against Atheism (1653)
- 2 ‘Prudent Charity’: Richard Baxter's The Reasons of the Christian Religion (1667)
- 3 A Settled Mind? John Wilkins's Of the Principles and Duties of Natural Religion (1675)
- 4 God's Naturalist: John Ray's The Wisdom of God (1691)
- 5 God's Philologist: Richard Bentley's The Folly and Unreasonableness of Atheism (1692)
- Conclusion
- Notes
- Works Cited
- Index
5 - God's Philologist: Richard Bentley's The Folly and Unreasonableness of Atheism (1692)
- Frontmatter
- CONTENTS
- Acknowledgements
- List of Figures and Tables
- Introduction
- 1 Rational Theology: Henry More's An Antidote against Atheism (1653)
- 2 ‘Prudent Charity’: Richard Baxter's The Reasons of the Christian Religion (1667)
- 3 A Settled Mind? John Wilkins's Of the Principles and Duties of Natural Religion (1675)
- 4 God's Naturalist: John Ray's The Wisdom of God (1691)
- 5 God's Philologist: Richard Bentley's The Folly and Unreasonableness of Atheism (1692)
- Conclusion
- Notes
- Works Cited
- Index
Summary
But we dare not undertake to shew, what advantage is brought to Us by those innumerable Stars in the Galaxy and other parts of the Firmament, not discernible by naked eyes … If you say, they beget in us a great Idea and Veneration of the mighty Author and Governour of such stupendous Bodies, and excite and elevate our minds to his adoration and praise; you say very truly and well. But would it not raise in us a higher apprehension of the infinite Majesty and boundless Beneficence of God, to suppose that those remote and vast Bodies were formed, not merely upon Our account to be peept at through an Optick Glass, but for different ends and nobler purposes?
Bentley, The Folly and Unreasonableness of Atheism (1692)In 1691, John Ray asserted in The Wisdom of God that all creatures are useful to humankind, at least insofar as they present an opportunity for humans to contemplate the providence of the Creator and render him praise. On 5 December the following year, Richard Bentley (1662–1742) took up the same argument as he opened the eighth and final of the inaugural Boyle Lectures in natural theology. Appropriating Newton's new physics, Bentley looked up at the stars more than down at flora and fauna, considering a question that will sound familiar to those who have read Psalm 8 or Milton's Paradise Lost.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Natural Theology in the Scientific RevolutionGod's Scientists, pp. 117 - 138Publisher: Pickering & ChattoFirst published in: 2014