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
Introduction
- 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
I appeare now in the plaine shape of a meere Naturalist, that I might vanquish Atheisme … For hee that will lend his hand to help another fallen into a ditch, must himself though not fall, yet stoop and incline his body … So hee that would gaine upon the more weake and sunk minds of sensuall mortalls, is to accommodate himself to their capacity.
Henry More, An Antidote against Atheism (1653)Thus far the Doctor [Cudworth], with whom for the main I do consent. I shall only add, that Natural Philosophers, when they endeavor to give an account of any of the Works of Nature by preconceived Principles of their own, are for the most part grosly mistaken and confuted by Experience.
John Ray, The Wisdom of God (1691)At stake in both of these statements is the epistemological authority of nature and the legitimacy of empirical science. Henry More concedes that nature may be useful in educating those who shy away from the better means of reason; John Ray voices suspicion of anyone whose reason does not start by listening to nature. By the end of the seventeenth century, Ray's view had come to prevail in England, as the humanistic programme of learning that had displaced scholasticism was itself displaced by the sciences of observation: natural philosophy and natural history.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Natural Theology in the Scientific RevolutionGod's Scientists, pp. 1 - 28Publisher: Pickering & ChattoFirst published in: 2014