"Natural theology" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... what I understand then by a first philosophy, my answer will be such as I suppose you already prepared to receive. I understand by a first philosophy, that which deserves the first place on account of the dignity and importance of its objects, natural theology or theism, and natural religion or ethics. If we consider the order of the sciences in their rise and progress, the first place belongs to natural philosophy, the mother of them all, or the trunk, the tree of knowledge, out of which, and in proportion ...
— Letters to Sir William Windham and Mr. Pope • Lord Bolingbroke
... completion of natural knowledge by revelation. The light of nature (the reason and the conscience) is able only to convince us of sin and not to give us complete information concerning our duty,—e.g., the lofty moral principle, Love your enemies. Similarly, natural theology is quite sufficient to place the existence of God beyond doubt, by reasoning from the order in nature ("slight tastes of philosophy may perchance move one to atheism but fuller draughts lead back to religion"); but the doctrines of Christianity are matters of faith. Religion ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg
... Consort, with a sum of L50.—Some singular decisions have recently been made by the Vice Chancellor. It seems that a Mr. Hartley deceased in 1843, left directions in his will that L300 should be set apart as a prize for the best Essay on "Natural Theology," treating it as a substantive science, and as adequate to constitute a true, perfect, and philosophical system of universal religion. It was ruled by the Vice Chancellor that this bequest was void, on account of ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various
... all his mastery of talk, to convey positive ideas of Deity. But how should he convey to others what he did not, could not, himself possess? To him no revelation had been vouchsafed, and though my Lord Brougham is quite sure, without the proof of natural Theology, revelation has no other basis than mere tradition, we have even better authority than his Lordship's for the staggering fact that natural Theology, without the prop of revelation, is a 'rhapsody of words,' mere jargon, analogous to the tale told by an idiot, so happily described by our great ...
— An Apology for Atheism - Addressed to Religious Investigators of Every Denomination - by One of Its Apostles • Charles Southwell
... eminently in Christian literature we find the noblest, soundest, and fullest advocacy of moral Theism, as having its evidence in the heart of man within and nature without, independently of any postulates concerning the Bible. I certainly grew up for thirty years in that belief. Treatises on Natural Theology, which (with whatever success) endeavoured to trace—not only a constructive God in the outer world, but also a good God when that world is viewed in connexion with man; were among the text-books of our clergy and of our universities, and were ...
— Phases of Faith - Passages from the History of My Creed • Francis William Newman |
