Classic Quotes Collection
Explore a curated collection of positive quotes from history’s greatest minds, offering timeless inspiration and wisdom for every moment.
Religion is partly fundamental & immutable partly circumstantial & mutable. The first was the Religion of Adam, Enoch, Noah, Abraham Moses Christ & all the saints & consists of two parts our duty towards God & our duty towards man or piety & righteousness, piety which I will here call Godliness & Humanity.
When a Beast or Man is put for a kingdom, his parts and qualities are put for the analogous parts and qualities of the kingdom; as the head of a Beast, for the great men who precede and govern; the tail for the inferior people, who follow and are governed; the heads, if more than one, for the number of capital parts, or dynasties, or dominions in the kingdom, whether collateral or successive, with respect to the civil government; the horns on any head, for the number of kingdoms in that head, with respect to military power.
The times of the Birth and Passion of Christ, with such like niceties, being not material to religion, were little regarded by the Christians of the first age. They who began first to celebrate them, placed them in the cardinal periods of the year.
All which shews that these days were fixed in the first Christian Calendars by Mathematicians at pleasure, without any ground in tradition; and that the Christians afterwards took up with what they found in the Calendars.
All the characters of the Passion agree to the year 34; and that is the only year to which they all agree.
All which relates to the overspreading of the Greek Empire with Monks and Nuns, who placed holiness in abstinence from marriage; and to the invocation of saints and veneration of their relics, and such like superstitions, which these men introduced in the fourth and fifth centuries.
The folly of Interpreters has been, to foretell times and things by this Prophecy, as if God designed to make them Prophets. By this rashness they have not only exposed themselves, but brought the Prophecy also into contempt.
He gave this and the Prophecies of the Old Testament, not to gratify mens curiosities by enabling them to foreknow things, but that after they were fulfilled they might be interpreted by the event, and his own Providence, not the Interpreters, be then manifested thereby to the world.
To observe diligently the consent of Scriptures & analogy of the prophetique stile, and to reject those interpretations where this is not duely observed. Thus if any man interpret a Beast to signify some great vice, this is to be rejected as his private imagination becaus according to the stile and tenour of the Apocalyps & of all other Prophetique scriptures a Beast signifies a body politique & sometimes a single person which heads that body, & there is no ground in scripture for any other interpretation.
The wonderful arrangement and harmony of the cosmos would only originate in the plan of an almighty omniscient being. This is and remains my greatest comprehension.
Therefore to the same natural effects we must, as far as possible, assign the same causes.
God is able to create particles of matter of several sizes and figures and perhaps of different densities and forces, and thereby to vary the laws of nature, and make worlds of several sorts in several parts of the Universe.
Daniel was in the greatest credit amongst the Jews, till the reign of the Roman Emperor Hadrian . And to reject his prophecies, is to reject the Christian religion. For this religion is founded upon his prophecy concerning the Messiah.
The instinct of brutes and insects can be the effect of nothing else than the wisdom and skill of a powerful ever-living agent.
We are not to consider the world as the body of God: he is an uniform being, void of organs, members, or parts; and they are his creatures, subordinate to him, and subservient to his will.
Our present work sets forth mathematical principles of philosophy. For the basic problem of philosophy seems to be to discover the forces of nature from the phenomena of motions and then to demonstrate the other phenomena from these forces. It is to these ends that the general propositions in books 1 and 2 are directed, while in book 3 our explanation of the system of the world illustrates these propositions.
In the reign of the Greek Emperor Justinian, and again in the reign of Phocas, the Bishop of Rome obtained some dominion over the Greek Churches, but of no long continuance. His standing dominion was only over the nations of the Western Empire, represented by Daniel's fourth Beast.
Those qualities of bodies that cannot be intended and remitted [i.e., qualities that cannot be increased and diminished] and that belong to all bodies on which experiments can be made should be taken as qualities of all bodies universally.
Against filling the Heavens with fluid Mediums, unless they be exceeding rare, a great Objection arises from the regular and very lasting Motions of the Planets and Comets in all manner of Courses through the Heavens.
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