The greatest part of mankind ... are given up to labor, and enslaved to the necessity of their mean condition; whose lives are worn out only in the provisions for living.

Some eyes want spectacles to see things clearly and distinctly: but let not those that use them therefore say nobody can see clearly without them.

Good and evil, reward and punishment, are the only motives to a rational creature

The care of souls cannot belong to the civil magistrate.

Those are not at all to be tolerated who deny the being of God. Promises, covenants, and oaths, which are the bonds of human society, can have no hold upon an atheist. The taking away of God, though but even in thought, dissolves all.

For where is the man that has incontestable evidence of the truth of all that he holds, or of the falsehood of all he condemns; or can say that he has examined to the bottom all his own, or other men's opinions? The necessity of believing without knowledge, nay often upon very slight grounds, in this fleeting state of action and blindness we are in, should make us more busy and careful to inform ourselves than constrain others.

Neither the inveterateness of the mischief, nor the prevalency of the fashion, shall be any excuse for those who will not take care about the meaning of their own words, and will not suffer the insignificancy of their expressions to be inquired into.