There is no less invention in aptly applying a thought found in a book, than in being the first author of the thought.

In the Bible the ignorant may learn all requisite knowledge, and the most knowing may learn to discern their ignorance.

As the sun is best seen at his rising and setting, so men's native dispositions are clearest seen when they are children, and when they are dying.

He that condescended so far, and stooped so low, to invite and bring us to heaven, will not refuse us a gracious reception there.

And, to prevent mistakes, I must advertize you, that I now mean by elements, as those chymists that speak plainest do by their principles, certain primitive or simple, or perfectly unmingled bodies; which not being made of any other bodies, or of one another, are the ingredients of which all those called perfectly mixt bodies are immediately compounded, and into which they are ultimately resolved: now whether there be any such body to be constantly met with in all, and each, of those that are said to be elemented bodies, is the thing I now question.

And first, it seems not at all probable, That if the Omniscient Author of Nature knew that the study of his Works did really tend to make Men disbelieve his Being or Attributes, he would have given Men so many Invitations, and almost Necessities, to study and contemplate the Nature of his Creatures: Of these Invitations divers have been mention'd already, and more might be added to them, if we thought it requisite.

God may rationally be supposed to have framed so great and admirable an automaton as the world for special ends and purposes.