
“If there is a God, atheism must seem to Him as less of an insult than religion.”
Book V,1314b.39
Politics
“If there is a God, atheism must seem to Him as less of an insult than religion.”
Source: Temporal Authority: To What Extent It Should Be Obeyed (1523), p. 83
Preface (Scribner edition, 1872) <!-- New York, Scribner p xx -->
Chips from a German Workshop (1866)
Context: He must be a man of little faith, who would fear to subject his own religion to the same critical tests to which the historian subjects all other religions. We need not surely crave a tender or merciful treatment for that faith which we hold to be the only true one. We should rather challenge it for the severest tests and trials, as the sailor would for the good ship to which he trusts his own life, and the lives of those who are dear to him. In the Science of Religion, we can decline no comparisons, nor claim any immunities for Christianity, as little as the missionary can, when wrestling with the subtle Brahmin, or the fanatical Mussulman, or the plain speaking Zulu.
Justine or The Misfortunes of Virtue (1787)
Drafts on the history of the Church (Section 3). Yahuda Ms. 15.3, National Library of Israel, Jerusalem, Israel. 2006 Online Version at Newton Project http://www.newtonproject.sussex.ac.uk/view/texts/normalized/THEM00220
Letter to Peter the Great, the Czar of Russia, 2 July 1698, in Samuel McPherson Janney, The Life of William Penn (Philadelphia, 1852), p. 407
“He loved his country as no other man has loved her; but no man deserved less at her hands.”
Epitaph of Philip Nolan in "The Man Without a Country" (1863)