“Man is the product of causes which had no prevision of the end they were achieving; that his origin, his growth, his hopes and fears, his loves and his beliefs, are but the outcome of accidental collocations of atoms; that have no fire, no heroism, no intensity of thought and feeling, can preserve an individual life beyond the grave; that all the labor of the ages, all the devotion, all the noonday brightness of human genius, are destined to extinction in the vast death of the solar system, and that the whole temple of mans achievement must inevitably be buried beneath the debris of a universe in ruins - all these things, if not quite beyond dispute, are yet so nearly certain, that no philosophy which rejects them can hope to stand. Only within the scaffolding of these truths, only on the firm foundation of unyielding despair, can the soul’s habitation henceforth be safely built.”
-Bertrand Russell (an atheist)
“Without conversion your being is vain. Is it not a pity you should be good for nothing, an unprofitable burden of the earth, a mere wart in the body of the universe? Thus you are, while unconverted....Verily you are in vain, except you are for God. It were better you had no being than not be for Him.”
- Joseph Alleine (a Puritan) From a Sure Guide to Heaven
"Indeed, atheists are but beasts, shaped in the proportion and dressed in the habits of men. It is impossible for man to manifest more want of reason, than in wandering from God, the fountain of his being, and the wellspring of all his blessedness. Who ever, unless bereft of his wits and distracted, would murder his body, much less his precious soul, forever? As soon as ever the prodigal ' came to himself,' he came to his father. It was a clear sign he had lost his reason, when he left bread in his father's house for husks amongst swine. Men's hearts naturally are, like Nebuchadnezzar's, the hearts of beasts, grazing only in fleshly pastures, and savoring only sensual pleasures, till their reason returneth to them; then they bless and honour the most high God, who liveth for ever, Dan. iv. 34;"
-George Swinnock, The Works of George Swinnock Vol. 1
“…in the present day not a few are found, who deny the being of a God, yet, whether they will or not, they occasionally feel the truth which they are desirous not to know. We do not read of any man who broke out into more unbridled and audacious contempt of the Deity than C. Caligula, and yet none showed greater dread when any indication of divine wrath was manifested. Thus, however unwilling, he shook with terror before the God whom he professedly studied to condemn. You may every day see the same thing happening to his modern imitators. The most audacious despiser of God is most easily disturbed, trembling at the sound of a falling leaf. How so, unless in vindication of the divine majesty, which smites their consciences the more strongly the more they endeavour to flee from it. They all, indeed, look out for hiding-places where they may conceal themselves from the presence of the Lord, and again efface it from their mind; but after all their efforts they remain caught within the net. Though the conviction may occasionally seem to vanish for a moment, it immediately returns, and rushes in with new impetuosity, so that any interval of relief from the gnawing of conscience is not unlike the slumber of the intoxicated or the insane, who have no quiet rest in sleep, but are continually haunted with dire horrific dreams. Even the wicked themselves, therefore, are an example of the fact that some idea of God always exists in every human mind.”
-John Calvin in Institutes of the Christian Religion
"Men of sound judgment will always be sure that a sense of divinity which can never be effaced is engraved upon men's minds. Indeed, the perversity of the impious, who though they struggle furiously are unable to extricate themselves from the fear of God, is abundant testimony that this conviction, namely, that there is some God, is naturally inborn in all, and is fixed deep within, as it were in the very marrow."
-John Calvin in the Institutes of the Christian Religion, Book 1
