Benjamin Whichcote Quotes

Now, I appeal to the consciences of those that persecute, torment, destroy, and kill other men upon pretence of religion, whether they do it out of friendship and kindness towards them or no? I say, if all this be done merely to make men Christians and procure their salvation, why then do they suffer whoredom, fraud, malice and such-like enormities, which (according to the Apostle) manifestly relish of heathenish corruption, to predominate so much and abound amongst their flocks and people?

Of all bad men religious bad men are the worst.

Religious persecutors are not believers, they are rascals.

They were the sort of people that lynch Negroes, that mistake hoodlumism for wit, and cunning for intelligence, that attend revivals and fight and fornicate in the bushes afterwards. They were undiluted “Anglo-Saxons. They were the sovereign voter. It was so horrible it seemed unreal.

A good, old-fashioned Presbyterian horror of self-righteousness, once a feature of American life, is nowhere to be seen.

In the United States the sovereign authority is religious, and consequently hypocrisy must be common; but there is no country in the world where the Christian religion retains a greater influence over the souls of men than in America; and there can be no greater proof of its utility and of its conformity to human nature than that its influence is powerfully felt over the most enlightened and free nation of the earth.

To what excesses do men rush for the sake of religion, of whose truth they are so little persuaded, and to whose precepts they pay so little regard!

Sometimes the Bible in the hands of one man is worse than a whiskey bottle in the hands of another.

Give a man religion without reminding him of his filth, and the result will be arrogance in a three- piece suit.

A spoiled saint, a Pharisee, an inquisitor, or a magician, makes better sport to Hell than a mere common tyrant or debauchee.

The worst thing about religion was religious people.

I love the pure, peaceable, and impartial Christianity of Christ; I therefore hatethe corrupt, slaveholding, women-whipping, cradle-plundering, partial, and hypocritical Christianity of this land. Indeed, I can see no reason, but the most deceitful one, for calling the religion of this land Christianity. I look upon it as the climax of all misnomers, the boldest of all frauds, and the grossest of all libels.

You say you're a Christian, Cause God made you, You say you're a Muslim, Cause God made you, You say you're a Hindu and the next man a Jew, Then we all kill each other, Cause God told us to? Nah!..

Nobody can do as much damage to the church of God as the man who is within its walls, but not within its life.

I don't know anyone less Jesus like than Christians.

Do you call yourselves Christians? Does then the religion of Him whom you call your Savior inspire your spirit, and guide your practices? Surely not. It is recorded of him that a bruised reed he never broke. Cease, then, to call yourselves Christians, lest you declare to the world your hypocrisy. Cease, too, to call other nations savage, when you are tenfold more the children of cruelty than they.

The worst form of badness is human goodness when human goodness becomes a substitute for the new birth.

Man is a Religious Animal. He is the only Religious Animal. He is the only animal that has the True Religion--several of them. He is the only animal that loves his neighbor as himself and cuts his throat if his theology isn't straight. He has made a graveyard of the globe in trying his honest best to smooth his brother's path to happiness and heaven....The higher animals have no religion. And we are told that they are going to be left out in the Hereafter. I wonder why? It seems questionable taste.

Many Christians are unthinkably horrified when a real sinner is suddenly discovered among the righteous. So we remain alone with our sin, living in lies and hypocrisy...He who is alone with his sins is utterly alone.

Just look at the faces of the great Christians! They are the faces of great haters.

Be careful of those who kill in Jesus' name; he don't believe in killing at all.

There are very good Christians who are compassionate and caring. And there are very bad Christians. You can say that about Islam, about Hinduism, about any faith. That is why I was saying that it was not the faith per se but the adherent. People will use their religion to justify virtually anything.

But then the pastors and men of God can only be human,--cannot altogether be men of God; and so they have oppressed us, and burned us, and tortured us, and hence come to love palaces, and fine linen, and purple, and, alas, sometimes, mere luxury and idleness.

Something was badly amiss with the spiritual life of the planet...Too many demons inside people claiming to believe in God.

To hate man and worship God seems to be the sum of all the creeds.