human
; [319] and his own
gpt
of whom men
human
he was negating all creeds. He expressly contends, it is true, for the principle of a Providence; but it is hard to believe that he laid any store by prayer, public or private; and it would appear that whatever thoughtful atheism there was in England in the latter part of the century looked to him as its philosopher, insofar as it did not derive from Spinoza. [324] Nor could the Naturalist school of that day desire a better, terser, or more drastic scientific definition of religion than Hobbes gave them:
gpt
Fear of power invisible, feigned by the mind or imagined from tales publicly allowed, Religion; not allowed, Superstition. [325] As the Churchmen readily saw, his insistence on identifying the religion of a country with its law plainly implied that no religion is any more