Song titles that didn't make the cut: The 16,150 that I breathe

 The ordinary air in which we live and respire, is of so thin a composition, that sixteen thousand one hundred and forty-nine parts of its dimensions are mere emptiness and nothing; and the remaining one only, material and real substance.

 

-- Richard Bentley

All the world deludes itself with the charm, Happy New Year

 The commands which our religion hath imposed on its followers are not like the absurd ceremonies of pagan idolatry, that might look like incantations and magick, but had no tendency to make mankind the happier.

-- Richard Bentley 

 

And all the days that Adam lived were nine hundred and thirty years: and he died

 Who were there then in the world, to observe the births of those first men, and calculate their nativities, as they sprawled out of ditches?

-- Richard Bentley

The wise Author of all things

The consideration of our understanding, which is an incorporeal substance independent from matter; and the contemplation of our own bodies, which have all the stamps and characters of excellent contrivance; these alone do very easily guide us to the wise Author of all things.

-- Richard Bentley

I will praise thee; for I am fearfully and wonderfully made: marvellous are thy works; and that my soul knoweth right well.

-- Psalm 139:14

On the pre-existence of the soul

 

No man in his wits can seriously think that his own soul hath existed from all eternity.

-- Richard Bentley

And fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul: but rather fear him which is able to destroy both soul and body in hell. 

-- Matthew 10:28

The soul is immortal and capable of enduring all extremes of good and evil.

-- Plato, Republic, X, 621c

If anyone asserts the fabulous pre-existence of souls, and shall assert the monstrous restoration which follows from it: let him be anathema.

-- Second Council of Constantinople, A.D. 553

Before I formed thee in the belly I knew thee; and before thou camest forth out of the womb I sanctified thee, and I ordained thee a prophet unto the nations.

-- Jeremiah 1:5

Richard Bentley's "Big Crunch"

"There might arise some vertiginous motions or whirlpools in the matter of the chaos, whereby the atoms must be thrust and crowded to the middle of those whirlpools, and there constipate one another into great solid bodies."

-- Richard Bentley (1662-1742)

On the very foul and gross corruption of holy communion

When our Saviour said, in an allegorical and mystical sense, Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of Man, and drink his blood, ye have no life in you; the hearers understood him literally and grossly.

-- Richard Bentley (1662-1742)