Sunday 3 August 2014

An insight into the infidel hall of fame 2

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Thomas Hobbes was born 5 April 1588 in United Kingdom to a Christian father, who was the Vicar of Charlton and Westport. Hobbes was educated at Westport church from the age of four. He however grew up to become a philosopher. He was one of the main philosophers who founded materialism. He also contributed to history, geometry, physics and political science.
Hobbes authored several books. He displayed strong secularist spirit, which greatly angered both Anglicans and French Catholics. He criticized religious doctrines on rationalistic grounds.
Leviathan was his most popular book. The book was well-known for its radical religious views, which were often Hobbes's attempt to reinterpret scripture from his materialist assumptions. He denied incorporeal (spiritual) entities and wrote that Heaven and Hell were places on Earth. He also denied the truth of major teachings of the Bible.
Hobbes corrupting influence on matters of the Christian faith led the British House of Commons, in 1666, to introduce a bill against atheism and profaneness. On 17 October, 1666, it was ordered that the committee to which the bill was referred  ‘‘should be empowered to receive information touching such books as tend to atheism, blasphemy and profaneness... in particular... the book of Mr. Hobbes called the Leviathan’’.
The only consequence that came of the bill was that Hobbes could never thereafter publish anything in England on subjects relating to human conduct.
During the years of the composition of Leviathan he remained around Paris. In 1647 Hobbes was overtaken by a serious illness which disabled him for six months. But God had mercy on him, and he recovered. On recovering from this near fatal sickness, he resumed his writing, and carried it steadily forward to completion by the year 1650.
Eventually, in October 1679, Hobbes suffered a bladder disorder, which was followed by a paralytic stroke from which he died on 4 December, 1679, at the age of 91. In his final moments of life, Thomas Hobbes regretted: ‘‘if I had the whole world, I would give it to live one day. I shall be glad to find a hole to creep out of the world at. I am taking a great leap in the dark’’. He was interred within St. John the Baptist Church in Ault Hucknall in Derbyshire, England.
Francis Newport was born on 23 February, 1620, to Richard Newport, 1st Baron Newport. He later succeeded his father as baron in 1651. 

Francis Newport had a brilliant career as soldier, courtier and politician, and occupied privileged positions. He represented Shrewsbury in the Parliament. He was appointed Lord Lieutenant of Shropshire.
Newport was Comptroller of the Household, and later Treasurer of the Household, as well as Cofferer of the Household. In 1668, he was sworn of the Privy of England. 1675, he was elevated to the peerage as Viscount Newport, of Bradford, in the County of Shropshire, and on 11 May 1694, he was further honoured when he was created Earl of Bradford.
Newport died aged 88 on 19 September 1708. It was recorded of him:
On his deathbed he wailed in anguish: ‘Whence this war in my heart? What argument is there now to assist me against matters of fact? Do I assert that there is no hell, when I feel one in my bosom? Am I certain that there is no judgment when I feel present judgment? Wretch that I am, whither shall I flee from this breath? That there is a God I know, because I continually feel the effects of His wrath; that there is a hell I am equally certain … O that I was to lie upon the fire that never is quenched a thousand years, to purchase the favour of God and be reunited to Him again! But it is a fruitless wish. Millions of millions of years will bring me no nearer to the end of my torments than one poor hour. Oh eternity, Eternity! Who can discover the abyss of eternity? Who can paraphrase upon these words forever and ever?’

As his distress increased, he was asked if he would have prayers offered on his behalf, but he replied, ‘Tigers and monsters! Are ye also become devils to torment me? Would you give me prospect of Heaven to make my hell more intolerable?’ Soon after he cried, ‘Oh, the insufferable pangs of hell!’ And he died at once. What did you learn from these lives? This is not religious bargain but real facts of the heart.

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