The "Father of Chemistry" wanted to evangelize America?... and warned of the end?
Robert Boyle was born JANUARY 25, 1627.
He
studied Bacon, Descartes, and other of his contemporaries, including
scientists Isaac Newton and Galileo, philosophers John Locke and Thomas
Hobbes, and poet John Milton.
Robert
Boyle made contributions in physics and chemistry, especially with his
pneumatic experiments using the vacuum pump, putting forward the idea
that gases were made of tiny particles.
He discovered the basic
law of gas dynamics, known as "Boyle's Law," that if the volume of a gas
is decreased, the pressure increases proportionally.
Boyle
defined the modern idea of an 'element,' introduced the litmus test to
distinguish acids from bases, and was the first to use the term
"chemical analysis."
In 1660, Boyle and eleven others formed the Royal Society in London to advance scientific experiments.
While in Geneva, during a frightening thunderstorm, Boyle had a deepening conversion experience.
Boyle
devoted much effort to defending and propagating the Christian
religion, writing the 'Boyle Lectures' and numerous books, including:
Of the high Veneration Man's Intellect owes to God (1684);
Discourse Of Things Above Reason (1681);
Some Considerations touching the Style of the Holy Scriptures (1661);
and
The Christian Virtuoso (1690), which John Locke reviewed in 1681, and which was a basis for Cotton Mather's work,
The Christian Philosopher, 1721.
Get the book, America's God and Country Encyclopedia of Quotations
Robert Boyle provided in his Last Will and Testament, dated July 28, 1691:
"Fifty
pounds...for an annual salary so some learned Divine or Preaching
Minister...to preach eight sermons in the year, for proving the
Christian Religion against notorious Infidels, viz., Atheists, Theists,
Pagans, Jews, and Mahometans, not descending lower to any controversies
that are among Christians themselves...
and encouraging...any undertaking for Propagating the Christian Religion in foreign parts."
Robert
Boyle was a director of the East India Company, and spent large sums
supporting missionary societies in the spread of Christianity in Asia.
Boyle believed all races, no matter how diverse, came from Adam and Eve.
He
funded translations of the Bible to make it available in people's
vernacular language, in contrast to the prevailing Latin-only policy,
most notably an Irish edition (1680-1685), which was thought ill of by
English upper class.
In a letter to a Mr. Clodius, Boyle was
concerned about propagating the Gospel to natives in New England and the
rest of America, and how to translate and print the Bible in American
Indian languages.
Robert Boyle wrote:
"Our
Saviour would love at no less rate than death; and from the
super-eminent height of glory, stooped and debased Himself to the
sufferance of the extremest of indignities, and sunk himself to the
bottom of abjectness, to exalt our condition to the contrary extreme."
American Minute-Notable Events of American Significance Remembered on the Date They Occurred
Boyle wrote in
Some Considerations Touching the Style of the Holy Scriptures (1661):
"The
Books of Scripture...expound each other; as in the mariner's compass,
the needle's extremity, though it seems to point purposely to the north,
doth yet at the same time discover both east and west, as distant as
they are from it and each other, so do some texts of Scripture guide us
to the intelligence of others."
Boyle wrote:
"There are divers truths in the Christian religion, that reason left to itself would never have been able to find out...
Such
as...free will...that the world was made in six days, that Christ
should be born of a virgin, and that in his person there should be
united two such infinitely distant natures as the divine and human;
and
that the bodies of good men shall be raised from death and so
advantageously changed, that the glorified persons shall be like or
equal to, the angels."
Boyle wrote of the last days and the "sinful world's ruin":
"In
Noah's time a deluge of impiety called for a deluge of waters...and so
when (in the last days) the earth shall be replenished with those
scoffers mentioned by St Peter, who will walk after their own lusts, and
deride the expectation of God's foretold coming to judge and punish the
ungodly,
their impiety shall be as well punished as silenced by
the unexpected flames...that shall either destroy or transfigure the
world.
For as by the law of Moses the leperous garment which
would not be recovered by being washed in water, was to be burnt in the
fire, so the world, which the Deluge could not cleanse, a general
conflagration must destroy."
Boyle wrote of the destruction of the world by fire at the end of this age:
"The
present course of nature shall not last always, but that one day this
world...shall either be abolished by annihilation, or which seems far
more probable, be innovated, and as it were transfigured, and that, by
the intervention of that fire, which shall dissolve and destroy the
present frame of nature:
so that either way, the present state of things, (as well natural as political) shall have an end."
Prayers and Presidents-Inspiring Faith from Leaders of the Past
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