Atheism Is "A Grand Folly"

Charnock tells us that atheism is a stubborn denial of what is so plainly evident from reason, the testing of nature, and the being of man himself, to the point that it actually degrades a man. Recall that Charnock wrote in the middle of the 17th century in England. He observes that ordinarily he would consider it a waste of time to defend the existence of God, but that there had been in his day a proliferation of atheists (who styled themselves free-thinkers) as well as a rise in moral corruption, which he links together. As he will discuss shortly, open atheism had been espoused very rarely in Western civilization and practically not at all for the preceding millennium in Europe. So for Charnock the rise of open atheism was a new phenomenon; he did not know, as we do now, that things would only get worse in succeeding centuries. Be that as it may, he wrote in order to refute the arguments being raised and to lend encouragement to his fellow Christians--a proper study and understanding of God as he really is being of much benefit in dispelling the secret atheism that can plague even professed believers and hence reduce the outworkings of such corrupting influences.