The last‐half of seventeenth‐century England witnessed an increasing number of works published questioning the traditional notions of God's work of creation and providence. Ascribing agency to matter, motion, chance, and fortune, thinkers ranging from Hobbes, Spinoza, modern‐Epicureans, and other presented a challenge to the Anglican defenders of social and ecclesiastical order. By examining the genesis of the Boyle Lectures that began in 1692 with a bequest from Robert Boyle, we can see that while the Lecturers—three of whom will be examined in detail (Richard Bentley, John Harris, and William Whiston)—assiduously defended classical notions of the God–world relationship, they did so without a great sense of panic or pessimism. This transitional period in the mode of conflict or concord between religion and science sheds interesting lights on matters such as argument from design, biogenesis without purposive, personal agents, and scriptural exegesis and scientific inquiries.

中文翻译：

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无神论，原子和神的活动：早期博伊尔传授的科学与宗教，1692-1707年

十七世纪后半叶，英格兰见证了越来越多的作品问世，这些作品对上帝创造和天意工作的传统观念提出了质疑。霍布斯（Hobbes），斯宾诺莎（Spinoza），现代史诗般的人等思想家赋予物质，运动，机会和财富的代理权，这对英国国教捍卫社会和教会秩序的人提出了挑战。通过检查1692年罗伯特·博伊尔（Robert Boyle）的遗赠开始的博伊尔（Boyle）演讲的起源，我们可以看到，虽然讲师（其中三位将被详细研究）（理查德·本特利（Richard Bentley），约翰·哈里斯（John Harris）和威廉·惠斯顿（William Whiston））捍卫了古典关于神与世界的关系的概念，他们这样做时并没有很大的恐慌或悲观感。