In practical life we are compelled to follow what is most probable ; in speculative thought we are compelled to follow truth. - Benedictus de Spinoza

His [Spinoza's] correspondence is the most interesting book one can read in the world of uprightness and of humanity. [Original in German: Sei Briefwechsel sei das interessanteste Buch, das man in der Welt von Aufrichtigkeit, Menschenliebe lesen könne.]

For many years he had suffered from consumption, aggravated perhaps by his work of glass polishing. On Sunday, February 21, 1677, the end came unexpectedly, and almost suddenly. ...
Credit must be given to Colerus [John Kohler]... for his downright contradiction of the tales concerning Spinoza's death-bed which were circulated, it would seem, by persons who thought it would tend to edification to represent Spinoza as the blustering infidel of popular orthodox polemics, who is invariably assailed by doubt and disquietude in his last moments, and as invariably strives to disguise them with feeble bravado. Colerus very honestly says that the people of the house... knew nothing of any such matters, and did not believe a word of them.

These distinctions make sense only when AR [absolute perfection in some respects, relative perfection in all others] is assumed (hence Spinoza's failure, who assumed mere A). Just as AR is the whole positive content of perfection, so CW, or the conception of the Creator-and-the-Whole-of-what-he-has-created as constituting one life, the super-whole which in its everlasting essence is uncreated (and does not necessitate just the parts which the whole has) but in its de facto concreteness is created — this panentheistic doctrine contains all of deism and pandeism except their arbitrary negations. Thus ARCW, or absolute-relative panentheism, is the one doctrine that really states the whole of what all theists, if not all atheists as/well, are implicitly talking about.