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on the nature of Evidence , we esteem the most valuable part of his book . His exposure of the inaccuracy of Dr . Clarke's reasoning , we hold to be complete ; and we can only wonder that the errors in that writer ' s De- » monstration , " &c , should have been current so long ; and that in conversation , in books , and from the pulpit , we should still be plied with arguments which to the Theist are needless , and which the Atheist has always been able to elude .
" So confidently , " gays Dr . C , has this mode of argumentation been employed , that it has even been asserted , that no mathematical deduction , or intuitive truth , is accompanied with a clearer evidence . Now , the existence of a Supreme Being is not a necessary truth ; it is a question of fast . It cannot be demonstrated that a Deity must he , or that tue contrary proposition involves an absurdity . That something must have existed from eternity , is self-evident ; and what this something is , constitutes the question between
the Theist acd the Atheist . The one asserts the eternity of matter ; the other that of an Intelligent First Cause , the Author of all existence . The question of Deity then being a question of fact , and the subjects of metaphysical evidence being * the necessary and immutable relations of our ideas , it is clear that this species of argument is wholly inapplicable to this , as to every question which relates to actual existence . These metaphysical reasonings , therefore , have failed to convince . They are not only abstruse aad perplexing ,
but , when strictly examined , will be found inconclusive . Hence they have proved injurious to the doctrine which they have been offered to establish , •*—Vol . I . p . 49 . ^ * The learned and sagacious Dr . Clarke , though he resorted to metaphysical reasoning to demonstrate the existence of Deity , seems to have been fully aware that this species of argumentation is much less calculated to produce conviction than that which is derived from the phenomena of nature .
This is sufficiently manifest from a conversation which passed between him and Mr . Whiston , on the subject of his celebrated work on the Being and Attributes of God . ' I was , ' says Whiston , * in my garden , against St . Peter ' s College , Cambridge , where I then lived . Now I perceived that in these sermons , he had dealt a great deal in abstract and metaphysical reasoning . I therefore asked him how he ventured into such subtleties , which I never durst
meddle with ; and shewing him a nettle , or some contemptible weed in my garden , I told him that weed contained better arguments for the Being and Attributes of God than all his metaphysics . Clarke confessed it to be so ; but alleged for himself , that since such philosophers as Hobbes and Spinoza had made use of those kinds of subtleties agaimt , he thought it proper to shew that the like way of reasoning might be made better use of on the side of religion ; which reason or excuse I allowed to be not inconsiderable / ( Wliiaton ' s Memoirs . ) Such way the motive , it would appear , which induced Dr . Clarke to resort to the employment of abstract arguments , ia order to
overthrow the reasoning of these subtle metaphysicians , and to establish the doer trine of Theism . While we acknowledge the necessity of meeting an adversary on his own ground , we must at the same time remark , that it is one thing to expose his fallacies , and quite another thing to attempt the establishment of the doctrine which he impugns , by arguments equally inapposite as his own . It would have been quite sufficient , and less dangerous , if Dr . Clarke had rested satisfied with disproving the abstract doctrines of Spinoza . "*—" But though the existence of an Intelligent First Cause cannot , from the
very nature of the subject , be evinced with the same certainty as a mathematical truth , or its contrary be proved to involve a metaphysical contradiction , it will be found on examination to rest on evidence so clear and conclusive , as to compel the assent of every candid inquirer , whose understanding has not been entangled in metaphysical subtleties , and whose reason is not inaccessible to the authority ot that evidence , of which alone the question is sus-
Untitled Article
Cromdie ' s Natural Theology . 15 f
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), March 2, 1830, page 151, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2582/page/7/
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