On this page
-
Text (1)
-
Untitled Article
Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
-
-
Transcript
-
Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
Additionally, when viewing full transcripts, extracted text may not be in the same order as the original document.
Untitled Article
present experience of mankind , is no necessary assumption . The sole question is , whether a supernatural event requires that like causes should not produce like effects . Certainly , this is not supposed hy the believer in a miraculous event . On the contrary , he believes in the intervention of a
cause , which is not in nature , of the immediate power of God ; because the event cannot he an effect of any natural cause with which he is acquainted . A case of testimony may be supposed so strong as to require this intervention either in the physical or moral world . In the former it has a worthy object , if it authenticates a divine revelation ; in the latter , it is without any end worthy of the interposition . Knapp ' s observations on divine revelations , and the inspiration of the books of the Old and New Testament , display his usual sobriety of judgment . * Events , " he says , ** have often been
ascribed to the immediate act of God , because the means through which they were effected were not known . Hence the ignorant and uninstructed are prone to see miracles , and to believe in them more readily than the more educated ; they are less acquainted with natural causes . This has brought every history of miracles into doubt and discredit with many thinking men . But it is surely a great error , though a very common one , to draw a universal conclusion from particular facts , and to assume that because many histories of miracles have been found to be false , therefore all , however
well attested , must be rejected . It cannot be said that such extraordinary effects of divine power are impossible ; and they have a moral possibility : they are not contrary to the wisdom of God , whilst they serve to the accomplishment of an important end , which was not to be accomplished , or not so well , in another way . It cannot be shewn a priori that such events will never exist ; and as little can it be demonstrated a priori , that they are physically or morally impossible ; and this has been acknowledged by our late
philosophers , as Kant and Fichte . It is , therefore , a question of fact only , and rests entirely on the credibility of the witnesses . " On the inspiration of the sacred books he speaks with a discretion which is not always observed by the advocates of revelation : ?* The Holy Scriptures have been called the word of God , especially since the time of H utter , who so defined them . Tollner , Semler , and others , have held that this use of the expression , the word of God , may be permitted , if it is rightly explained . In the Bible itself never applied to the books which compose it ; but it means either prophecies and other revelations , or doctrines and religious precepts . Rom . lii . 2 ; Acts vii . 38 . A distinction between the Holy Scriptures and the word of God is to be made , because all that is contained in the Scriptures is not the proper word of God ; and since only a part of their contents is the word of Qod 9 we shall speak more truly and correctly if we use the expression only of that part and not of the whole . In Jesus Sirach , Josephus , the Talmud , and in the New Testament , the books of the Old Testament are named the law and the prophets ; or the law , the prophets , and the psalms , or poetical books . They were called by the Jews generally the four-and-twenty books . A sort of sacred library or archive was formed by degrees in the temple in which the present collection of the writings of the Old Testament at length grew to what it is . The collection began with the law of Moses . Josephus mentions it in his Antiquities , ( B . v . I , ) avanEiuavoc tv TCp Upcp ypa / xjxaTu . "
it is It IS
1 subjoin a historical sketch extracted from the section on the reading of the Holy Scriptures . " According to Cyrillus of Alexandria , Julian reproached the Christians with placing their Scriptures in the hands of children and of women , to be read by them without discrimination . The declension
Untitled Article
176 Letters from Germany .
-
-
Citation
-
Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), March 2, 1831, page 176, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2595/page/32/
-