Though the problem is of no difficult solution for reflecting minds, yet
for the reading many it would be a serviceable work, to bring together
and exemplify the causes of the extreme and universal credulity that
characterizes sundry periods of history (for example, from A.D. 1400 to
A.D. 1650): and credulity involves lying and delusion--for by a seeming
paradox liars are always credulous, though credulous persons are not
always liars; although they most often are.
It would be worth while to make a collection of the judgments of eminent
men in their generation respecting the Copernican or Pythagorean scheme.
One writer (I forget the name) inveighs against it as Popery, and a
Popish stratagem to reconcile the minds of men to Transubstantiation and
the Mass. For if we may contradict the evidence of our senses in a
matter of natural philosophy, 'a fortiori', or much more, may we be
expected to do so in a matter of faith.
In my Noetic, or Doctrine and Discipline of Ideas = 'logice, Organon'--I
purpose to select some four, five or more instances of the sad effects
of the absence of ideas in the use of words and in the understanding of
truths, in the different departments of life; for example, the word
'body', in connection with resurrection-men, &c.--and the last
instances, will (please God!) be the sad effects on the whole system of
Christian divinity. I must remember Asgill's book. [7]
Religion necessarily, as to its main and proper doctrines, consists of
ideas, that is, spiritual truths that can only be spiritually discerned,
and to the expression of which words are necessarily inadequate, and
must be used by accommodation.
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