O, if Bull and Waterland had been first philosophers, and then divines,
instead of being first, manacled, or say articled clerks of a guild;--if
the clear free intuition of the truth had led them to the Article, and
not the Article to the defence of it as not having been proved to be
false,--how different would have been the result! Now we feel only the
inconsistency of Arianism, not the truth of the doctrine attacked.
Arianism is confuted, and in such a manner, that I will not reject the
Catholic Faith upon the Arian's grounds. It may, I allow, be still true.
But that it is true, because the Arians have hitherto failed to prove
its falsehood, is no logical conclusion. The Unitarian may have better
luck; or if he fail, the Deist.
Query XVI. p. 234.
But God's 'thoughts are not our thoughts'.
That is, as I would interpret the text;--the ideas in and by which God
reveals himself to man are not the same with, and are not to be judged
by, the conceptions which the human understanding generalizes from the
notices of the senses, common to man and to irrational animals, dogs,
elephants, beavers, and the like, endowed with the same senses.
Therefore I regard this paragraph, p. 223-4, as a specimen of admirable
special pleading 'ad hominem' in the Court of eristic Logic; but I
condemn it as a wilful resignation or temporary self-deposition of the
reason. I will not suppose what my reason declares to be no position at
all, and therefore an impossible sub-position.
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