The Difficulties of Infidelity

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Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2012 - 118 páginas
Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: SECTION IV. THE DIFFICULTIES ATTENDANT UPON DEISTICAL INFIDELITY IN REGARD TO ACTUALLY ACCOMPLISHED PROPHECY. The same, or (if possible) still greater, difficulties attend upon deistical I ifidelity in regard to actually accomplished prophecy. Political sagacity may sometimes anticipate events, on the mere principle of cause and effect: but this sagacity can penetrate to no very great distance of time; it is uncertain in its, operation, even when causes are accurately known; and, if the causes of future events be altogether unknown, its operation wholly ceases. Prophetic sagacity, on the other hand, is so totally different from political sagacity, that, on no rational grounds, can the two be ever confounded together. Various instances may be easily produced, in which matters most remotely distant in point of time have been accurately foretold, in which such unerring certainty is exhibited that not a failure can be detected even in the most minute circumstance, and in which the prophet must clearly have been ignorant of all those political causes which in the course of God's providence were destined to bring about the predicted effects. Such being the case, we have an undoubted fact to explain. A mere man, like ourselves, authoritatively and confidently declares, thai a particular tissue of events will assuredly come to pass. His word is accurately accomplished: and yet, so far as his ownnatural powers were concerned, he possessed no greater facility of developing futurity than any other man. This is the fact to bu accounted for; and, as the fact itself is indisputable, we certainly have a right to expect, either that the infidel on his own principles should give a satisfactory solution of it, or that he should renounce his principles as clogged with too many diffic...

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