Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

F15

2520

Printed by A. Spooner, Brooklyn.

[merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][ocr errors][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small]

PREFACE.

THE theological system of a Christian is: that God, who, at sundry times and in diverse manners, spake in time past unto the fathers by the prophets, hath in these last days spoken unto us by his Son; whom he hath appointed heir of all things, and by whom also he made the worlds: who, being the brightness of his glory and the express image of his person, and upholding all things by the word of his power, when he had by himself purged our sins, sat down on the right hand of the majesty on high.*

The theological system of the infidel is: that all religions, claiming to be revelations from heaven, are alike impostures upon the blind credulity of mankind;

Heb. i. 1--3.

B

that the only religion, worthy of a phi losophical deist, is uninspired natural religion; and that, as human reason alone is amply sufficient to guide us into all needful truth, a divine communication is no less unnecessary in the abstract, than all pretensions to such communication are false in the concrete.

If we ask the specific ground, on which the latter system is preferred to the former; we are told, that the religion of the Bible is hampered by too many difficulties to be rationally credible and these difficulties are forthwith produced and expatiated upon with no small degree of triumphant satisfaction.

But here a question naturally rises, whether the deistical scheme itself, in all its component parts, be free from difficulties and objections: for that, which is preferred to Christianity on the express score of the difficulties attendant upon revealed religion, ought certainly in reason to be as free as possible from all liability to the unpleasantness of a direct and well-founded retort.

In the following discussion, the question now before us is answered in the negative Its purpose is to shew, not only that Infidelity has its own proper difficul

« AnteriorContinuar »