Swedenborg And Channing - Showing The Many And Remarkable Agreements In The Beliefs And Teachings Of These Writers (1878) (Hardcover)

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: told the same thing by those among whom they were born; it being the general cry, Here is the church Here is the church Here are truths, and nowhere else This being the case, they conclude that the Word ought to be searched with devout prayer to the Lord for enlightenment. Such persons do not disturb any one within the church, nor do they ever condemn others for- believing differently from themselves]; for they know that every one who is a church, lives according to his own faith." (A. C, n. 5432. See also T. C. R., n. 177, 489,498,634; A. C, n. 5402, 7298; D. P., n. 71-97; A. R., n. 776, 914.) III. REASON IN RELIGION VINDICATED. 'OEFORE the memorable year 1757 (the time from -L which the illustrious Swede dates " the Last Judgment"), it was an established tenet in all the churches, Protestant as well as Catholic, that religious doctrines were not to be scrutinized by the eye of reason; that they (some of them at least) were profound mysteries which people must not expect to understand, and should not, therefore, " pry into;" that they were to be accepted blindly, not rationally; that, in such matters the understandingwas to be held in subjection to faith. And there was good reason for this; for the generally accepted beliefs were not such as would stand the test of rational examination. Therefore it became the habit of religious teachers, when closely questioned about their doctrines, to deny the lawfulness or propriety of exercising our human reason in matters of religious belief, and to seek shelter behind that much abused, but very convenient word, mystery. Swedenborg lays the axe at the root of this pernicious tree. He boldly announces himself as the herald of a New Dispensation ? a dispensation of rational religious truth; and throughout his writings he insist...