Scripture Notices and Proofs (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1838. Excerpt: ... CHAPTER XVII. FURTHER NOTICES OF THE TENDENCY OF MODERN THEOLOGY. It is impossible to witness the eager thirst for knowledge which characterises the present age, without foreseeing what must happen unless the fountain of living water be kept free from pollution. The Church of England is an appointed guardian of this fountain, and it behoves, not only the appointed ministers of that Church, but every sincere member of it, to watch the signs of the times, and guard against the anti-scriptural deductions of natural philosophers on the one hand, no less than against infidelity, Socinianism, and Popery, on the other. With respect to the latter there is no doubt that the defenders of our faith are vigilant and powerful--but it is by no means so clear that this is the case with respect to the former. Lord Brougham tells us that the friends of Revelation " appear to be alarmed lest the progress of natural religion should prove dangerous to the acceptance of revealed; lest the former should, as it were, be taken as a substitute for the latter. They argue, as if the two systems were rivals, and whatever credit the one gained, were so much lost to the other. They seem to think that if any discovery of a first cause and another world were made by natural reason, it would no longer be true that "life and immortality were brought to light by the Gospel." "Although these reasoners are neither the most famous advocates of revelation, nor the most enlightened, we yet may do well to show the groundlessness of the alarms which they would excite." This his lordship endeavours to do by assuming "that the greatest advocates of natural theology have been sincere and even zealous Christians,"--and that so essential is natural theology to a belief of the Scriptures, and therefore...