The Works, Theological and Miscellaneous, Including Some Pieces, Not Before Printed; With Some Account of the Life and Writings of the Author Volume 3 (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1804 edition. Excerpt: ...Arnauld and d'Ablancourt. The former thinks the philosophical demonstration of the natural immortality may be of use, to bring unbelievers to the knowledge and belief of a future state, as revealed in the scriptures; inasmuch as they are a sort of men who will admit nothing but what may be known by the light of reason, and who are unwilling to begin with faitlz."" These men then we will suppose, begin with studying the peripatetic or, if you please, the cartesian philosophy. Here they find, according to d'Ablancourt, that upon these principles, the resurrection of the dead is impossible. And. the honour of God in the moral government Baylc. POMIQNAT-XU6. u.: of the world, being sufiiciently secured by the hypothesis of a natural immortality, they will be as little disposed to end with the point of faith, as to begin with it. The Sieur d'./lblancourt on the other hand, thinks it necessary tobegin with the revealed doctrine, of a future state; and after the mind is sufficiently inlightened by the doctrines of grace, to confirm t-he faithful by the additional testimony of philosophical conclusions, i. e. the conclusions of a philosophyfull ot'presump.-tion, obstinacy, error, and ignorance, and which teacheth that the doctrine of grace to be confirmed by it, is an utter impossibility. There is however, in all this, one consideration entirely overlooked both by d'Ablancourt's piet, and Bayle's scepticism. They put the cre ibility of man's immortality, as revealed. in the scriptures, to the account of faith, without any respect to the reasonableness of it, in consequen cc of certain facts, which in the same scriptures connect it with the history of man W from the first origin of the species....