The Sunday Library

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: THE INSUFFICIENCY OF NATURAL OR MORAL PHILOSOPHY TO INSTRUCT US IN RELIGIOUS TRUTH. 1 Cor. iii. 19. The wisdom of this world is foolishness with God. However plain and incontrovertible may be the arguments which we bring to prove the necessity of Revelation, we shall always find it a matter of difficulty...
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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: THE INSUFFICIENCY OF NATURAL OR MORAL PHILOSOPHY TO INSTRUCT US IN RELIGIOUS TRUTH. 1 Cor. iii. 19. The wisdom of this world is foolishness with God. However plain and incontrovertible may be the arguments which we bring to prove the necessity of Revelation, we shall always find it a matter of difficulty to convince those who attach themselves to the wisdom of this world that we have truth on our side. The votaries of philosophy will hardly suffer us to question the sufficiency of their natural faculties to instruct them upon every subject, divine as well as human; and the advocate for natural religion will be ready to enter his protest against any thing that seems to derogate from the dignity of human nature. Reason, it will still be said, is the gift of God, and ought to be prized above all other gifts: it ought on every occasion to be consulted, and its suggestions implicitly obeyed; since otherwise we degrade ourselves to the rank of brutes, and insult the Creator by depreciating the noblest work of his hands. This kind of language will never fail to gain attention and applause. But when the point which we have hitherto maintained (that of the inability of man to frame a religion for himself) is clearly understood and fairly represented, it will not be found to depreciate any just pretensions of the human understanding: for, what real disparagement to its faculties can it be, to say that man must be taught of God, before he can have any knowledge of Divine truths? Or how can reason be more nobly or usefully employed, than in receiving instruction from him who is the Fountain of Wisdom, and in deducing from what he is pleased to reveal truths of the highest importance? Who gave us reason and understanding ? who furnished us with a capacity of apprehendin...