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| The Christian Has Sure and Simple Knowledge Concerning the Subject Before Us. PREVIOUS SECTION - NEXT SECTION - HELP
Chapter II.—The Christian
Has Sure and Simple Knowledge Concerning the Subject Before
Us.
Of course we shall not deny that philosophers have
sometimes thought the same things as ourselves. The testimony of truth
is the issue thereof. It sometimes happens even in a storm, when the
boundaries of sky and sea are lost in confusion, that some harbour is
stumbled on (by the labouring ship) by some happy chance; and sometimes
in the very shades of night, through blind luck alone, one finds access
to a spot, or egress from it. In nature, however, most conclusions are
suggested, as it were, by that common intelligence wherewith God has
been pleased to endow the soul of man. This intelligence has been
caught up by philosophy, and, with the view of glorifying her own art,
has been inflated (it is not to be wondered at that I use this
language) with straining after that facility of language which is
practised in the building up and pulling down of everything, and which
has greater aptitude for persuading men by speaking than by teaching.
She assigns to things their forms and conditions; sometimes makes them
common and public, sometimes appropriates them to private use; on
certainties she capriciously stamps the character of uncertainty; she
appeals to precedents, as if all things are capable of being compared
together; she describes all things by rule and definition, allotting
diverse properties even to similar objects; she attributes nothing to
the divine permission, but assumes as her principles the laws of
nature. I could bear with her pretensions, if only she were herself
true to nature, and would prove to me that she had a mastery over
nature as being associated with its creation. She thought, no doubt,
that she was deriving her mysteries from sacred sources, as men deem
them, because in ancient times most authors were supposed to be (I will
not say godlike, but) actually gods: as, for instance, the Egyptian
Mercury,1501
1501 Mentioned below, c.
xxxiii.; also Adv. Valent. c. xv. | to whom Plato paid
very great deference;1502
1502 See his
Phædrus, c. lix. (p. 274); also Augustin, De. Civ.
Dei, viii. 11; Euseb. Præp. Evang. ix. 3. | and the Phrygian
Silenus, to whom Midas lent his long ears, when the shepherds brought
him to him; and Hermotimus, to whom the good people of Clazomenæ
built a temple after his death; and Orpheus; and Musæus; and
Pherecydes, the master of Pythagoras. But why need we care, since these
philosophers have also made their attacks upon those writings which are
condemned by us under the title of apocryphal,1503
1503 Or
spurious; not to be confounded with our so-called
Apocrypha, which were in Tertullian’s days called
Libri Ecclesiastici. |
certain as we are that nothing ought to be received which does not
agree with the true system of prophecy, which has arisen in this
present age;1504
1504 Here is a touch of
Tertullian’s Montanism. | because we do not
forget that there have been false prophets, and long previous to them fallen
spirits, which have instructed the entire tone and aspect of the world
with cunning knowledge of this (philosophic) cast? It is,
indeed, not incredible that any man who is in quest of wisdom may have
gone so far, as a matter of curiosity, as to consult the very prophets;
(but be this as it may), if you take the philosophers, you would
find in them more diversity than agreement, since even in their
agreement their diversity is discoverable. Whatever things are true
in their systems, and agreeable to prophetic wisdom, they either
recommend as emanating from some other source, or else perversely
apply1505 in some other sense. This process is
attended with very great detriment to the truth, when they pretend that
it is either helped by falsehood, or else that falsehood derives
support from it. The following circumstance must needs have set
ourselves and the philosophers by the ears, especially in this present
matter, that they sometimes clothe sentiments which are common to both
sides, in arguments which are peculiar to themselves, but contrary in
some points to our rule and standard of faith; and at other times
defend opinions which are especially their own, with arguments which
both sides acknowledge to be valid, and occasionally conformable to
their system of belief. The truth has, at this rate, been well-nigh
excluded by the philosophers, through the poisons with which they have
infected it; and thus, if we regard both the modes of coalition
which we have now mentioned, and which are equally hostile to
the truth, we feel the urgent necessity of freeing, on the one hand,
the sentiments held by us in common with them from the arguments of the
philosophers, and of separating, on the other hand, the arguments which
both parties employ from the opinions of the same philosophers. And
this we may do by recalling all questions to God’s inspired
standard, with the obvious exception of such simple cases as being free
from the entanglement of any preconceived conceits, one may fairly
admit on mere human testimony; because plain evidence of this
sort we must sometimes borrow from opponents, when our opponents have
nothing to gain from it. Now I am not unaware what a vast mass of
literature the philosophers have accumulated concerning the subject
before us, in their own commentaries thereon—what various schools
of principles there are, what conflicts of opinion, what prolific
sources of questions, what perplexing methods of solution. Moreover, I
have looked into Medical Science also, the sister (as they say) of
Philosophy, which claims as her function to cure the body, and thereby
to have a special acquaintance with the soul. From this circumstance
she has great differences with her sister, pretending as the latter
does to know more about the soul, through the more obvious treatment,
as it were, of her in her domicile of the body. But never mind
all this contention between them for pre-eminence! For extending
their several researches on the soul, Philosophy, on the one hand, has
enjoyed the full scope of her genius; while Medicine, on the other
hand, has possessed the stringent demands of her art and practice. Wide
are men’s inquiries into uncertainties; wider still are their
disputes about conjectures. However great the difficulty of adducing
proofs, the labour of producing conviction is not one whit less; so
that the gloomy Heraclitus was quite right, when, observing the thick
darkness which obscured the researches of the inquirers about the soul,
and wearied with their interminable questions, he declared that he had
certainly not explored the limits of the soul, although he had
traversed every road in her domains. To the Christian, however,
but few words are necessary for the clear understanding of the whole
subject. But in the few words there always arises certainty to him; nor
is he permitted to give his inquiries a wider range than is compatible
with their solution; for “endless questions” the apostle
forbids.1506 It must, however,
be added, that no solution may be found by any man, but such as is
learned from God; and that which is learned of God is the sum and
substance of the whole thing.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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