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Book
Excerpts:
SECTION I. Metaphysical Proofs of the Existence of God are not within Everybody’s reach. I cannot open my eyes without admiring the art that shines throughout all nature; the least cast suffices to make me perceive the
Hand that makes everything.
Men accustomed to meditate upon metaphysical truths, and to trace
up things to their first principles, may know the Deity by its idea;
and I own that is a sure way to arrive at the source of all truth.
But the more direct and short that way is, the more difficult and
unpassable it is for the generality of mankind who depend on their
senses and imagination.
An ideal demonstration is so simple, that through its very
simplicity it escapes those minds that are incapable of operations
purely intellectual.
In short, the more perfect is the way to find the First Being,
the fewer men there are that are capable to follow it.
SECT. II. Moral Proofs of the Existence of God are
fitted to every man’s capacity.
But there is a less perfect way, level to the meanest capacity.
Men the least exercised in reasoning, and the most tenacious of the
prejudices of the senses, may yet with one look discover Him who has
drawn Himself in all His works. The wisdom and power He has stamped upon everything He has made
are seen, as it were, in a glass by those that cannot contemplate
Him in His own idea. This is a sensible and popular
philosophy, of which any man free from passion and prejudice is
capable.
Humana autem anima rationalis est, quć mortalibus peccati pśna
tenebatur, ad hoc diminutionis redacta ut per conjecturas rerum
visibilium ad intelligenda invisibilia niteretur; that is,
“The human soul is still rational, but in such a manner that,
being by the punishment of sin detained in the bonds of death, it is
so far reduced that it can only endeavour to arrive at the knowledge
of things invisible through the visible.”
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