BUTLER'S ANALOGY. PART 2. Сн. 3. "PRACTICAL Christianity, or that faith and behaviour which renders a man a Christian, is a plain and obvious thing, like the common rules of conduct with respect to our ordinary temporal affairs. The more distinct and particular knowledge of those things, the study of which the Apostle calls 'going on unto perfection,' and the prophetic parts of revelation, like many parts of natural and even civil knowledge, may require very exact thought and careful consideration. The hinderances too of natural and of supernatural light and knowledge have been of the same kind. And as it is owned the whole scheme of Scripture is not yet understood; so, if it ever comes to be understood before the 'restitution of all things,' and without miraculous interpositions, it must be in the same way as natural knowledge is come at by the continuance and progress of learning and of liberty, and by particular persons attending to, comparing, and pursuing intimations scattered up and down it, which are overlooked and disregarded by the generality of the world. For this is the way in which all improvements are made; by thoughtful men's tracing on obscure hints, as it were, dropped us by nature accidentally, or which seem to come into our minds by chance. Nor is it at all incredible, that a book which has been so long in the possession of mankind should contain many truths as yet undiscovered. For all the same phenomena, and the same faculties of investigation, from which such great discoveries in natural knowledge have been made in the present and last age, were equally in the possession of mankind several thousand years before. And possibly it might be intended that events, as they come to pass, should open and ascertain the meaning of several parts of Scripture." ESSAY. SECTION I. INTRODUCTORY. THERE is a strong feeling prevailing in the present time, that an effort should be made to alter or remove the damnatory clauses from the Creed commonly called Athanasian. Athanasian. As these clauses, however, have held their place for so many centuries in one of the formularies of our faith which we hold in reverence, and as it has been determined by those in authority that the Creed should be retained in its present form, and should be continued as part of the public service of the Church, it is needful that those who feel their consciences wounded by these clauses, and who refuse to repeat them when joining in public worship, should be able to give good reason why their minds are disturbed, and why they plead for their alteration or suppression. It may be a strange thought with many, that in the nineteenth century a doctrine so intensely interesting to the mind and heart of man as that of everlasting damnation, which has been almost universally held in the Christian Church, should now be questioned. Can it be otherwise than the greatest presumption, to dissent B |