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Updated: May 20, 2025
Alas! the mind is blinded; the dungeon is within; and till Christ open the eyes, as well as reveal his light, the soul abides in its blindness, and is buried in midnight darkness; but when the Spirit of God opens the man's eyes, and he is translated by an act of omnipotency out of the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of his dear Son, which is a kingdom of marvellous light, O what matchless beauty doth he now see in these things, which appeared despicable and dark nothings to him, till he got the unction, the eye-salve, which teacheth all things.
He who is without God cannot run into absurdities and blasphemies like these, whereas he who is with one cannot keep clear of them. If consistent he must clothe Him with Calvinistic attributes. To present Him stripped of foreknowledge, or omnipotency would outrage all just conception of that 'Immense Being' who brought his worshippers out of nothing.
Lest it should be thought that I am doing injustice to the views of this illustrious theist, I here quote his own words: "We have the ideas of matter and thinking, but possibly shall never be able to know whether any mere material being thinks or no, it being impossible for us, by the contemplation of our own ideas, without revelation, to discover whether omnipotency has not given to some systems of matter fitly disposed a power to perceive and think, or else joined and fixed to matter so disposed a thinking immaterial substance; it being, in respect of our notions, not much more remote from our comprehension to conceive that God can, if He pleases, superadd to matter a faculty of thinking, than that He should superadd to it another substance with a faculty of thinking; since we know not wherein thinking consists, nor to what sort of substance the Almighty has been pleased to give that power, which cannot be in any created being, but merely by the good pleasure and bounty of the Creator.
In another moment he had revealed a fragment of decomposed quartz, like discolored honeycombed cheese, half filling the pan. But on its side, where the pick had struck it glancingly, there was a yellow streak like a ray of sunshine! And as he strove to lift it he felt in that unmistakable omnipotency of weight that it was seamed and celled with gold. The news of Mr.
"We have," he says, "the ideas of matter and thinking, but possibly shall never be able to know whether any mere material being thinks, or no; it being impossible for us, by the contemplation of our own ideas, without revelation, to discover whether omnipotency has not given to some system of matter, fitly disposed, a power to perceive and think, or else joined and fixed to matter so disposed a thinking immaterial substance, it being, in respect of our notions, not much more remote from our comprehension to conceive that God can, if he pleases, superadd to matter a faculty of thinking, than that he should superadd to it another substance, with a faculty of thinking; since we know not wherein thinking consists, nor to what sort of substances the Almighty has been pleased to give that power, which cannot be in any created being, but merely by the good pleasure and power of the Creator."... "All the great ends of morality and religion," he adds, "are well secured without philosophical proof of the soul's immateriality."
Omnipotency cannot do it.... Parliaments are in all cases to declare what is for the good of the whole; but it is not the declaration of parliament that makes it so: there must be in every instance a higher authority, viz., GOD. Should an Act of Parliament be against any of His natural laws, which are immutably true, their declaration would be contrary to eternal truth, equity and justice, and consequently void; and so it would be adjudged by the Parliament itself, when convinced of their mistake."
Did I wish even by stealth to do contrary to Thy law, because by power I could not, so that being a prisoner, I might mimic a maimed liberty by doing with impunity things unpermitted me, a darkened likeness of Thy Omnipotency? Behold, Thy servant, fleeing from his Lord, and obtaining a shadow.
If, however, they are requested to prove the authenticity of these oracles, which are at such variance with each other, they will refer to miracles in support of what they assert: these miracles, independent of the difficulty there must exist to repose in them our faith, when, as we have seen, they are admitted even by the theologians themselves, to be contrary to the intelligence, the immutability, to the omnipotency of their immaterial substances, are, moreover, warmly disputed by each particular sect, as being impositions, practised by the others for their own individual advantage.
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