Besides, how
can we imagine a God who is 'totally destitute of body and of corporeal
figure,' to have any kind of attributes? Earthly emperors we know to be
substantial and common-place sort of beings enough, but is it not sheer
abuse of reason to argue as though the character of God were at all
analogous to theirs; or rather, is it not a shocking abuse of our
reasoning faculties to employ them at all about a Being whose existence,
if it really have an existence, is perfectly enigmatical, and allowed to
be so by those very men who pretend to explain its character and
attributes? We find no less a sage than Newton explicitly declaring as
incontestable truth, that God exists necessarily--that the same
necessity obliges him to exist always and everywhere--that he is all
eyes, all ears, all brains, all arms, all feeling, all intelligence, all
action--that he exists in a mode by no means corporeal, and yet this
same sage, in the self-same paragraph, acknowledges God is _totally
unknown to us_.
Now, we should like to be informed by what _reasonable_ right Newton
could pen a long string of 'incontestible truths,' such as are here
selected from his writings, with respect to a Being of whom, by his own
confession, he had not a particle of knowledge.
Pages:
96
97
98
99
100
101
102
103
104
105
106
107
108
109
110
111
112
113
114
115
116
117
118
119
120