Volume 2 / Part 1 — Part I. S.1.
Reading edition
For my religion, though there be several circumstances that might perswade the world I have none at all, 'as the generall scandall of my profession', &c.
The historical origin of this scandal, which in nine cases out of ten is the honour of the medical profession, may, perhaps, be found in the fact, that Ænesidemus and Sextus Empiricus, the sceptics, were both physicians, about the close of the second century. {2} A fragment from the writings of the former has been preserved by Photius, and such as would leave a painful regret for the loss of the work, had not the invaluable work of Sextus Empiricus been still extant.
S. 7.
A third there is which I did never positively maintaine or practise, but have often wished it had been consonant to truth, and not offensive to my religion, and that is, the prayer for the dead, &c.
Our church with her characteristic Christian prudence does not enjoin prayer for the dead, but neither does she prohibit it. In its own nature it belongs to a private aspiration; and being conditional, like all religious acts not expressed in Scripture, and therefore not combinable with a perfect faith, it is something between prayer and wish,—an act of natural piety sublimed by Christian hope, that shares in the light, and meets the diverging rays, of faith, though it be not contained in the focus.
S. 13.
He holds no counsell, but that mysticall one of the Trinity, wherein, though there be three persons, there is but one mind that decrees without contradiction, &c.
Sir T.B. is very amusing. He confesses his part heresies, which are mere opinions, while his orthodoxy is full of heretical errors. His Trinity is a mere trefoil, a 3=1, which is no mystery at all, but a common object of the senses. The mystery is, that one is three, that is, each being the whole God.
S. 18.
'Tis not a ridiculous devotion to say a prayer before a game at tables, &c.
But a great profanation, methinks, and a no less absurdity. Would Sir T. Brown, before weighing two pigs of lead, A. and B., pray to God that A. might weigh the heavier? Yet if the result of the dice be at the time equally believed to be a settled and predetermined effect, where lies the difference? Would not this apply against all petitionary prayer?—St. Paul's injunction involves the answer:—'Pray always'.
S. 22.
They who to salve this would make the deluge particular, proceed upon a principle that I can no way grant, &c.
But according to the Scripture, the deluge was so gentle as to leave uncrushed the green leaves on the olive tree. If then it was universal, and if (as with the longevity of the antediluvians it must have been) the earth was fully peopled, is it not strange that no buildings remain in the since then uninhabited parts—in America for instance? That no human skeletons are found may be solved from the circumstance of the large proportion of phosphoric acid in human bones. But cities and traces of civilization?—I do not know what to think, unless we might be allowed to consider Noah a 'homo repraesentativus', or the last and nearest of a series taken for the whole.
S. 33.
They that to refute the invocation of saints, have denied that they have any knowledge of our affairs below, have proceeded too farre, and must pardon my opinion, till I can throughly answer that piece of Scripture, 'At the conversion of a sinner the angels of Heaven rejoyce'.
Take any moral or religious book, and, instead of understanding each sentence according to the main purpose and intention, interpret every phrase in its literal sense as conveying, and designed to convey, a metaphysical verity, or historical fact:—what a strange medley of doctrines should we not educe? And yet this is the way in which we are constantly in the habit of treating the books of the New Testament.
S. 34.
And, truely, for the first chapters of 'Genesis' I must confesse a great deal of obscurity; though divines have to the power of humane reason endeavored to make all go in a literall meaning, yet those allegoricall interpretations are also probable, and perhaps, the mysticall method of Moses bred up in the hieroglyphicall schooles of the Egyptians.
The second chapter of Genesis from v. 4, and the third chapter are to my mind, as evidently symbolical, as the first chapter is literal. The first chapter is manifestly by Moses himself; but the second and third seem to me of far higher antiquity, and have the air of being translated into words from graven stones.
S. 48. This section is a series of ingenious paralogisms.
S. 49.
Moses, that was bred up in all the learning of the Egyptians, committed a grosse absurdity in philosophy, when with these eyes of flesh he desired to see God, and petitioned his maker, that is, truth itself, to a contradiction.
Bear in mind the Jehovah 'Logos', the {Symbol: 'O "omega N} {Greek: en kolpo patros}—the person 'ad extra',—and few passages in the Old Testament are more instructive, or of profounder import. Overlook this, or deny it,—and none so perplexing or so irreconcilable with the known character of the inspired writer.
S. 50.
For that mysticall metall of gold, whose solary and celestiall nature I admire, &c.
Rather anti-solar and terrene nature! For gold, most of all metals, repelleth light, and resisteth that power and portion of the common air, which of all ponderable bodies is most akin to light, and its surrogate in the realm of {Greek: antiph'os}; or gravity, namely, oxygen. Gold is 'tellurian' {Greek: kat exochaen} and if solar, yet as in the solidity and dark 'nucleus' of the sun.
S. 52.
I thank God that with joy I mention it, I was never afraid of hell, nor never grew pale at the description of that place; I have so fixed my contemplations on heaven, that I have almost forgot the idea of hell, &c.
Excellent throughout. The fear of hell may, indeed, in some desperate cases, like the moxa, give the first rouse from a moral lethargy, or like the green venom of copper, by evacuating poison or a dead load from the inner man, prepare it for nobler ministrations and medicines from the realm of light and life, that nourish while they stimulate.
S. 54.
There is no salvation to those that believe not in Christ, &c.
This is plainly confined to such as have had Christ preached to them;—but the doctrine, that salvation is in and by Christ only, is a most essential verity, and an article of unspeakable grandeur and consolation. Name—nomen, that is, {Greek: noumenon}, in its spiritual interpretation, is the same as power, or intrinsic cause. What? Is it a few letters of the alphabet, the hearing of which in a given succession, that saves?
S. 59.
'Before Abraham was, I am,' is the saying of Christ; yet is it true in some sense if I say it of myself, for I was not only before myself, but Adam, that is, in the idea of God, and the decree of that synod held from all eternity. And in this sense, I say, the world was before the creation, and at an end before it had a beginning; and thus was I dead before I was alive;—though my grave be England, my dying-place was Paradise, and Eve miscarried of me before she conceived of Cain.
Compare this with s. 11, and the judicious remark there on the mere accommodation in the 'prae' of predestination. But the subject was too tempting for the rhetorician.