A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume IIDe Morgan, Augustus
Philosophy
A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume II
De Morgan, Augustus
Circle-squaring; Perpetual motion; Science -- Miscellanea; Trisection of angle
His colleague, my secular tutelary, who also made an anachronistic onset,
with his repartees and his retorts, before there was anything to fire at,
takes what I give by way of subsequent provocation with a good humor which
would make a convert of me if he could afford .01659265 ... of a grain of
logic. He instantly sent me his photograph for the asking, and another
letter in proof. The Thor-hammerer does nothing but grumble, except when he
tells a good story, which he says he had from Dr. Abernethy.[362] A Mr.
James Dunlop was popping at the Papists with a 666-rifled gun, when Dr.
Chalmers[363] quietly said, "Why, Dunlop, you bear it yourself," and handed
him a paper on which the numerals in
I A C O B V S D V N L O P V S
1 100 5 500 5 50 5
were added up. This is almost as good as the _Filii Dei Vicarius_, the
numerical letters of which also make 666. No more of these crazy--I first
wrote _puerile_, but why should young cricketers be libelled?--attempts to
extract religious use from numerical vagaries, and to make God over all a
proposer of _salvation conundrums_: and no more of the trumpery hints about
future destiny which is too great a compliment to call blasphemous. If the
Doctor will cipher upon the letter in [Greek: en hoi metroi metreite
metrethesetai humin][364] with _double Vahu_ cubic measure, he will perhaps
learn to leave off trying to frighten me into gathering grapes from thorns.
Mystical hermeneutics may be put to good use by out-of-the-way people. They
may be made to call the attention {220} of the many to a distinction well
known among the learned. The books of the New Testament have been for 1,500
years divided into two classes: the _acknowledged_ ([Greek:
homologoumena]), which it has always been paradox not to receive; and the
_controverted_ ([Greek: antilegomena]), about which there has always been
that difference of opinion which no scholar overlooks, however he may
decide for himself after balance of evidence. Eusebius,[365] who first (l.
3, c. 25) recorded the distinction--which was much insisted on by the early
Protestants--states the books which are questioned as doubtful, but which
yet are approved and acknowledged by _many_--or _the many_, it is not easy
to say which he means--to be the Epistles of James and Jude, the second of
Peter and the second and third of John. In other places he speaks
doubtingly of the Epistle to the Hebrews. The Apocalypse he does not even
admit into this class, for he proceeds as follows--I use the second edition
of the English folio translation (1709), to avert suspicion of bias from
myself:--
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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