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A Series of Letters, in Defence of Divine Revelation: In Reply to Rev. Abner Kneeland's Serious Inquiry into the Authenticity of the Same. To Which is Added, a Religious Correspondence, Between the Rev. Hosea Ballou, and the Rev. Dr. Joseph Buckminster and Rev. Joseph Walton, Pastors of Congregational Churches in Portsmouth, N. H.Ballou, Hosea

Religion

A Series of Letters, in Defence of Divine Revelation: In Reply to Rev. Abner Kneeland's Serious Inquiry into the Authenticity of the Same. To Which is Added, a Religious Correspondence, Between the Rev. Hosea Ballou, and the Rev. Dr. Joseph Buckminster and Rev. Joseph Walton, Pastors of Congregational Churches in Portsmouth, N. H.

Name: A Series of Letters, in Defence of Divine Revelation: In Reply to Rev. Abner Kneeland's Serious Inquiry into the Authenticity of the Same. To Which is Added, a Religious Correspondence, Between the Rev. Hosea Ballou, and the Rev. Dr. Joseph Buckminster and Rev. Joseph Walton, Pastors of Congregational Churches in Portsmouth, N. H.
Author: Ballou, Hosea

Ballou, Hosea

Revelation; Universalism -- Doctrines

"That 'reason is candid,' I also admit; and if I am blundering in
making mistakes, I believe you will have the goodness to acknowledge
that I am candid in retracting them again when they are so pointed out
to me that I can see them.

"Respecting divine revelation, it is true, I understood you to mean
something more than barely what is predicated on the resurrection of
Jesus; yet in the second proposition of the three which you made, viz.
'Is the resurrection of Jesus capable of being proved,' I understand
you to state one single fact, on which you are willing to rest the
final issue of the argument. This being the most important fact,
relative to the truth of christianity, and which, probably, is as
difficult of proof as any, I do not perceive any disingenuousness in
confining you _now_ to this proposition till it is either proved or
admitted. Neither do I perceive how this can embarrass your argument,
as you have proposed to consider them 'true, disjunctively,' as well
as conjunctively. When therefore you have proved the three
propositions _disjunctively_; particularly the second, above named,
then I shall be willing you should avail yourself of their
_union_.--You may say, perhaps, I have proposed to admit the truth of
your three propositions; but you will also perceive, it was only for
the sake of introducing a fourth proposition, which it will not be
necessary for you to consider until the three first are proved true.

"I conceive that reason has no more to do in this case than to judge
of the evidences of facts; and then, if the facts are supported,
reason can judge of their relation one to the other; but to assume, in
the first place, the truth of revelation, and then infer from _that_
the probability of the truth of the resurrection of Jesus, appears to
me to be unreasonable. Therefore, if you attempt to prove the truth of
revelation, I conceive you must in the first place prove,
'disjunctively,' the truth of the resurrection. If, therefore, you
have considered yourself excused from proving the facts on which the
truth of revelation seems to rest, because I have granted them for the
sake of the argument, you have misapprehended my meaning. I grant
_nothing_, respecting the main question, until it is _proved_.

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