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.
Ballou, Hosea
Revelation; Universalism -- Doctrines
time, those evidences would naturally lose their force when
communicated to others and finally lose their strength. Let us suppose
a case. A man shall have a vision of the night, in which it shall be
revealed to him that some time before the present generation shall
leave the stage of life, the kingdom of Great Britain will be overcome
by the power of France; that very many of the flourishing cities of
England will be destroyed in a very awful manner; that London will be
laid level with the ground; that the distress of the inhabitants
during the siege will be extreme; that for some time before this great
event, there will be wars and rumors of wars among the nations, and
certain signs very wonderful will be seen in the heavens. This man
tells his vision very circumstantially and several persons write it
down. Now suppose as the time passes away, these events, one after
another, should take place, all in the same order in which the vision
represented them; do you feel willing to say that the evidences of the
truth of this vision, are all the time losing their force? No surely
they are not; they are all the time gaining strength and waxing
brighter. Whether I am able to satisfy you that the above case is a
fair representation of the evidences of divine revelation, or not, it
discovers in some degree the ground on which, in my mind, revelation
is established.
Compare, if you please, the prophesy of Jesus recorded in the 24th of
Matthew, with the history of the events of which the divine messenger
spake.
Yours, &c.
H. BALLOU.
P. S. You have noticed, no doubt, in a parenthesis, that I do not
allow your argument on the dissimilarity of divine revelation and
principles of nature to have any force to do away the argument of our
brother, to which you replied. It was evidently not his design to
argue a similarity between the nature of these widely different
subjects, but to show that no greater partiality appears in the divine
wisdom, in not discovering the truths of revelation in all ages, to
all nations and in all languages, than in its not leading the human
mind to the discovery of electricity or any other of the laws of
nature in the same manner. Will you endeavour to maintain that the
divine economy has nothing to do in directing means and circumstances
to the developement of the laws of nature and to the discovery of
useful inventions? And if you allow it has, why do you not assign a
reason why these discoveries should not have been made in all ages, to
all nations, and written or rather _printed_, in all languages that
cannot as well be applied in the other case? In this way you would do
away his reasoning and my own likewise, for as you notice, we were
both of one mind on this subject.
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