Collected Essays, Volume V: Science and Christian Tradition: EssaysHuxley, Thomas Henry
Religion
Collected Essays, Volume V: Science and Christian Tradition: Essays
Huxley, Thomas Henry
Agnosticism; Miracles; Religion and science
Such being the case, I consider myself excused from following Mr.
Gladstone through all the meanderings of his late attempt to extricate
himself from the maze of historical and exegetical difficulties in
which he is entangled. I content myself with assuring those who, with
my paper (not Mr. Gladstone's version of my arguments) in hand,
consult the original authorities, that they will find full
justification for every statement I have made. But in order to dispose
those who cannot, or will not, take that trouble, to believe that the
proverbial blindness of one that judges his own cause plays no part in
inducing me to speak thus decidedly, I beg their attention to the
following examination, which shall be as brief as I can make it, of
the seven propositions in which Mr. Gladstone professes to give a
faithful summary of my "errors."
When, in the middle of the seventeenth century, the Holy See declared
that certain propositions contained in the work of Bishop Jansen were
heretical, the Jansenists of Port Royal replied that, while they were
ready to defer to the Papal authority about questions of faith and
morals, they must be permitted to judge about questions of fact for
themselves; and that, really, the condemned propositions were not to
be found in Jansen's writings. As everybody knows, His Holiness and
the Grand Monarque replied to this, surely not unreasonable, plea
after the manner of Lord Peter in the "Tale of a Tub." It is,
therefore, not without some apprehension of meeting with a similar
fate, that I put in a like plea against Mr. Gladstone's Bull. The
seven propositions declared to be false and condemnable, in that
kindly and gentle way which so pleasantly compares with the
authoritative style of the Vatican (No. 5 more particularly), may or
may not be true. But they are not to be found in anything I have
written. And some of them diametrically contravene that which I have
written. I proceed to prove my assertions.
PROP. 1. _Throughout the paper he confounds together what I had
distinguished, namely, the city of Gadara and the vicinage attached to
it, not as a mere pomoerium, but as a rural district_.
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