De Tribus Impostoribus, A. D. 1230: The Three Impostors: Translated (with notes and comments) from a French manuscript of the work written in the year 1716, with a dissertation on the original treatise and a bibliography of the various editions — John Shaqi
De Tribus Impostoribus, A. D. 1230: The Three Impostors: Translated (with notes and comments) from a French manuscript of the work written in the year 1716, with a dissertation on the original treatise and a bibliography of the various editions
Religion
De Tribus Impostoribus, A. D. 1230: The Three Impostors: Translated (with notes and comments) from a French manuscript of the work written in the year 1716, with a dissertation on the original treatise and a bibliography of the various editions
De tribus impostoribus -- Bibliography; Rationalism
Mankind being thus of the ridiculous opinion that all they see is
made for themselves, have made it a religious duty to apply it to
their interest, and of judging the price of things by the profit they
gain. Thence proceed the ideas they have formed of good, and evil, of
order and confusion, of heat and cold, of beauty and ugliness, which
serve to explain to them the nature of things, which in the end are not
what they imagine. Because they pride themselves in having free will
they judge themselves capable of deciding between praise and blame, sin
and merit, calling everything good which redounds to their profit and
which concerns divine worship, and to the contrary denominate as evil
that which agrees with neither. Because the ignorant are not capable
of judging what may be a little abstruse, and having no idea of things
only by the aid of imagination which they consider understanding,
these folk who know not what represents Order in the world believe
all that they imagine. Man being inclined in such a manner that
they think things well or ill ordered as they have the facility or
trouble to conclude when good sense would teach differently. Some
are more pleased to be weary of the means of investigation, being
satisfied to remain as they are, preferring order to confusion, as
if order was another thing than a pure effect of the imagination of
man, so that when it is said that God has made everything in order,
it is recognizing that he has that faculty of imagination as well as
man. If it was not so, perhaps to favor human imagination they pretend
that God created this world in the easiest manner imaginable, although
there are an hundred things far above the force of imagination, and
an infinity which may be thrown into disorder by reason of weakness.
VIII.
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