Inspiration and Interpretation: Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of OxfordBurgon, John William
Religion
Inspiration and Interpretation: Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford
Burgon, John William
Bible -- Criticism, interpretation, etc.; Bible -- Inspiration; Sermons, English
That a certain occurrence or phenomenon "is due to supernatural causes,"
Professor Powell maintains is "entirely dependent on the previous belief
and assumptions of the parties." (p. 107.) He forgets that he grounds
his own denial of the possibility of a Miracle, on nothing stronger than
"the nature of" his own "antecedent convictions." Thus, the question
becomes merely a personal one between Mr. Baden Powell and the Apostles
of CHRIST. The reasonableness of the "antecedent convictions" in the one
case have to be set against the reasonableness of the "antecedent
convictions" in the other. Either party, (according to this view,) has
its own "previous belief and assumptions;" which, in the one case, are
known to have produced conviction; in the other, they are unhappily
found to have resulted in a rejection of Miracles. But then it happens,
unfortunately, that in the case of the Apostles and others, conviction
of the truth of our LORD'S Miracles was based on _knowledge_, and
_experience of a matter of fact_: in the case of Professor Powell,
disbelief is founded on certain "antecedent convictions" only: namely,
"the inconceivableness of imagined interruptions of natural Order, or
supposed suspensions of the Laws of matter." (p. 110.) He is never tired
of repeating that "in an age of physical research like the present, all
highly cultivated minds and duly advanced intellects (!) have imbibed,
more or less, the lessons of the Inductive Philosophy; and have, at
least in some measure, learned to appreciate the grand foundation
conception of universal Law:" (p. 133:) that "the entire range of the
Inductive Philosophy is at once based upon, and in every instance tends
to confirm, by immense accumulation of evidence, the grand truth of the
universal Order and constancy of natural causes, as a primary law of
belief; so strongly entertained and fixed in the mind of every truly
inductive inquirer, that he cannot even conceive the possibility of its
failure." (p. 109.)
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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