Occasional Thoughts in Reference to a Vertuous or Christian lifeMasham, Damaris, Lady
Religion
Occasional Thoughts in Reference to a Vertuous or Christian life
Masham, Damaris, Lady
Christian life -- Anglican authors
Now if the Christian Religion be very often represented as teaching
Doctrines clearly contrary to Reason; or as exacting belief of what we
can neither perceive the Truth of, nor do find to be reveal'd by
Christ, or his Apostles: And, (what is still more) that this pretended
Divine Religion does even consist in such a Belief as This; so that a
Man cannot be a Christian without believing what he neither from
Arguments or Authority has any Ground for believing; what must the
Natural Consequence of this be upon all whoever so little consult
their Reason, when in riper Years they come to reflect hereupon, but
to make them recal, and suspend, at least, their assent to the Truth
of a Religion that appears to them thus Irrational? since an
Irrational Religion can never Rationally be conceived to come from
God.
And if Men once come to call in question such Doctrines as (tho' but
upon slender Grounds for it) they had received for unquestionable
Truths of Religion, they are ordinarily more likely to continue
Scepticks, or to proceed to an intire disbelief of this Religion, than
to take occasion from hence to make a just search after its Verity:
The want either of Capacity, Leisure or Inclination for such an
inquiry, disposing Men, very generally, to neglect it; and easily to
satisfy themselves in so doing, from a perswasion that the Christian
Religion is indeed self condemn'd: Those whom they imagine to have
understood it as well as any Men, having never taught them that this
Religion does so much as pretend to any Foundation in, or appeal to
Reason, that Faculty in us which distinguishes us from Beasts, and the
Actual use thereof from Mad-Men; but indeed Taught them the contrary:
And thus prejudg'd, it truly is that the Christian Religion, by those
who disbelieve it, has usually come to be rejected; without ever
having been allow'd a fair Examination.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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