The argumentative strength of this Appendix, as a reply to those
who call themselves "orthodox" Christians, is immensely increased by
analysing their subsidiary doctrines, which pretend to relieve,
while they prodigiously aggravate, the previous difficulties of Moral
Theism; I mean the doctrine of the fall of man by the agency of a
devil, and the eternal hell. But every man who dares to think will
easily work out such thoughts for himself.
APPENDIX II.
I here reproduce (merely that it may not be pretended that I silently
withdraw it) the substance of an illustration which I offered in my
2nd edition, p. 184.
When I deny that History can be Religion or a part of Religion, I
mean it exactly in the same sense, in which we say that history is not
mathematics, though mathematics has a history. Religion undoubtedly
comes to us by historical transmission: it has had a slow growth; but
so is it with mathematics, so is it with all other sciences. (I refer
to mathematics, not as peculiarly like to religion, but as peculiarly
unlike; it is therefore and _à fortiori_ argument. What is true of
them as sciences, is true of all science.) No science can flourish,
while it is received on authority. Science comes to us _by_ external
transmission, but is not believed _because_ of that transmission. The
history of the transmission is generally instructive, but is no proper
part of the science itself. All this is true of Religion.
THE END.
End of Project Gutenberg's Phases of Faith, by Francis William Newman
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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