The meaning of a liberal educationMartin, Everett Dean
Philosophy
The meaning of a liberal education
Martin, Everett Dean
Education
“Well, but there are none (say you) build any altars, or dedicate
any temple to Folly. I admire (as I have before intimated) that the
world should be so wretchedly ungrateful. But I am so good natured
as to pass by and pardon this seeming affront, though indeed the
charge thereof, as unnecessary, may well be saved; for to what
purpose should I demand the sacrifice of frankincense, cakes,
goats, and swine, since all persons everywhere pay me that more
acceptable service, which all divines agree to be more effectual and
meritorious, namely, an imitation of my communicable attributes?...
Farther, why should I desire a temple, since the whole world is but
one ample continued choir, entirely dedicated to my use and service?
Nor do I want worshippers at any place where the earth wants not
inhabitants. And as to the manner of my worship, I am not yet so
irrecoverably foolish, as to be prayed to by proxy, and to have my
honour intermediately bestowed upon images and pictures, which quite
subvert the true end of religion....”
But Folly has not time to recount all the foolishness of the ignorant,
neither is it necessary. She confines herself to the follies of those
who make pretense of wisdom. Of these the theologians doubtless “least
like to be reminded of their dependence upon Folly,” but in evidence of
this fact,
“They will cut asunder the toughest argument with as much ease
as Alexander did the Gordian knot; they will thunder out so many
rattling terms as shall fright an adversary into conviction. They
are exquisitely dexterous in unfolding the most intricate mysteries;
they will tell you to a tittle all the successive proceedings of
omnipotence in the creation of the universe; they will explain
the precise manner of original sin being derived from our first
parents; they will satisfy you in what manner, by what degrees, and
in how long a time our Saviour was conceived in the Virgin’s womb,
and demonstrate in the consecrated wafer how accidents may subsist
without a subject. Nay, these are accounted trivial, easy questions;
they have yet far greater difficulties behind, which nothwithstanding
they solve with as much expedition as the former; ... whether Christ,
as a son, bears a double specifically distinct relation to God the
Father, and his virgin mother? whether this proposition is possible
to be true, the first person of the Trinity hated the second? whether
God, who took our nature upon him in the form of a man, could as
well have become a woman, a devil, a beast, an herb, or a stone? and
were it so possible that the Godhead had appeared in any shape of an
inanimate substance, how he should then have preached his gospel?
or how have been nailed to the cross? whether if St. Peter had
celebrated the eucharist at the same time our Saviour was hanging on
the cross, the consecrated bread would have been transsubstantiated
into the same body that remained on the tree?”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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