Theism; being the Baird Lecture of 1876Flint, Robert
Religion
Theism; being the Baird Lecture of 1876
Flint, Robert
Theism
be said that there is any impossibility in the nature of the thing
that the perfections inhering in an _infinite_ subject should be
in the highest or even in an infinite degree. Indeed it is scarce
possible for us (for the reasons already assigned) to conceive how they
should be otherwise. Neither can any such impossibility arise from
the nature of the perfections themselves. If, then, the perfections
of a self-existent being cannot be limited by itself, nor by anything
external to it, nor from any invincible repugnancy in the nature of
the perfections themselves, I conclude that the self-existent being
must not only have all possible perfections, but every perfection in an
_infinite_ degree."
The 'Demonstration of the Existence of God against Atheists,' by the
Rev. Colin Campbell, Minister of the Parish of Ardchattan, 1667-1726,
has been recently printed for private circulation from a MS. now
deposited in the library of Edinburgh University. The editor has
added to it a learned and admirable appendix. Mr Campbell's manner of
proving that there is one, and but one, infinite Being, is as follows:
"As everything which hath a beginning forces confession of one who
hath none--because to produce is an action, and must presuppose an
actor,--by the same force of reason, we must confess that whatever is
limited, or made of such and such a limited nature, is limited by
something which did limit it to be such a thing, and no other. For
limit is an action, and confesseth an actor. So that there must be a
being anterior to all limited beings, and, consequently, some being
that is not at all limited, to evite the absurd progress of running
infinitely upwards unlimited beings, without a single limiter. Now, an
unlimited being is the same as to say an infinite being. And so, by the
force of reason, we have a being which is eternal, which is infinite.
There can be but one infinite, because, were there two or more, the
one would limit the other; and so the infinite would be finite, the
unlimited would be limited. Therefore, the unlimited, or infinite, must
be one only; and that one purely single and uncompounded, else every
part of the compound would limit the other parts, so that all the parts
would be limited. And a whole whose parts are limited must be limited
in the whole, it being impossible that a compound or conjunction of
finites can, by addition, produce an infinite, unless you imagine this
complex whole to consist partly of finites, and also of some infinite.
But the one infinite part, if infinite, cannot leave place for any
other finite to make it up, it being itself unlimited and infinite; and
such an addition would speak it limited by the part which was added.
And a thousand like absurdities would follow."
Wollaston's attempted demonstration is contained in the fifth section
of his 'Religion of Nature Delineated' (1725). This is a common book,
and the mere reference to it must suffice.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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