Inhaltsangabe
This historic book may have numerous typos, missing text or index. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. 1835. Not illustrated. Excerpt: ... ties rectified by trying them by this strait line, they venture to bend the strait line till it fits their own crooked opinions; if they are determined to make between them a conformity which they do not find, they are not far from concluding that they have found it. By such means, a very little knowledge, and a great deal of presumption, has been the groundwork of many a novel and pernicious system. Systems, indeed there will be as many as they are novel and pernicious; for though men are as tenacious of error, for a time, as if their convictions were as strong as they could be if it were truth, yet the persuasion of error is not likely to be so lasting. As no error can be so irresistible as a known truth, it cannot long carry the same weight with it. He who adopted it, at length finding it not to go, as we say, on all fours, is more likely to plunge into a succession of errors, each deeper than the other, than to return to the truth which he has abandoned. Whether the pride of not going back, or the hope that, in his wider wanderings, he may extricate himself, it is hard to say; for error is as endless as truth is powerful. Some minds are so constituted, that it is easier to them to produce objections to truth, than to embrace it; they therefore resist truth, when they might resist the obstacles which prevent their receiving it. Our adoption of error as naturally proceeds from our abuse of reason, as our adoption of truth from the right use of it. The question, to a plain Christian, seems to be settled by this declaration of our Lord: "He that doeth his will shall know of the doctrine, whether it be of God." As, in many of those to whom we have been alluding, their aberrations seem to have been occasioned rather by the vagrancy of the imagination than the cor...
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