The Connexion of Natural and Divine Truth: Or, The Study of the Inductive Philosophy, Considered as Subservient to Theology |
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adjustment admit adopted æther analogy animal appear apply argument arrangement authority belief Bridgewater Treatise cause and effect conclusions of natural conjecture connexion consideration considered contemplation contended contradiction cosmogony creation Cuvier Decalogue Deity distinct Divine doctrines earth entire essential established existence extent fact final causes geologist geology gravitation ground idea imagined inductive philosophy inductive reasoning inference infinite instance intelligence interpretation investigation irreligion kind language limited manifest material meaning merely mind moral causation natural philosophy natural theology nature of physical Newton notion object observe organized particular passage perceive perfections phenomena philosophical physical causes physical inquiry physical laws physical science physical truth physiologist planets precise present principle proof question rational evidence reason recognise recondite referred relation religion religious remarks revelation Scripture sense sical species speculations sublime suppose theory things tical tion trace truths of natural universal vast whole writers
Popular passages
Page 170 - But if the matter was evenly disposed throughout an infinite space, it could never convene into one mass, but some of it would convene into one mass, and some into another, so as to make an infinite number of great masses, scattered at great distances from one to another throughout all that infinite space.
Page 73 - The laws of attraction and repulsion are to be regarded as laws of motion, and these only as rules or methods observed in the productions of natural effects, the efficient and final causes whereof are not of mechanical consideration. Certainly, if the explaining a phenomenon be to assign its proper efficient and final cause,* it should seem the mechanical philosophers never explained any thing ; their province being only to discover the laws of nature, that is, the general rules and methods of motion,...
Page 182 - And though every true Step made in this Philosophy brings us not immediately to the Knowledge of the first Cause, yet it brings us nearer to it, and on that account is to be highly valued.
Page 299 - And hardly do we guess aright at things that are upon earth, and with labour do we find the things that are before us: but the things that are in heaven who hath searched out?
Page 122 - ... que les révolutions du soleil. Dans l'ignorance des liens qui les unissent au système entier de l'univers, on les a fait dépendre des causes finales, ou du hasard, suivant qu'ils arrivaient et se succédaient avec régularité, ou sans ordre apparent; mais ces causes imaginaires ont été successivement reculées avec les bornes de nos connaissances, et disparaissent entièrement devant la saine philosophie, qui ne voit en elles que l'expression de l'ignorance où nous sommes des véritables...
Page 161 - Whereas the main Business of Natural Philosophy is to argue from Phenomena without feigning Hypotheses, and to deduce Causes from Effects, till we come to the very first Cause, which certainly is not mechanical; and not only to unfold the Mechanism of the World, but chiefly to resolve these and such like Questions.
Page 313 - ... newness, to interest with a perpetual charm the growing mind of a rational being, and lead him by a flowery path t o the cultivation of the divine thing within him, which raises him above all that his senses make known; and thus to fit him for the highest contemplation of which he is capable, namely, the relation which he bears to the unseen AUTHOR of all this visible material world.
Page 312 - The full and complete system of organic life now on the globe includes all the effects of land and sea, warmth and cold, divided regions, and all the other things which are the diversifying causes of nature ; and it is no wonder if, before this land was raised from the deep, and the present distinction of natural regions was produced, there was not the same extreme variety of natural productions. Till that variety was occasioned on the globe, it was not the fitting place for intellectual man that...
Page 161 - Now by the help of these Principles, all material Things seem to have been composed of the hard and solid Particles above-mention'd, variously associated in the first Creation by the Counsel of an intelligent Agent. For it became him who created them to set them in order. And if he did so, it's unphilosophical to seek for any other Origin of the World, or to pretend that it might arise out of a Chaos by the mere Laws of Nature; though being once form'd, it may continue by those Laws for many Ages.
Page 205 - Revelation is natural reason enlarged by a new set of discoveries communicated by God immediately, which reason vouches the truth of, by the testimony and proofs it gives, that they come from God. So that he that takes away reason, to make way for revelation, puts out the light of both...