Directory_and_Chronicle_1850 — Page 468

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Defense of an Essay, &c.

Ava.

had not a divine nature; they were weak, frail, and feeble men, of like infirmities with the rest of their species, and therefore no gods." Waterland's Works, Vol. I, p. 305.

The two considerations mentioned by Dr. L. do not, it

appears to me, in any way "fortify" the inference he derived from his fanciful grammatical test, in favor of God's being a relative term, which raises so very slight a presumption in its favor, that it left, I suspect, on the minds of most of his readers, the whole weight of the proposition to be sustained by these subsequent considerations.

In answer to the simple authority on which he relies-that of Sir Isaac Newton-I will take the liberty to quote a paragraph or two from a very clever and excellent review of the Doctor's "Argument,” which was published in the China Mail of the 23d May, 1850. The Reviewer says,

"The third fortification is 'the great authority of New- ton.' The quotation from the Scholium of the Principia is in point, and seems to agree with the Doctor's view, but can not corroborate it. Newton, beyond the limits of abstract and natural science, becomes as another man. Does not the Doctor feel this in reading his conjecture respecting prophecy, and his tracts on 'Those two noted corruptions of Scripture?' If he adhere to Newton in all these things, from the convictions of reason, will he not bring the great author to the same test here, according to the maxim quoted by himself, non enim tam auctoritatis in disputando, quam rationis momenta quærenda sunt ?

"But is it not this philosopher's sole object to refute the doctrines of the Epicureans, who believed in the existence of inactive deities, and the Stoics and others who held to anima mundi? Newton is main- taining, we apprehend, a question of facts, and not of the application of words. He does not wish to prove that the term God is equivalent to the term Lord, but that God is the Lord, the universal Ruler over a dominion distinct from himself, which the ancient philosophers denied.

"Again; in the Scholium on his profound contemplations on the works of God, Sir Isaac naturally views the Infinite One as the God of nature, and not as the self-existent, prior to all secondary beings. A plurality of objects is necessary to constitute relation, but when God dwelt alone, He sustained no relations, and the term applied to Ilim in that state is not a relative. Newton says, 'a being without dominion however perfect, is not the Lord God;' but God he surely was without a creature and without a subject. If Newton had been writing a book of synonyms, he would not have defined the word God merely by Lord, and made the term relative because another title of the same being necessarily implies relation."