The British Plutarch, Vol. 4 Of 6: Containing the Lives of the Most Eminent Divines, Patriots, Statesmen, Warriors, Philosophers, Poets, and Artists, of Great Britain and Ireland, from the Accession of Henry VIII. to the Present Time (Classic Reprint)

Excerpt from The British Plutarch, Vol. 4 of 6: Containing the Lives of the Most Eminent Divines, Patriots, Statesmen, Warriors, Philosophers, Poets, and Artists, of Great Britain and Ireland, From the Accession of Henry VIII. To the Present Time

I cannot refrain from attaching in a note a most splendid pas sage from Mr. Erskine's Speech upon Paine's Age of Reason, ' though perhaps familiar to many of my readers - But it seems. This is an Age of Reason, and the time and the person are at last arrived, that are to dissipate the errors, which have over spread the past generations of ignorance. The believers in Christianity are many; but it belongs to the few, that are wise, to correct their coedulity. Belief is an act of reason; and superior reason may, therefore, dictate to the weak. In running the mind along the list of sincere and devout Christians, I cannot help lamenting that newton had not lived to this day, to have had his shallowness filled up with this new flood 'of light. Bnt the subject is too aweful for irnny. I' will' speak plainly, and directly. Newton was a Christian: Newton, whose mind burst forth from the fetters fastened by nature upon on: finite conceptions; Newton, whose science was truth, and the foundation of whose knowledge of 'it was philosophy, not those visionary and arrogant presumptions which too often usurp it's name, but philosophy resting upon the basis of mathematics which like figures cannot lie; Newton, who carried the line and rule to the uttermost barriers of creation, and explored. The principle, by which all created matter exists and is held. Together.

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