If, on the other hand, he says that he receives the miracles only to
authenticate what he knows very well without them, and believes true on
the information of reason alone, why trouble miracles and revelation
at all? Is not this, according to the old proverb to 'take a hatchet to
break an egg'?*
____
* If such a man says that he rejects certain doctrines, not on
rationalistic grounds, but because he denies the canonical authority, or
the interpretation of portions of the records in which they are
found, and is willing to abide by the issue if the evidence on those
points--evidence with which the human mind is quite competent to
deal,--we answer, that he is not the man with whom we are now arguing.
The points in dispute will be determined by the honest use of history,
criticism, and philology. But between such a man and one who rejects
Christianity altogether, we can imagine no consistent position.
____
Nor can we disguise from ourselves, indeed, that consistency in the
application of the essential principle of Rationalism would compel us
to go a few steps further; for since, as Bishop Butler has shown, no
greater difficulties (if so great) attach to the page of Revelation than
to the volume of Nature itself,--especially those which are involved in
that dread enigma, 'the origin of evil,' compared with which all other
enigmas are trifles,--that abyss into which so many of the
difficulties of all theology, natural and revealed, at last disembogue
themselves,--we feel that the admission of the principle of Rationalism
would ultimately drive us, not only to reject Christianity, but to
reject Theism in all its forms, whether Monotheism, or Pantheism, and
even positive or dogmatic Atheism itself.
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