If then
it is plain that God has not thought it needful to communicate to the
writer of the Scriptural Cosmogony the knowledge revealed by modern
researches, why do we not confess it? We would do so if it did not
conflict with a human theory which presumes to point out how God ought
to have instructed man.[184] The writer had no authority for what he
asserts so solemnly and unhesitatingly, for he was an early speculator
who stated as facts what he only conjectured as probabilities. Yet he
seized one great truth, in which he anticipated the highest revelation
of modern inquiry; namely, the unity of the design of the world, and
its subordination to one sole Maker and Law-giver.[185] But no one
contends that the Mosaic view can be used as a basis of astronomical or
geological teaching; and we must therefore consider the Scriptural
cosmogony not as "an authentic utterance of divine knowledge, but a
human utterance, which it has pleased Providence to use in a special way
for the education of mankind."[186]
VI. TENDENCIES OF RELIGIOUS THOUGHT IN ENGLAND, 1688-1750.
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