Indications of the Creator: Extracts, Bearing Upon Theology, from the History and the Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences |
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analogies appears asserted assume assumption astronomy attempts authority Axiom believe Bridgewater Treatise catastrophist causation causes and effects conceive conception condition considered contemplation conviction Copernican Copernican system course of nature creation Creator Cuvier cycle developement discovery doctrine of Final earth endeavour evidence existence express facts Final Causes forces Galileo Geoffroy geologists geology habits Idea Inductive inquiry intelligible interpretation kind knowledge language laws manner material sciences means minds mode molluscs moral morphological motion narrative Natural Theology nebular hypothesis nebulous objects Octavo opinion organs origin Palætiological Sciences philosophy physical physiology planets portion present principle produced progress providential purpose question reason reference remark researches result Scripture series of causes solar system species speculations structure suppose Supreme Cause TEN THOUSAND GREEKS tenets things thought tion trace transmutation of species truth uniform uniformitarian universe vertebrata vertebrate zoological
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Page 170 - ... towards divine mysteries. But rather, that by our mind thoroughly cleansed and purged from fancy and vanities, and yet subject and perfectly given up to the divine oracles, there may be given unto faith the things that are faith's.
Page 170 - This also we humbly and earnestly beg, that human things may not prejudice such as are Divine ; neither that from the unlocking of the gates of sense, and the kindling of a greater natural light, anything of incredulity, or intellectual night, may arise in our minds towards Divine mysteries.
Page 43 - I ascribe no intention to God, for I mistrust the feeble powers of my reason. I observe facts merely, and go no further. I only pretend to the character of the historian of what is." " I cannot make nature an intelligent being who does nothing in vain, who acts by the shortest mode, who does all for the best.
Page 71 - ... parts. We need not wonder, then, at any particular instance of this incapacity ; as, for example, that of which we have been speaking, the impossibility of accounting by any natural means for the production of all the successive tribes of plants and animals which have peopled the world in the various stages of its progress, as geology teaches us. That they were, like our own animal and vegetable contemporaries, profoundly adapted to the condition in which they were placed, we have ample reason...
Page 145 - Mars' he opens with the following passage : " I beseech my reader, that, not unmindful of the Divine goodness bestowed on man, he do with me praise and celebrate the wisdom and greatness of the Creator, which I open to him from a more inward explication of the form of the world, from a searching of causes, from a detection of the errors of vision ; and that thus, not only in the firmness and stability of the earth, he perceive with gratitude the preservation of all living things in Nature as the...
Page 170 - This Being governs all things, not as the soul of the world, but as Lord over all; and on account of his dominion he is wont to be called Lord God...
Page 135 - ... probable. And the new interpretation which the new philosophy requires, and which appears to the older school to be a fatal violence done to the authority of religion, is accepted by their successors without the dangerous results which were apprehended.
Page 44 - And this, he says, is a universal and necessary maxim. He adds, " It is well known that the anatomisers of plants and animals, in order to investigate their structure, and to obtain an insight into the grounds why and to what end such parts, why such a situation and connexion of the parts, and exactly such an internal form, come before them, assume, as indispensably necessary, this maxim, that in such a creature nothing is in vain, and proceed upon it in the same way in which in general natural philosophy...