The Works of Daniel Waterland (V. 4)

Seitenzahl:

134

Gewicht:

204 g

Erschienen bei:

Cambridge Scholars Publishing

Kurzbeschreibung

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: A DISSERTATION UPON THE ARGUMENT A PRIORI For proving the Existence of a FIRST CAUSE: IN A LETTER TO MR. LAW. W HEN I last had the pleasure of your conversation, in company with one or two more ingenious friends, I remember we soon fell to asking each other, what news from the republic of letters; what fresh pamphlets stirring; what works, relating either to religion or science, had appeared lately, or were soon likely to appear. Hereupon several things were mentioned, and passed off in discourse: but what we happened more particularly to dwell upon, was the consideration of some metaphysical pieces concerning the proving the existence of a Deity a priori, (as the Schools term it, ) that is to say, from some supposed antecedent necessity, considered as a ground, or reason, or foundation, or internal cause, or formal cause of the Divine existence. And here, if I remember, we were inquisitive to know, what those scholastic terms imported, and whether the thought contained in them was entirely new, a recent product of the eighteenth century; as also what weight or solidity there was in it: and if there were none, whether it portended any detriment to religion or science, and might be worth the opposing or confuting. Upon thedebating and canvassing the particulars now mentioned, my opinion then was, and I am since more and more confirmed in the same, that those who have appeared as advocates for that argument a priori, seem to have had no clear notion of the thing itself, or of the terms they make use of; that the thought however was not a new thought, though perhaps it might be justly called a new tenet, as having been constantly exploded for many centuries upwards, and never once maintained by metaphysicians or divines; that moreover it was absolutely untenable...

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Mehr von:  Daniel Waterland, Cambridge Scholars Publishing