Publisher's Synopsis
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated.1850 Excerpt: ... SCHOLASTIC THEOLOGY. "And they said, Go to, let us build us a city and a tower whose top may reach unto Heaven, and let us make us a name." Men are ambitious builders, rejoicing in the construction of symmetrical towers, pyramids, and pinnacles, whose tops hold communion with the clouds. But our fondness for systematic architecture displays itself feebly in material piles of masonry, compared with its development in the far prouder fabrics of scientific composition, by which in our Religious capacity we aspire to reach the very Heaven of Heavens; and on which we actually do contrive to lose ourselves in dizzy regions "without;' form and void." These earth-spurning sky-piercing structures, whose prodigious shadows darken our Planet, claim a title loftier than their own tops, and are called "Theologies." Theology, being a greek compound signifying a science which investigates the Existence and attributes of the Godhead, the ubiquitous cause, centre, and circumference of Universal Creation! It were no hard task with cyclopaediac assistance, to enumerate and specify a startling list of these portentous "systems" each of them looming through time and space, as dim fantastic and dangerous, more like the baseless fabric of a dream than a day-light reality of truth and soberness. Yet the meanest among them might well attract and reward our best attention, if our span of life were not too brief and momentous for the indulgence of curious inquiry. The least of these Theological schemes has been able in its own age and latitude to command the full consent and confidence of immense communities, looked up to by the Nations as an everlasting tower of strength and safety. Each of them has rivetted the reverential faith of multitudes, as an oracular shrine from which issue...
