The Works of the Late Right Honorable Henry St. John, Lord Viscount Bolingbroke, Volume 4

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P. Byrne, Grafton Street, 1793

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Page 195 - Then Paul stood in the midst of Mars' hill and said, Ye men of Athens, I perceive that in all things ye are too superstitious. For as I passed by and beheld your devotions, I found an altar with this inscription, TO THE UNKNOWN GOD. Whom therefore ye ignorantly worship, him declare I unto you.
Page 239 - Our physical and moral systems are carried round in one perpetual revolution, from generation to corruption, and from corruption to generation; from ignorance to knowledge, and from knowledge to ignorance; from barbarity to civility, and from civility to barbarity.
Page 190 - Hence we see that reason, speaking never so clearly to the wise and virtuous, had never authority enough to prevail on the multitude, and to persuade the societies of men that there was but one God that alone was to be owned and worshipped.
Page 395 - They recorded his doctrines particularly, they recorded them in the very words in which he taught them, and they were careful to mention the several occasions on which he delivered them to his disciples or others. If therefore Plato and Xenophon tell us, with a good degree of certainty, what Socrates taught, the two evangelists seem to tell us, with much more, what the Saviour taught, and commanded them to teach.
Page 246 - Jews themselves, a people not known to the greatest part of mankind ; contemned and thought vilely of, by those nations that did know them ; and therefore very unfit and unable to propagate the doctrine of one God in the world...
Page 87 - In like manner, the knowledge of the Creator is on many accounts necessary to such a creature as man: and therefore we are made able to arrive, by a proper exercise of our mental faculties, from a knowledge of God's works to a knowledge of his existence, and of that infinite power and wisdom which are demonstrated to us in them. Our knowledge concerning God goes no further.
Page 324 - ... vain to reduce the entire plan of divine wisdom in the mission of Christ, and the redemption of man, to a coherent, intelligible, and reasonable system of doctrines and facts. Is it strange that it should be so? It could not be otherwise. Two of the evangelists recorded, as witnesses, what they saw and heard in this extraordinary conjuncture, and two others what they were told about it. Not the whole indeed; for then the world could not have contained the books that would have been written, but...
Page 255 - It may sound oddly, but it is true in many cases, to say, that if men had learned less, their way to knowledge would be shorter and easier. It is indeed shorter and easier to proceed from ignorance to knowledge, than from error. They who are in the last, must unlearn before they can learn to any good purpose; and the first part of this double task is not in many respects the least difficult, for which reason it is seldom undertaken.
Page 246 - God, maker of heaven and earth, was revealed to them, yet that revelation was shut up in a little corner of the world, amongst a people, by that very law which they received with it, excluded from a commerce and communication with the rest of mankind.
Page 554 - Verily I fay unto you, Whatfoever ye fhall bind on earth, fhall be bound in heaven : and whatfoever ye fhall loofe on earth, fhall be loofed in heaven.

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