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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: open to no passion, but the more refined one, of ambition or of pride. ' From the faint attacks of both these, the purity of their judg- ments would preserve them: in the former case, a just sense of the divine perfections; in the latter, of their own. Else, I would ask, of what value is exalted reason ? But granting there is this commonwealth of evil spirits existing in the vast expanse; yet I doubt whether they are suffered to break in upon the borders of our world. To speak plainly, I must think their agency here not only neither terrible nor troublesome, but entirely unnecessary. Our virtue is sufficiently assaulted by internal passions or external allurements; and reason often quits the field, unequal to the combat. It is to be presumed, therefore, if these spirits are per- mitted to ensnare mankind, that the good Being gives us, in those moments, an extraordinary power, to assist our reason in withstand- ing the extraordinary temptations which engage our appetites. So that, admitting the fact to be as you state it, we are just in the condition in which we were before, as to the proportion of temptation to invite transgression, and of reason to support virtue. Hence I maintain that the agency of these beings is unnecessary; and as the wisest of all Beings can do nothing that is superfluous, I must think the opinion is an error, however supported by tradition, or enforced by authority. The truth is, the belief of the evil prin- ciple (as I have already explained to you) arose from the conjectures of Ignorance; and the worship of him arose from the suggestions of Fear; the two fatal ingredients of Superstition, which begins in the first, and terminates in the last. For the understand- ing and the passions reciprocally misreprese...
| ISBN-13 | 9780217726214 |
|---|---|
| ISBN-10 | 0217726216 |
| Weight | 1.20 Pounds |
| Dimensions | 9.00 x 6.00 x 0.82 In |
| List Price | $23.19 |
| Format | Paperback |
|---|---|
| Pages | 370 pages |
| Publisher | |
| Published On | 2009-08-01 |
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