On Natural Theology Volume 1

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1850 edition. Excerpt: ... On natural theology Thomas Chalmers PREFACE. The Science of Theology in its most general meaning, as comprehensive both of the Natural and the Revealed, might, in respect to the order of its topics and propositions, be presented to the disciple in two different ways--so as, if not to affect the substance of its various arguments, at least to affect the succession of them. According to the first way, a commencement is made, as if at the fountain-head of the whole themei with the being and the constitution and the character of God; and then from this point of departure, a demonstration is carried forward in the footsteps of the history of the divine administration, from the first purposes of the uncreated mind to the final issues of His government in eternity. This most frequently is the course of those Christian writers, who attempt the construction of an entire system of Theology. They descend from the heights of the eternity that is past; and, often, it is not till they have bestowed their treatment on such antemundane topics as the mysteries of the divine essence and the high pre-ordinations of God, that !- they enter on the development of these in the creation of a universe and its moral history onward to the consummation of all things. One cannot peruse the successive titles of the chapters in the systematic works of our best and greatest authors, without observing how much the arrangement proceeds in the chronological order of the history of the divine government--so that, after the establishment of the initial lessons which we have now specified, we are very generally conducted along some such series of doctrines as the following-- the formation of man; his original state of innocence; the introdu