Genre:

Introduction; Extract, Essay

Publications extracted:

Kempis [1822]

Subjects:

Meteorology, Light, Physics, Biblical Authority, Piety, Empiricism, Astronomy, Travel, Analogy

    Considers that a partisan attachment to the doctrine of justification by faith has resulted in a neglect of the doctrine of sanctification: 'it is this which, on the pretence of magnifying a most essential doctrine, has, in fact, diffused a mist over the whole field of revelation; and which, like a mist in nature, not only shrouds the general landscape from all observation, but also bedims, while it adds to the apparent size of the few objects that continue visible. It is the same light which reveals the whole, that will render these last more brightly discernible than before' (724). Urges the analogy in reverse to establish that whatever tends to distort easily accessible truths will certainly hide less easily accessible truths. Argues that the doctrine of regeneration is seen at work in human experience, while that of atonement is more abstract. The man who 'without looking for a present holiness on earth [...] pictures for himself a future beatitude in heaven [...] resembles the man who, across the haze of nature's atmosphere which wraps all things in obscurity, thinks to descry the realities of the ulterior space, when he has only peopled it with gratuitous imagery of his own' (725). Draws an analogy between the Bible and a traveller's guide to establish that trust can be placed in the narrative of things beyond one's own experience in proportion to the assessed trustworthiness of the narrative of things within one's own experience.