BERKELEY'S ANALYST (1734) n 



ing?i (§ 3) . . . I say that an infidel, who believes 

 the doctrine of fluxions, acts a very inconsistent 

 part in pretending to reject the Christian religion 

 — because he cannot believe what he doth not 

 comprehend " (§ 7). . . . 



^ Berkeley is not the only one who invoked the aid of the Doctrine 

 of Fluxions in theological discussion. In a criticism {A Keviexv of the 

 Fiery Eniption^ etc, London, 1752, p. 128) of Bishop William 

 Warburton's Julian^ concerning earthquakes and fiery eruptions, 

 which, Warburton argued, defeated Julian's attempi to rebuild the 

 tempie at Jerusalem, it is stated that a connection (needed in the 

 argument) was established between the preservation of Christianity 

 and tìie destruction of Judaism by the following clever procedure: — 



"The great modem Father of the mathematics had invented a new 

 and curious way of improving that science by a fiction ; according to 

 which quantities are supposed to be generated by the continuai flux or 

 motion of others. In the application of this method it became neces- 

 sary to consider these quantities, sometinìes in a nascent, and at other 

 times in an evanescent state, by which ingenious contrivance they 

 could be made either continually to tend to and at last absolutely to 

 become nothing, or vice versa, according to the intention and occasions 

 of the Artist. Now by extending this noble invention to the two 

 religions, it evidently appeared, that, from the time of the first coming 

 of Christ, Judaism entered into its evanescent state, as on the other 

 band Christianity did into a nascent state, by which means both being 

 put into a proper flux, one was seen continually decaying, and the other 

 continually improving, till at last by the destruction of the Tempie 

 Judaism actually vanished and became nothing, and the Christian 

 religion then bursted out a perfectly generated Entity. . . . As the 

 great author of the mathematical method of fluxions had for very good 

 reasons studiously avoided giving any definition of the precise magni- 

 tude of those moments, by whose help he discovers the exact magnitude 

 of the generated quantities, so our Author [Warburton] by the same 

 rule of application, and under the influence of the same authority, was 

 fairly excused from defining that precise degree of perfection and 

 imperfection in which the two religions subsisted, during the respective 

 evanescent and nascent state of each, by the help of which he discovered 

 the precise time when Judaism was perfectly abolished, and Christianity 

 perfectly established. But we may well suppose, that the most alluring 

 charm in this extraordinary piece of ingenuity, was the creating of a 

 new character by it : For questionless he may now be justly stiled the 

 great founder and inventor of the fluxionary method of theology. . . . 

 This fancy of a necessary connexion between the Temple-edifice, and 

 the being of Christianity, . . . this pretended Christianity which is of 

 such an unsubstantial nature, that it must necessarily vanish at the 

 restoration of the Tempie, can be nothing else but a mere Ghost^ . . . 

 evidently the Ghost of departed Judaism." 



