200 NATURAL THEOLOGY, 



controversies and creeds of the early Christian Churches 

 have led to a more obscure and unsettled conception of 

 the Deity than we find in some of these great heathen 

 writers. The old and vehement disputes concerning 

 the nature of the Trinity, though now for a time sunk 

 into silence amidst other controversies, were yet still 

 rife in my younger days, and but two centuries ago 

 called for the interposition of the sovereign to arrest the 

 angry argument of two of our most eminent divines. 



The metaphysical or a priori proof of a Deity, 

 variously attempted at successive times, is felt more as 

 an exercise of logic than a conclusion of the reason. 

 The speculations of Proclus and the neo-Platonists in 

 the nature of the Supreme Being, repeated in modern 

 phrase by Hegel and others of his school, leave the 

 question in the obscurity from which they profess to 

 withdraw it. 1 The schoolmen of the dark ages be- 

 stowed their logical subtleties on the subject without 

 solving any of its difficulties. Archbishop Anselm is 

 perhaps the one who has left the deepest mark of his 

 genius upon it. The axiom in his Prologium, that the 

 idea of God in the mind of man is in itself an irrefra- 

 gable proof of his existence, descended in succession to 

 Descartes and Leibnitz, and has given foundation to the 

 belief of many men of lesser note in the world. The 

 labours of Dr. S. Clark on this subject are well-nigh 

 forgotten. 



1 There is more wisdom, because more candid confession of ignorance, 

 in the words of St. Augustine : ' Verius cogitatur Deus quam dicitur, 

 \erius est quam cogitatur.' Sir I. Newton's expression, ' Non est seternitas, 

 sed aeternus et infinitus ; non est duratio et spatium, sed durat et adest/ 

 escapes pantheism by giving personality. 



