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The Chairman.— I am sure you all feel very much indebted to Mr. 
De La Mare for his interesting paper, more especially as it relates to so 
much that this society was founded to bring before the notice of the public, 
and I beg to propose that the thanks of the meeting be given to the author. 
(Hear, hear.) I shall now be glad to hear any observations upon the 
paper. 
Rev. C. A. Row. — I have given a great deal of consideration to the sub- 
ject of the paper, and I think the easiest way in which I can deal with it 
now, will be not to discuss the whole of it, but to select merely one or two 
points on which to express my own views. While the paper was being read, 
I noted down no less than twenty-six of those points, and I think, if I were 
to attempt to discuss them all, I should not have finished by sunrise. I so far 
agree with Mr. De La Mare as to think it is possible to make theology more 
scientific than it is at present, but I cannot go further than that ; and I think 
that we have no prospect of making theology a science in itself. To my mind, 
theology consists of, or rather is illustrated by, ten, twenty, or thirty totally 
distinct and separate sciences. Now just let me draw your attention to a few 
of the sources from which anything like a scientific theology must come, if we 
can possibly have a theological science at all. There are only two principles 
that can be applied to science, — the principle of induction and the principle 
of deduction. Is scientific theology an a priori or an a posteriori science ? 
Until we determine that, we cannot advance one single step. The science of 
theology can only be founded on a priori science, so far as we are able to give to 
theology distinct and accurate definitions. Now several things have been men- 
tioned in the paper as definitions and axioms, and so forth ; but I have failed 
to find in any one of them that which would amount to a proper definition, 
and I cannot find any of them participating in the nature of axiomatic truth. 
In one passage, the word perfect ” has been used by Mr. De La Mare ; but 
while he has applied it to the Deity in one sense, he has applied it to man in 
another. It may be a distinct and a positive truth when it is said that God 
is angry or furious ; but those phrases are used, not in relation to Deity itself, 
but in relation to man’s conceptions of Deity. The Articles of the Church 
of England say most plainly and distinctly that the Deity has no body, 
parts, or passions ; and the Deity, therefore, in relation to Himself is not 
angry or furious, while in relation to man’s conceptions this may be true. You 
see we are bound first, to distinguish between truth as applied to the Deity 
and as applied to man. A priori science is only possible where strict de- 
finition is possible. Bear in mind that I am not contending that there should be 
the strictly logical definition, consisting, in the phraseology of logicians, of 
genus and differentia ; but until we can have a definition to describe one par- 
ticular thing so as to distinguish it from everything else, such a science is 
not possible. The definitions in the first book of Euclid are rational in the 
strictest sense of the term, because they do separate and mark off the thing 
defined from every other object, although they are not logical. In Euclid, 
geometry deals with one idea of the human mind, — the idea of extension ; but 
in theology, taking the word in the large sense, as it has been taken by 
