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THE CONNECTION

OF

NATURAL AND REVEALED

THEOLOGY:

BEING AN ATTEMPT TO ILLUSTRATE THE

EVIDENCES AND DOCTRINES OF CHRISTIANITY

BY THEIR RELATION TO THE

INDUCTIVE PHILOSOPHY OF THE HUMAN MIND.

WITH

NOTES AND AUTHORITIES

COLLECTED FROM THE

MOST EMINENT ANCIENT AND MODERN WRITERS.

BY EDWARD WILLIAM GRINFIELD, M. A.

MINISTER OF LAURA CHAPEL, BATH.

Arena non sine calce.

LONDON:

PRINTED FOR T. CADELL AND W. DAVIES,
IN THE STRAND.

1818.

DIVINITY SCHOOL

LIBRARY

HARVARD UNIVERSITY

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"The principle in which this branch of logic hath its foundation, is a native bent, and propensity of the mind, strengthened by experience, and confirmed by habit, from which we are involuntarily led to expect that nature and truth are uniform and analogous throughout the whole universe; that similar causes of whatever kind, will in similar circumstances at all times produce similar effects; or if the causes cannot be known, that similar effects, will explain, illustrate, and account for similar effects. This principle, then, resolves itself into similitude; and reason acts upon it, as in all other cases, by comparing and judging. Thus we argue from truths which have been proved by direct reason, or which are obvious to simple apprehension, to others which are similar in cause or effect; and if paring and judging, the principle will bear us out, we conclude the latter to be true: a conclusion which will supply us with a kind and degree of truth sufficient for most of the uses and purposes of human life.

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"This method of reasoning is analogy, which according to Quintilian, is to refer a thing that is doubtful to something similar and different, that uncertainties may derive their proof from certainties.""

Tatham's Chart and Scale of Truth.. "The probability of most things, and the possibility of all things contained in the Scriptures, may well be discerned by reason itself, which makes their existence the more easy to be believed."

Baxter's Saints' Rest, Part ii. Ch. iii.

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