'A great part of the reasoning founded upon prophecies is unsound. Much
of the reasoning employed by the early Christian Fathers, by the
Schoolmen, and by the Reformers had no intrinsic force: it was based on
ignorance and error. Yet theologians are prone to cling to it. They
forget the age in which they live. They linger, they live, among the
shades of the past. Their thoughts, their dialect, their way of
reasoning are all of other days.
'The quality of another kind of reasoning common among divines is, that
it is not understood by the mass of men, and that it does not seem to be
understood by those who use it.'
17. In the following paragraph he speaks important words about theology
as well as about theological reasoning.
'There is much theology,' says he, 'that a good man cannot preach. It
would shock his own feelings; it would contradict his prayers; it would
be fatal to all his efforts to do good; it would drive off the sinner to
a hopeless distance, though he had begun to return to God; it would be
at war with the elementary convictions which men have of what must be
true. Among the doctrines of this theology are those,--that Christ died
for the salvation of only a part of mankind,--that we are to blame for
Adam's sin,--condemned for an act done ages before we were born.
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