The Testimony of the Heathen to the Truths of Holy Writ: A Commentary on the Old and New Testaments, Compiled Almost Exclusively From Greek and Latin Authors of the Classical Ages of Antiquity (Classic Reprint)

Thomas Street Millington

ISBN 10: 0243954913 / ISBN 13: 9780243954919

Published by Forgotten Books, 2018

About this Item

New Book. Shipped from UK. Established seller since 2000.

Seller Inventory # LW-9780243954919

Bibliographic Details

• Title: The Testimony of the Heathen to the Truths of Holy Writ: A Commentary on the Old and New Testaments, Compiled Almost Exclusively From Greek and Latin Authors of the Classical Ages of Antiquity (Classic Reprint)
• Publisher: Forgotten Books
• Publication Date: 2018
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0243954913
• ISBN 13: 9780243954919
• Binding: PAP
• Condition: New
• Weight: 1049 grams

About this title

Synopsis

Excerpt from The Testimony of the Heathen to the Truths of Holy Writ: A Commentary on the Old and New Testaments, Compiled Almost Exclusively From Greek and Latin Authors of the Classical Ages of Antiquity

Without some measure of divine enlightenment there could indeed be no real appreciation of righteousness and truth, no sense of honour and integrity, no regard for moral excellence and virtue. The mind of man would never have been able without higher direction to discern between good and evil, truth and error; nor could the conscience, save by divine instruction, have learned to approve the one or to condemn the other. Destitute of heavenly guidance, human reason would have been but a higher kind of animal instinct, more perfect in its operations than that of the brutes, because proceeding from a finer organisation and assisted by quicker senses and perceptions, but essentially of the same nature. God therefore not only manifested himself by his outward works to the eyes and senses of his creatures, but made his voice also to be heard in the inner man. While the great lights in the heavens declared his glory and proclaimed his handy work to all the world, some rays Of heavenly wisdom penetrated also to the souls of his creatures, and taught them not alone to know, but to approve things excellent.

Nor can it be supposed that when, at a later period, God made choice of a peculiar people to be the recipients of his written law, and to be taught by a special revelation, other nations were deprived of those earlier sources of wisdom and direction which had, till then, been common to all. The Court of the Gentiles was still open for the world at large, though the inner temple was for the Jew alone; and the former, though excluded from the special privileges Of the favoured race, were not therefore cut off from those opportunities of knowing and reverencing their Maker which they had before enjoyed, and which, during the first ages of the world, had supplied the place of the written commandment and the law of ordinances. The numberless examples of piety and virtue, of benevolence and moral recti tude, which we meet with in the history of pagan nations, and the general, though sometimes reluctant, admiration which these qualities evoked, and still more, the grand, and may we not say divine, sentiments expressed by many of their philosophers on the subject of religion, forbid us to doubt that God did at all times shed, even upon the Gentiles, some purer, warmer rays of knowledge than the light of nature could alone impart.

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