LIFE IS not long enough for a
religion of inference; we shall never have done beginning, if we determine to
begin with proof. We shall ever be
laying our foundations; we shall turn theology into evidences, and divines into
textuaries.
WE SHALL never get at our first
principles. Resolve to believe nothing,
and you must prove your proofs and analyze your elements, sinking farther and
farther, and finding in the lowest depth a lower deep, till you come to the
broad bosom of skepticism.
I WOULD rather be bound to defend the
reasonableness of assuming that Christianity is true, than to demonstrate a
moral governance from the physical world. Life is for action. If we insist
on proofs for everything, we shall never come to action: To act you must assume, and that assumption
is faith.
[John Henry Cardinal Newman, DISCUSSIONS AND ARGUMENTS ON VARIOUS
SUBJECTS (London: Longman's, Green and Co., 1907) 292]
(Image: Shrine of the Immaculate Conception, Washington DC)
(Image: Shrine of the Immaculate Conception, Washington DC)
