[Author’s Name]
[Institution’s Name]
Essay on Revelation doctrine
Revelation of doctrine basing itself upon the Aristotelian principle of the sufficiency of reason, It demanded assent to certain doctrinal propositions. As a theory of revelation, it was psychologically unsound because it failed to take account of the other constituents of man's psychical nature. As a polemic against deism the orthodox arguments became nugatory.
The battle waged against the deistic opponents, indeed, could never be decisive for the origin and weapons of both were the same. Each was the product of that estimate of the natural man characteristic of the Enlightenment with its fundamental principle of 'sound common sense'. So closely akin, in this respect, were the deists and their opponents that the former could refer to Archbishop Tillotson as their spiritual father. On the fly-leaf of Toland, Christianity not Mysterious, there is a quotation from the Archbishop which serves as a text for all that follows. Tindal has some fourteen extended passages from Tillotson's works in his, Christianity as Old as Creation. In one place he refers to the renowned ecclesiastic as 'the incomparable Tillotson'. (Bloesch, donald G. 1967: 550-1).
Anthony Collins, likewise contends that Tillotson is the one 'whom all English free-thinkers own as their head'. On the other hand the general position of Tillotson is the same as that adopted by the orthodox in the next century.
This fact means that each side was hindered from dealing a decisive blow on the other. It is for this reason that the arguments of the orthodox apologists were for the most part nullified, and the battles which they waged against the deists, in their defense of revealed religion were so much 'sound and fury, signifying nothing' (Bloesch, Donald g. 1971).
It was inevitable that the era should give birth to a doctrine of protest. The inevitable reaction soon set in. There thus developed, in opposition...................
