his
score, we ought to deny that the round towers of this country had any
origin, because history does not disclose it; or that any individual came
from Adam who cannot produce the table of his ancestry. Yet Gibbon argues
against the darkness at the Passion, from the accident that it is not
mentioned by Pagan historians:--as well might he argue against the
existence of Christianity itself in the first century, because Seneca,
Pliny, Plutarch, the Jewish Mishna, and other authorities are silent about
it. Protestants argue in a parallel way against Transubstantiation, and
Arians against our Lord's Divinity, viz., on the ground that extant
writings of certain Fathers do not witness those doctrines to their
satisfaction:--as well might they say that Christianity was not spread by
the Twelve Apostles, because we know so little of their labours. The
evidence of History, I say, is invaluable in its place; but, if it assumes
to be the sole means of gaining Religious Truth, it goes beyond its place.
We are putting it to a larger office than it can undertake, if we
countenance the usurpation; and we are turning a true guide and blessing
into a source of inexplicable difficulty and interminable doubt.

And so of other sciences: just as Comparative Anatomy, Political Economy,
the Philosophy of History, and the Science of Antiquities may be and are
turned against Religion, by being taken by themselves, as I have been
showing, so a like mistake may befall any other. Grammar, for instance, at
first sight does not appear to admit of a perversion; yet Horne Tooke made
it the vehicle of his peculiar scepticism. Law would seem to have enough
to do with its own clients, and their affairs; and yet Mr. Bentham made a
treatise on Judicial Proofs a covert attack upon the miracles of
Revelation. And in like manner Physiology may deny moral evil and human
responsibility; Geology may deny Moses; and Logic may deny the Holy
Trinity;(12) and other sciences, now rising into notice, are or will be
victims of a similar abuse.

14.

And now to sum up what I have been saying in a few words. My object, it is
plain, has been--not to show that Secular Science in its various
departments may take up a position hostile to Theology;--this is rather the
basis of the objection with which I opened this Discourse;--but to point
out the cause of an hostility to which all parties will bear witness. I
have been insisting then on this, that the hostility in qu