Thoughts on nature and religion. Or, an apology for the right of private judgment / maintained by Michael Servetus [i.e. P. Blair] M.D. in his answer to John Calvin. [Anon].

  • Blair, Patrick, M.D., of Cork, active 1738-1780.
Date:
1774
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Thoughts on nature and religion. Or, an apology for the right of private judgment / maintained by Michael Servetus [i.e. P. Blair] M.D. in his answer to John Calvin. [Anon]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    ,[ 130 ] The Jews feem to have been a people, from the beginning, whom reafon could not convert: it was figns and wonders which directed their faith. They •were worfe than the heathens; for with the Jews, reafon was no motive for convi&ion. They afked a fign, and Jefus told them, that fmce neither the mi¬ racles they had feen him perform (which they at¬ tributed to Necromancy) nor the docirine he preach¬ ed, could convince them he was fent by God ; they fhould have no other fign but that of Jonas, who was three days and three nights in the whale’s belly, and then came again into the world ; fo he fhould be fo long under the power of death, and then reaf- fume life* That the fame prophecy which had foretold his coming, had alfo foretold his death,, by thofe he came to inflruft : but that it would be better, on the day of Judgment, with thofe of Sodom and Gomor¬ rah, than with that perverfe generation; that thofe of Ninevah fhould condemn them, for that they had repented, on the preaching of Jonas, while a greater than Jonas was there. Our Saviour here upbraids the Jews with incorrigible incredulity, and feems to give them up to the perverfe difpofition of their own hearts. The miracles he had already wrought, had not convinced them, that he was affifted by a divine power neither had the conformity of his behaviour to the precepts he taught, cleared their minds of the fufpicion of hypocrify. He therefore afks them, Which of yon convinces me of finf He had explained to them the will of God, as recorded by the pro¬ phets ; and by his own example fhown, that God requires no more than man can perform. They had now therefore no cloke for their fin ; nor fhould thefe Jews have any other fign from him, to evince his divine million, than that which fhould be the confer quence of their own wickednefs, viz. his refurre£lion to lifer, after being put to death by them. Jefus’s per- fevering
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