The unity of nature / by Charles Bland Radcliffe.

Date:
1850
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The unity of nature / by Charles Bland Radcliffe. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    seems, that he can understand no one of his own acts if he assumes his own present state as the standard of judgment: but, on the contrary, if he will rouse in himself his higher being, and judge by the light which then breaks upon him, many contending mysteries will meet with their solution. Take man in his perfect state, and he exercises a true vice-regal government over his own body and the rest of creation, and wields a divinely delegated power, so long as he continues faithful in his alle- giance. In him there will be no death, or impotence, or ignorance, for by faith he receives into himself, according to his wants and wishes, the Deity, who is life, and power, and wisdom. Let man forget his allegiance, and his high faculties crumble into ruin. Man, however, is boundless for evil as for good: and as he may pro- gress infinitely into a more and more perfect assimila- tion with his Maker, and participate without limita- tion in the essence of Deity, so also he has an infinite capacity to sink into some created thing or into himself, becoming more and more enthralled by idolatry and selfishness. As he turns away to created things he will be filled with errors, and these will be manifested in every act of vitality,—in aberrations of reason, and understanding, and instinct,—in help- lessness and uncertainty,—or in diseases and death. These errors are not mysteries, if we look at them from