A brief memoir of the late Thomas Bateman, M.D. : physician to the Public Dispensary, Carey Street, and to the Fever Institution, Gray's-inn Lane, London, who died 9th April 1821.

  • Rumsey, James, 1778-1856.
Date:
1822
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A brief memoir of the late Thomas Bateman, M.D. : physician to the Public Dispensary, Carey Street, and to the Fever Institution, Gray's-inn Lane, London, who died 9th April 1821. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    for thej^r.?^ time after he had become a believer, his old objections should have recurred, and his new and weak faith, for which he had not learned ‘ to give a reason,’ have been unsettled by them. As his disbelief had not been occasioned, so neither was it removed, by reasoning. The only argument which I remember to liave urged to him on the subject was this—that the omniscience of the Saviour, that perfect knowledge, not only of the ex- ternal circumstances, but of all that was passing in the inmost heart of man, which he displayed in his conver- sations with the Pharisees and the multitude, as well as with his disciples, was sufficient to prove his Deity, that St. John not only asserts positively the same truth, but declares also that ‘ he made all things, and without hinr was not any thing made that was made,’ and that no one therefore who admits these proofs of the deity of Christ, as Dr. Bateman then did, could, with any consistency, doubt his control over ‘ the works of his own hands,’ his power to still the winds and the sea, or to raise a dead person to life, with a word! He acknowledged at once the truth of this argument, yet his doubts did not at all give w'ay to it; an inconsistency which seems sufficient of itself to prove that his disbelief was a matter i.f feeling, independent of reason. There were seasons when his mind was quite free from it; it came in paroxysms, and while these lasted he used to say, that it would hardly be possible to count the ridiculous doubts which thronged into his mind. The absurdity of these doubts was so obvious in many instances, that his mind detected it at once, yet their palpable I'allacy and folly did not lessen their impression on his imagination ; he had no power to banish them from his thoughts ; and what most of all dis- tressed him at these times, vvas his utter inability to bring