Bad Advertisement?
Are you a Christian?
Online Store:Visit Our Store
| Chapter III.—Faith Not a Product of Nature.
PREVIOUS SECTION - NEXT SECTION - HELP 
Chapter III.—Faith Not a Product of Nature.
Now the followers of Basilides regard faith as
natural, as they also refer it to choice, [representing it] as finding
ideas by intellectual comprehension without demonstration; while the
followers of Valentinus assign faith to us, the simple, but will have
it that knowledge springs up in their own selves (who are saved by
nature) through the advantage of a germ of superior excellence, saying
that it is as far removed from faith as2176
| 2176 The text reads ἤ: but Sylb. suggests
ᾑ, which we have adopted. | the spiritual is from the
animal. Further, the followers of Basilides say that faith as well as
choice is proper according to every interval; and that in consequence
of the supramundane selection mundane faith accompanies all nature, and
that the free gift of faith is comformable to the hope of each. Faith,
then, is no longer the direct result of free choice, if it is a natural
advantage.
Nor will he who has not believed, not being the author
[of his unbelief], meet with a due recompense; and he that has believed
is not the cause [of his belief]. And the entire peculiarity and
difference of belief and unbelief will not fall under either praise or
censure, if we reflect rightly, since there attaches to it the
antecedent natural necessity proceeding from the Almighty. And if we
are pulled like inanimate things by the puppet-strings of natural
powers, willingness2177
| 2177 καὶ τὸ ἑκούσιον
is supplied as required by the sense. The text has ἀκούσιον
only, for which Lowth proposes to read ἑκούσιον. | and unwillingness, and impulse, which is the
antecedent of both, are mere redundancies. And for my part, I am
utterly incapable of conceiving such an animal as has its appetencies,
which are moved by external causes, under the dominion of necessity.
And what place is there any longer for the repentance of him who was
once an unbeliever, through which comes forgiveness of sins? So that
neither is baptism rational, nor the blessed seal,2178
| 2178 Either baptism or the
imposition of hands after baptism. [For an almost pontifical decision
as to this whole matter, with a very just eulogy of the German
(Lutheran) confirmation-office, see Bunsen, Hippol., iii. pp.
214, 369.] | nor the Son, nor
the Father. But God, as I think, turns out to be the distribution to
men of natural powers, which has not as the foundation of salvation
voluntary faith.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
|
