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Source: Sämtliche schriften und briefe series VI volume 4 Deutsche Akademie der Wissenschaften (ed) p 2298 Date: 1685 Translated from the Latin View this translation in PDF format (93k) Back to home page Search texts by keyword(s): (For search strings, just type the words; don't use quotation marks) |
LEIBNIZ: BRIEF PREPATORY REMARKS IN RELATION TO APOLOGETIC WORKS[A VI 4, p2298] Book 4 of Augustine's De trinitate: "No sensible person will decide against reason, no Christian against the Scriptures, no peaceful man against the Church."1 Apology for the Catholic faith from right reason. There would be no obligation to believe unless God himself, speaking in us through reason, had provided the signs by which God’s word could be distinguished from the word of an imposter. Christ himself said: "if they had not heard me, they would not have sinned."2 Protestant Theologians themselves are compelled to separate their theory from practice, and in so doing they give testimony against themselves, for they do not grant to others the freedom they have given themselves. And when they transferred the Protestant theory about instruction into practice, Anabaptists and Quakers and others of their ilk introduced that dreadful confusion in which anything that comes to anyone’s mind is considered right to say and do, as if it were a dictate of the divine spirit. On the other hand, while the Antitrinitarians and those like them put into practice the same theory about doctrine, the mysteries of the Christian faith had already been reduced almost to nothing among them. NOTES: 1. Augustine, De trinitate libri XV, IV.6.10. English translation from Saint Augustine, The Trinity, ed. and trans. Stephen McKenna (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 1963), 144. 2. John 15.22. © Lloyd Strickland 2019. Revised 2022 |