A Body of Divinity, Vol. 1 of 2: Wherein the Doctrines of the Christian Religion Are Explained and Defended; Being the Substance of Several Lectures ... Assembly's Larger Catechism (Classic Reprint) - Softcover

Thomas Ridgeley

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1333360096 ISBN 13: 9781333360092

Publisher: Forgotten Books, 2018

Synopsis

Excerpt from A Body of Divinity, Vol. 1 of 2: Wherein the Doctrines of the Christian Religion Are Explained and Defended; Being the Substance of Several Lectures on the Assembly's Larger Catechism

Dr. Ridceley's Body of Divinity, if viewed, not in any one point of light, but in all its aspects, will, probably, be pronounced the best book of its class. In criticism, in erudition, in polemical tact, in rhetorical beauty, or in some other solitary excellence, it has, no doubt, been surpassed; but, in the aggre gate properties of a luminous and well-adjusted summary of didactic and con troversial theology, it has lived through upwards of a century without meeting its equal. No book in the English language, or, so far as I know, in any other, will serve so efficiently the purposes of a daily companion to a reflecting Christian in his inquiries into Divine truth, or a guide to a candidate for the Christian ministry in introducing him to his theological studies. Its parts are in their due proportion, and its properties in their due degree. Subjects great and small are not set up in niches of equal space, but extended or compressed according to their relative magnitude in the system of Divine truth; nor are they treated agreeably to the scope they afford for displaying the writer's ac quirements and powers, and gratifying a popular taste for eloquence or a popu lar admiration of scholarship, but discussed with entire reference to their own intrinsic claims upon both the writer's care and the reader's attention. Dr. Ridgeley has, on almost every topic which he touches, the happy but rare art of knowing when he has said enough; and never, even when drawn, in justice to his subject, into extended dissertation, does he appear to forget that his work demands due space for the whole circle of revealed truths. He is not tempted, by love of declamation or of oratorical flourish, to write a sermon in stead Of a disquisition; nor by keenness of controversial spirit, to write long and arduously when an opponent is in the field, and not to write at all when no opponent, or but an insignificant one, appears; nor by attachment to a party, or fondness for denominational peculiarities, to write munificently in favour of his sect, and write like a niggard when the interests of his sect are out of view; nor by aptitude for abstract thinking, or critical analysis, or display of erudition, to array some topics in the glitter and gorgeousness of metaphy sics and bibliographical scholarship, and either to append to minor or plain topics some trappings of learnedness, or to pass them undiscussed. His Body of Divinity is eminently distinguished by sound sense. We look in vain throughout its pages for any indications of the pedant, the bibliographe, the theorist, or the declaimer, and see only the labours of a sober, judicious divine.

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Edition details

• Publisher: Forgotten Books
• Publication date: 2018
• ISBN 10: 1333360096
• ISBN 13: 9781333360092
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 675