Stiles, Ezra (1727-1795)

A discourse on the Christian union: the substance of which was delivered before the Reverend Convention of the Congregational Clergy in the Colony of Rhode-Island; assembled at Bristol April 23, 1760. By Ezra Stiles, A.M. Pastor of the Second Congregational Church in Newport.

Boston

Printed and sold by Edes and Gill

1761

"The great Mr. Locke has resembled the infant mind to a rasa tabula, as he expresses it a clean piece of paper, with no inscriptions, tho' susceptible of them."

[...] From which there is reason to suspect that no one of the human race is destitute of it. Our souls may come out of the hands of God pure and unpolluted, and the pollution take place upon our entering this state. Nor is it the result of personal action alone: it may perhaps be impossible for an innocent and unexperienced mind, commencing its infant existence in a polluted world, not to be very soon affected with the contagion. The great Mr. Locke has resembled the infant mind to a rasa tabula, as he expresses it a clean piece of paper, with no inscriptions, tho' susceptible of them. This is equally true of internal propensities, as of acquisitions in knowledge. Some indeed suppose or speak, as if they supposed that the pure and holy God infused into the soul at its first creation, and on its entrance into the world, the impure and unholy propensities both of flesh and spirit, which we find to have usurped the governing possession of us by the time we become capable of moral action; and consequently that our natures, as they come out of the hand of the benevolent creator, are corrupt, impure, and unholy. But the learned president EDWARDS has asserted, that the doctrine of original sin, according to the sense and explication of the most orthodox divines, implies no such thing:--but that, we coming pure out of the hands of God, or impurity and defilement is altogether consequential upon our entrance into this world. [...]
(p. 11)

Writing::Tabula Rasa

Searching "tabula rasa" in ECCO

Stiles, Ezra. A discourse on the Christian union: the substance of which was delivered before the Reverend Convention of the Congregational Clergy in the Colony of Rhode-Island; assembled at Bristol April 23, 1760. By Ezra Stiles, A.M. Pastor of the Second Congregational Church in Newport. [Five lines of quotations]. Boston: N.E., MDCCLXI. [1761]. Based on information from English Short Title Catalogue. Eighteenth Century Collections Online. Gale Group.
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Blank Slate; Lockean Philosophy

10/12/2006