"But Nature had designed him to think as he pleased, and to speak as he thought: his piety was offended by the excessive worship of creatures; and the study of physics convinced him of the impossibility of transubstantiation, which is abundantly refuted by the testimony of our senses."
— Gibbon, Edward (1737-1794)
Author
Work Title
Date
w. 1788-93, 1796 (rev. 1815, 1827, 1837, 1897)
Metaphor
"But Nature had designed him to think as he pleased, and to speak as he thought: his piety was offended by the excessive worship of creatures; and the study of physics convinced him of the impossibility of transubstantiation, which is abundantly refuted by the testimony of our senses."
Metaphor in Context
Bayle was the son of a Calvinist minister in a remote province of France, at the foot of the Pyrenees. For the benefit of education, the protestants were tempted to risk their children in the catholic universities; and in the twenty-second year of his age, young Bayle was seduced by the arts and arguments of the jesuits of Thoulouse. He remained about seventeen months (19th March 1669—19th August 1670) in their hands, a voluntary captive; and a letter to his parents, which the new convert composed or subscribed (15th April 1670), is darkly tinged with the spirit of popery. But Nature had designed him to think as he pleased, and to speak as he thought: his piety was offended by the excessive worship of creatures; and the study of physics convinced him of the impossibility of transubstantiation, which is abundantly refuted by the testimony of our senses.
(p. 49)
(p. 49)
Categories
Provenance
Searching "testimony" and "senses" in ECCO-TCP
Citation
3 entries in ESTC (1796).
See "Memoirs of My Life and Writings" in volume I of Miscellaneous Works: of Edward Gibbon, Esquire. With Memoirs of His Life and Writings, Composed by Himself: Illustrated from His Letters, With Occasional Notes and Narrative, by John Lord Sheffield. 2 vols. (London: Printed for A. Strahan, and T. Cadell Jun. and W. Davies, (successors to Mr. Cadell, 1796). <Link to ESTC><Link to ECCO-TCP>
Most text drawn from Memoirs of the Life and Writings of Edward Gibbon Ed. Oliver Farrar Emerson (London: Athenaeum Press, 1898). <Link to Google Books Edition><Link to Project Gutenberg> [text copied from PG, pagination for Google Book scan].
See "Memoirs of My Life and Writings" in volume I of Miscellaneous Works: of Edward Gibbon, Esquire. With Memoirs of His Life and Writings, Composed by Himself: Illustrated from His Letters, With Occasional Notes and Narrative, by John Lord Sheffield. 2 vols. (London: Printed for A. Strahan, and T. Cadell Jun. and W. Davies, (successors to Mr. Cadell, 1796). <Link to ESTC><Link to ECCO-TCP>
Most text drawn from Memoirs of the Life and Writings of Edward Gibbon Ed. Oliver Farrar Emerson (London: Athenaeum Press, 1898). <Link to Google Books Edition><Link to Project Gutenberg> [text copied from PG, pagination for Google Book scan].
Date of Entry
09/09/2013
