16 Feb y 1813 +

Church II Topics Ch.6. declaration

14 §1. Abstract

Part 5. Power over

(1)

By what has been

said it has been

shown that when

a body of authority

has been collected

(no matter how) credence

may be obtained

not only to unintelligible

but to

what did a man

suffer himself to

examine it would

clearly appear

false.

By From what has been said, it has been it is rendered, it is supposed

sufficiently tolerably evident, how it is that, [when, a com

no matter by what means, a competent body of authority —

intellectual authority - has been collected,] credence

may be obtained for any one imaginable proposition

as well as any other: - obtained not only

for a proposition, of to the terms of which [+]

[+] as in the case of an

unknown language

[+] as in the case of

a point-blank contradiction

in terms

the person individual proposed believer to be persuaded

neither does answer or so much as concerns

himself able to to annex any meaning, but to a proposition,

the falsity of which, were he to permitt suffer himself

to attend to it with a view the purpose of forming an indigenous

persuasion concerning in relation to it, would have been impressed upon

his mind by the strongest and clearest perception

possible:—

The

A process which is

in part forcibly

decepti ous may be

in another part, freely

deceptious - In the

first place coercion

is employed in the

second place intellectual

authority

or of persuasion

to which, real authority

is not necessary.

that in this case the same process which in

one part viz. the first former part of its operation is forcibly deceptious, may

in another part, viz the latter part of its operation, be

freely deceptious. In the first former part coercive authority

is the instrument that operates: and the product

is declaration of persuasion: in the latter part

the instrument that operates is intellectual authority;

that is composed of the such appearance or semblance of that persuasion

the declaration of which hath, as above,

been produced.

[+] to the production

of which no not any

real persuasion of

either kind, indigenous

or adoptive is necessary;

necessary to it? - no,

nor yet compatible with

it in so far as force

is the instrument by

which the declaraton

has been produced.