CYCLOPEDIA of BIBLICAL, THEOLOGICAL and ECCLESIASTICAL LITERATURE Neceres - Nevis by James Strong & John Mcclintock
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THE AGES DIGITAL LIBRARY REFERENCE CYCLOPEDIA of BIBLICAL, THEOLOGICAL and ECCLESIASTICAL LITERATURE Neceres - Nevis by James Strong & John McClintock To the Students of the Words, Works and Ways of God: Welcome to the AGES Digital Library. We trust your experience with this and other volumes in the Library fulfills our motto and vision which is our commitment to you: MAKING THE WORDS OF THE WISE AVAILABLE TO ALL — INEXPENSIVELY. AGES Software Rio, WI USA Version 1.0 © 2000 2 Neceres is the name which the Turks give to a clan of people inhabiting the mountains about Jebily, in Syria, who are of a very strange and singular character. It is the principle of the Neceres to adhere to no certain religion; chameleon like, they put on the color of religion, whatever it be, which is reflected upon them by the persons with whom they happen to converse. With Christians, they profess themselves Christians; with Turks, they are good Mussulmans; with Jews, they pass for Jews; being such Proteuses in religion that nobody was ever able to discover what shape or standard their consciences are really of. See Broughton, Biblioth. Hist. Sacra, 2, s.v. SEE NASSARIANS. Necessarians SEE NECESSITARIANS. Necessary Doctrine and Erudition (for any Christian man) is the title of a book which the English people received from their sovereign, Henry VIII, in the year 1543, in connection with the legal prohibition of reading the Scriptures. In contradistinction to the Institution of a Christian Man (q.v.), which was called the "Bishops' Book," the present formulary was called the "King's Book." The Necessary Doctrine was not, like the other, sanctioned by the authority of Convocation, but was composed by a committee originally nominated by the king, their compositions receiving the stamp of his personal approbation. Henry himself had a considerable share in the execution of the work, the chief part of which was corrected by his own hand; and evidence still remains of the diligence with which he had collected and compared the opinions of his bishops and divines on the different points of discussion. The Preface was probably written by himself, and, among other matter, contains a vindication of the late prohibition of the Bible. Cranmer also wrote a portion of it-that concerning faith. But while it was evangelical in doctrine, it was popish in other things, affirming transubstantiation, calling marriage a sacrament, and maintaining the seven sacraments of Romanism. As an authorized formula it retained authority till the king's death. This work has occasioned in the present day much discussion and dispute, arising from the prejudices of its readers. One party has confidently appealed to it as a criterion of the opinions of the Reformers on many doctrinal points, in opposition to the Church from which they had 3 separated; another party has condemned it in the most unqualified terms, as leaning even in doctrine towards popery rather than Protestantism. For a full account of the plan and contents of this work, see Carwithen, Hist. of the Church of England, volume 1, chapter 7; see also Palmer, On the Church, 1:468 sq., 481 sq.; Eadie, Eccles. Cyclop.; Eden. Theol. Dict.: Farrar, Eccles. Dict.; Burnet, Ref. 1:459, 586; 3, 624; Amer. Theol. Rev. February 1860, page 172; Bib. Sacra, 1865, page 350; 1863, page 891. Necessitarians an appellation which may be given to all who maintain that moral agents act from necessity. SEE NECESSITY. Some object not only to the name, but to the dispute on a subject so perplexing as the explanation of the most consistent mode of divine government, and insist that the theme should be left entirely to the future sphere, where even the truth, according to Milton, has never yet dawned. Says the poet: "Others apart sat on a hill retired, In thoughts more elevate, and reason'd high Of providence, foreknowledge, will, and fite, Fixed fate, free-will, foreknowledge absolute; And found no end — in wandering mazes lost!" Dr. Watts thinks it probable that the discussion of this subject will constitute one of the sublime employments of the blessed in the heavenly world. Necessity, Doctrine Of I. Definition. — In metaphysics, according to the common statement, "necessity" is that quality of a thing by which it cannot but be, or whereby it cannot be otherwise. When in a proposition which affirms anything to be true there is a fixed invariable connection between the subject and the predicate, then that thing is understood to be necessary. Necessity is opposed to chance, accident, contingency, and to whatever involves the idea of uncertainty and of possible variation. It is usually distinguished in philosophy and, theology into physical, metaphysical or logical, and moral. 1. Physical necessity has its origin in the established order and laws of the material universe. It is founded in the relation of cause and effect, and implies that where certain causes or forces are present certain effects must uniformly and inevitably follow. "By natural [or physical] necessity, as 4 applied to men," says Edwards, "I mean such necessity as men are under through the force of natural causes. Thus men placed in certain circumstances are the subjects of particular sensations by necessity; they feel pain when their bodies are wounded; they see the objects presented before them in a clear light when their eyes are opened; so by a natural necessity men's bodies move downwards when there is nothing to support them" (Works, 2:13, Carter's ed.). 2. Metaphysical or logical necessity expresses "the nature of our belief in certain fundamental truths, such as the reality of a material world, the law of causation, and the axioms of mathematics." Logical necessity is characteristic of truths or ideas, as physical necessity is of events or phenomena in the material world. "It is alleged by some philosophers that the truths held by us as most certain are the result of experience. Others contend that such first principles as the axioms of mathematics are not only true. but necessarily true; we not only do believe them, but we must believe them. Such necessity, it is argued, cannot come from mere experience, and therefore implies an innate or intuitive source. Hence the theory of necessary truth is only another name for the theory of intuitive truth." This necessity, as characteristic of certain truths, may be grounded in the impossibility of conceiving the opposite to be true. Thus Dr. Whewell, in his Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences (1:54, 55), teaches that necessary truths are those in which we not only learn that the proposition is true, but see that it must be true; in which the negation of the truth is not only false, but impossible. That there are such truths cannot be doubted. We may take, for example, all relations of number. We cannot, by any freak of thought, imagine three and two to make seven. John Stuart Mill, in his System of Logic, argues against the theory of necessary truths, especially that the common mathematical axioms are such truths. Dr. Samuel Clarke, in his argument for the existence of God, reasons from a belief in the existence of the Divine Being being necessary in this sense. " So," says Edwards, "the eternal existence of being, generally considered, is necessary in itself, because it would be in itself the greatest absurdity to deny the existence of being in general, or to say there was absolute and universal nothing" (Works, 2:11). Besides the meaning of the term necessary in connection with intuitive, or a priori truths, the truth of a statement is sometimes said to be necessary by reason of its being implied in another. "Thus if we say that all the apostles were Jews, it follows necessarily that Peter was a Jew." Here is involved the general axiom of 5 syllogistic reasoning that what is true of a whole class is true of each individual, which axiom may be itself an intuitive or necessary truth. But each particular proposition or conclusion from premises is necessary, because it is implied in the premises, or because "to withhold assent from it would be to violate the above axiom." This is, more strictly, logical necessity. SEE LOGIC. 3. Moral necessity has reference to the volitions and actions of rational agents, and is intended to express the connection between these volitions and actions and certain moral causes, as inclinations, desires, or motives generally. Whether there be any connection which, Strictly speaking, may be termed necessary between such motives and the volitions and actions of men, or whether independent of them the will has a self-determining power, is an inquiry which has always largely engaged the attention of both philosophers and theologians. SEE WILL. The term which stands opposed to necessity in the history and literature of the subject is liberty, or freedom. SEE LIBERTY. The consciousness of mankind in general, the Christian consciousness especially, has always asserted the fact of freedom, even in connection often with theories that have been called theories of necessity. The freedom of the will was strongly and almost universally affirmed, with little or no qualification or psychological analysis, as the doctrine of the Church during the anteNicene period. "All the Greek fathers, as well as the apologists Justin Martyr, Tatian, and Athenagoras. also the theologians of the Alexandrian school, Clement and Origen, exalt the autonomy, self- determination (avrEiovafov) of the human soul with the freshness of youth and a tincture of Hellenistic idealism, but also influenced by a practical Christian interest" (Hagenbach, Hist. of Doct. 1:155). With this the Platonic and Aristotelian philosophy was in harmony. Its ethics presupposes freedom.