The True God
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CHAPTER II.
THE TRUE GOD.
Thou shalt have no other gods before thee.
CHAPTER II.
THE TRUE GOD.
Thou shalt have no other gods before thee.
1. THE God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob is our God; this is his name forever, and this is his memorial unto all generations.1 He created the heavens and the earth, and all things that are in them are the workmanship of his hands.2 He created man in his own image, that he might have dominion over the earth, and over the beasts of the field, and over the fowls of the air, and over the fishes of the sea.3
85 words, 325 letters.
2. Man, being in the likeness of God’s person, they all recognize him as their Lord, and fear him as a God. And notwithstanding his degeneracy, he has retained so much of the divine likeness, that beasts, birds, and fishes, fear him, and his power is over them as a mighty one. It is diminished as he has departed from the likeness and perfections of his Creator: and that spirit of rebellion, which man has received so redundantly, he has communicated to them also, that they rebel
[1 Ex. iii, 15. [2 Gen. i. Ex. xx, 11. xxxi, 17. Neh. ix, 6. Ps. viii 3. xxxiii, 6, 9. lxxxix, 11, 12. Isa. xliv, 24. Jer. x, 12. [3 Gen. i, 26-28. v, 1.
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against him, as he rebels against God. Yet the fear of man is on them continually;1 and his dominion is over them throughout the earth.
111 words, 434 letters.
3. God conversed with Adam as a familiar friend;2 and walked with Enoch,3 who was faithful unto him in the midst of a corrupt race: he communed with Noah,4 the father of a new world; and covenanted by his own oath, with Abraham the faithful.5
44 words, 185 letters.
4. He commanded a fiery law, with a voice of thunder, in Sinai:6 the earth quaked at the tread of his foot: the rustling of his garment was as low thunder; and his voice as a mighty thunderbolt: the beaming of his face was as the sun in the morning; and the flash of his eye as the fierce lightning.7 The nations trembled at his presence;8 and the tribes said, Not unto us; not unto us, Oh Lord God, but unto Moses, be thy voice known.9
85 words, 330 letters.
5. For they heard the voice of God, as the voice of a trumpet; and as loud thunder: and they saw the lightning: and the mountain smoking; and they felt the earth tremble; and they fled far away, crying, Not unto us;
[1 Gen. ix, 2. Ps. viii, 4-8. Jas. iii, 7. [2 Gen. ii, iii.. [3 Gen. v, 24. [4 Gen. vi, 14-21. vii, 1-4. viii, 15-22. ix, 1-17. [5 Gen. xv, 18. xxiv, 7. Heb. vi, 13. [6 Ex. xix, 16, 18. Deut. xxxiii, 2. Job. xxxvii, 2, 5. [7 Hab. iii, 4. 1st Tim. vi, 16. [8 Ps. xcvii, 4. [9 Ex.
xx, 19.
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not unto us: but unto Moses, declare thy law, Oh God, and we will obey his voice, and live,1 for, who shall abide in thy presence?
67 words, 259 letters.
6. His word was made known to the Prophets, and his sacraments were established in Israel. Kings ruled in his glorious name; and the nations who forgot him were destroyed.
29 words, 136 letters.
7. He hath appointed everlasting life in the Lord Jesus; and given the keys of death and of hell2 unto him who alone among mortals, hath kept his glorious word in all things. He hath chosen him the first born among many brethren;3 for he is the first begotten of the dead,4 and hath the keys of the resurrection, and of life forevermore.5
62 words, 263 letters
8. He maketh his Apostles the witnesses of his Law, unto the nations;6 and of his gospel unto every kindred, and tongue, and people. His word is among men; and the revelation of his power, in the midst of the earth.
40 words, 164 letters.
9. The Lord our God is glorious in his perfections; there is none like him. The gods of the heathen have no voice: neither do they
[1 Ex. xx, 18-21. Heb. xii, 19. [2 Rev. i, 18. [3 Rom. viii, 29. Col. i, 15, 18. [4 Rev, i, 5. [5 John xi, 25, 26. [6 Matt. xxviii, 19, 20. Mark xvi, 15. Luke xxiv, 47, 48. Acts i, 8. x, 41, 42.
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see, nor understand. The god of Babylon the Great, the Mother of Churches, before whom all her daughters bow down, is naught; he is as wind, and vanity; he can neither be seen nor heard, nor felt; he hath no dwelling place: where shall any abide with him? Passionless, is he; and can neither love the good, nor hate the evil: who shall adore him, or fear him?
93 words, 374 letters.
10. Without members and parts; he cannot hear, see, feel, smell, or taste. Neither can he speak, nor come unto those that worship him, nor smite the disobedient and rebellious. Handless, footless, mouthless, eyeless, and earless; a shapeless chaos, conceived in the imagination of the vain: ye shall not fear him, nor bow down unto him, nor adore him.
58 words, 271 letters.
1. It is apparent that the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, is not the God of the Christian Churches; either of the Mother Church, or of the generality of the Daughters.
2. The Creed of Saint Athanasius, composed during the reign of the Emperour Constantine, is the most perfect and elaborate statement of the Christian doctrine on that subject in existence, and is adopted by ninetenths of all Christendom.
3. It is as follows:
Whosoever will be saved, before all things it is necessary that he hold the Catholick faith.
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Which faith, except every one do keep whole and undefiled, without doubt he shall perish everlastingly. And the Catholick faith is this: That we worship one God in Trinity, and Trinity in Unity.
Neither confounding the Persons, nor dividing the Substance.
For there is one Person of the Father, another of the Son, and another of the Holy Ghost.
But the Godhead of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, is all one: the Glory equal, the Majesty coeternal. Such as the Father is, such is the Son; and such is the Holy Ghost.
The Father uncreate, the Son uncreate, and the Holy Ghost uncreate.
The Father incomprehensible, the Son incomprehensible, and the Holy Ghost incomprehensible.
The Father eternal, the Son eternal, and the Holy Ghost eternal.
And yet they are not three eternals, but one eternal.
As also there are not three incomprehensibles, nor three uncreated; but one uncreated, and one incomprehensible. So likewise the Father is Almighty, the Son Almighty, and the Holy Ghost Almighty.
And yet they are not three Almighties, but one Almighty.
So the Father is God, the Son is God, and the Holy Ghost is God.
And yet they are not three Gods, but one God.
So likewise the Father is Lord, the Son Lord, and the Holy Ghost Lord.
And yet they are not three Lords, but one Lord.
For like as we are compelled by the Christian verity, to ac-knowledge every Person by himself to be God and Lord; So are we forbidden by the Catholick Religion to say, there be three Gods, or three Lords.
The Father is made of none; neither created, nor begotten.
The Son is of the Father alone; not made, nor created, but begotten.
The Holy Ghost is of the Father and of the Son; neither made, nor created, nor begotten, but proceeding.
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So there is one Father, not three Fathers; one Son, not three Sons; one Holy Ghost, not three Holy Ghosts. And in this Trinity none is afore, or after other; none is greater, or less than another;
But the whole three Persons are coeternal together, and co-equal.
So that in all things, as is aforesaid, the Unity in Trinity, and the Trinity in Unity, is to be worshipped.
He therefore that will be saved, must thus think of the Trinity.
Furthermore, it is necessary to everlasting salvation, that he also believe rightly the Incarnation of our Lord Jesus Christ.
For the right Faith is, that we believe and confess, that our Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, is God and Man:
God, of the Substance of the Father, begotten before the worlds: and Man, of the Substance of his Mother, born in the world; Perfect God, and perfect Man: of a reasonable soul and human flesh subsisting:
Equal to the Father, as touching his Godhead; and inferiour to the Father, as touching his Manhood.
Who, although he be God and Man, yet he is not two, but one Christ;
One, not by conversion of the Godhead into flesh, but by taking of the Manhood into God;
One altogether, not by confusion of Substance, but by unity of Person.
For as the reasonable soul and flesh is one Man, so God and Man is one Christ;
Who suffered for our salvation; descended into hell, rose again the third day from the dead.
He ascended into heaven; he sitteth on the right hand of the Father, God Almighty; from whence he shall come to judge the
quick and the dead.
At whose coming all men shall rise again with their bodies, and shall give account for their own works.
And they that have done good shall go into life everlasting; and they that have done evil into everlasting fire.
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This is the Catholick Faith; which except a man believe faithfully, he cannot be saved.
Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost.
As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be; world without end. Amen.
4. Among all Christian denominations, except the few small sects known as Unitarians, this creed is substantially, if not
literally, subscribed to; the principal departure from it being that the Greek, and a few small Eastern Churches, hold that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father only; not the Father and Son.
5. In the Catholick and most of the Protestant Churches, this is the declared Creed; but in those where it is not read, and its existence probably unknown, the same doctrine is set down in some different form of words: thus they all bow down before the same God: but not the God of Patriarchs, Prophets, and Apostles.
6. Among the Articles of Religion, of the Episcopal Churches, are the following:
I. There is but one living and true God, everlasting, without body, parts, or passions; of infinite power, wisdom and goodness; the Maker and Preserver of all things, both visible and invisible. And in unity of this Godhead there be three Persons, of one substance, power, and eternity; the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.
II. The Son, which is the Word of the Father, begotten from everlasting of the father, the very and eternal God, and of one substance with the Father, took Man’s nature in the womb of the blessed Virgin, of her substance: so that two whole and perfect Natures, that is to say, the Godhead and Manhood, were joined together in one Person, never to be divided, whereof is one Christ, very God, and very Man; who truly suffered, was crucified, dead, and buried, to reconcile his
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Father to us, and to be a sacrifice, not only for original guilt, but also for actual sins of men.
V. The Holy Ghost, proceeding from the Father and the Son, is of one substance, majesty, and glory, with the Father and the
Son, very and eternal God.
7. The Methodist Articles of Religion are a transcript, with slight variations, from the Episcopal; the chief variation being that
in the later editions of the Discipline of the Methodists of America, it is not alleged that God is passionless.
8. Abraham, Isaac and Jacob worshipped no such God. None of the Patriarchs knew him. None of the Prophets gave us his
word. None of the Apostles were his witnesses.
9. The God who created Adam had a body, with all its parts; for as truly as Adam, when he begat a son, begat him in his own
likeness, after his image, (Gen. v, 3) so truly God, when he created Adam, made him in the likeness and after the image of God. (Gen. i, 26, 27. v, 1. ix, 6. 1st Cor. xi, 7. Jas. iii, 9.)
10. Abraham worshipped the same God; for when God visited him, Abraham at first mistook him for a man; and, with genuine Patriarchal hospitality, invited him into the tent to eat, and offered to wash his feet. (Gen. xviii.)
11. Jacob also, worshipped the same God; for after wrestling with him, he tells us he saw him face to face. (Gen. xxxii, 24, 28, 30.) Surely the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, has a body and parts, face and feet.
12. The God who spoke to Moses from the fire in the bush, and in a voice of thunder in Sinai, gave the Commandments; wrote the Commandments on tables of stone, with his finger; (Deut. ix, 10;) conversed with Moses face to face, as a man converses with his friend; (Ex. xxxii, 11;) passed by
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covering Moses with his hand, and allowed him to behold his back parts. (Ex. xxxiii, 22, 23.) Truly this is not the God without body or parts, which Episcopalians, Methodists, and all other Christians worship.
13. The God of the Prophets and Apostles was in bodily form, with all the appropriate parts, as imaged in his creature man; for he had
Arms, (Jer. xxi, 5. Job xl, 9. Ps. lxxxix 13. Isa. lii 10. Luke i, 51,)
Hands, (Jer. xxi, 5. Hab. iii, 4. Ex. xxxiii, 22, 23. Acts vii, 55, 56. v, 31. Rom. viii, 34,) Loins, (Ezek. i, 27. viii, 2,)
Feet, (Ezek. xliii, 7. Hab. iii, 5. Gen. xviii, 4,)
Face, (Gen. xxii, 30. Ex. xxxiii, 11, 23. Num. xiv, 14. Luke i, 76,)
Eyes, (2d Kings xix, 16. Deut. xxxii, 10. Hab. i, 13. Heb. iv, 13,)
Ears, (2d Kings xix, 16. Num. xiv, 28. 2d Sam. xxii, 7. Ps. xxxiv, 15,)
Nostrils, (Ex. xv, 8. 2d Sam. xxii, 16,)
Mouth, (Isa. xxx, 2. Lam. iii, 38,)
Lips, (Isa. xxx, 27. Ps. xvii, 4,)
And tongue, (Isa. xxx, 27.)
14. The appearance of God was the likeness of man, when he appeared to Ezekiel, and called him to the Prophetick office; though he was surrounded with fire and a glorious radiance, from his loins upwards and downwards (Ezek. i, 26, 27.)
15. Their God was stirred up with the passions of
Love, (Deut. vii, 8. Jer. xxxi, 3. John iii, 16. xvii, 23. 1st John iv, 16. Mal. i, 2. Rom. ix,13.)
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Jealousy, (Ex. xx, 5. xxxiv, 14. Deut. iv, 24. v, 9. vi, 15. Josh. xxiv, 19. Ezek. xxxix, 25. Nah. i, 2. Zech. viii, 2. 1st Cor. x, 22. 2d Cor. xi, 2,)
Anger, (Ps. vi, 1. vii, 11. Isa. xxx, 27. Jer. xxi, 5. Nah. i, 3, 6. Hab. iii, 8, 12,) Indignation, (Isa. xxx, 27. Nah. i, 6. Hab. iii, 12. Zech. i, 12,)
Wrath, (Jer. xxi, 5. Nab. i, 2, 6. Hab. iii, 2, 8)
Hatred, (Jer. xii, 8. Hosea ix, 15. Mal. i, 3. ii, 16. Rom. ix. 13. Prov. vi, 16. Isa. lxi, 8,) Fury, (Jer. xxi, 5. Nah. i, 2, 6,)
And revenge, (Nah. i, 2.)
16. It is sometimes objected, that “God is a spirit.” (John iv, 24.) So are Angels “spirits sent forth to minister to them who shall be heirs of salvation:” (Heb. i, 14:) yet when Abraham and Lot saw them they mistook them for men, (Gen. xviii, 2, 5, 16- 20. xix, 1, 15,) and John the Revelator mistook one for God, and was about to worship him, but he said, “See thou do it not: for I am thy fellow servant, and of thy brethren the Prophets” (Rev. xxii, 8, 9.)
17. Those who worship a God without body, parts, or passions, do not worship the God of Abraham, of whom Prophets spoke and Apostles bore witness; but an idol--a false god, which their imagination conceives of; and as by their Creed, he is a nonentity, their faith is Atheism.
18. Close upon the tail of this Atheism, follows Polytheism. For as the Creed declares that the Father is Lord God Almighty, uncreate, eternal, aud incomprehensible; the Son, Lord God Almighty, uncreate, eternal, and incomprehensible; and the Holy Ghost, Lord God Almighty, uncreate, eternal, and incomprehensible; it is most indisputably the Creed of three gods, notwithstanding the disclaimer, which says they are one God.
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19. Thus they worship God the Father, “without body, parts, or passions;” and God the Son, begotten by the Father, with “body, flesh, and bones, and all things appertaining to the perfection of man’s nature,” sitting at the right hand of God, the Father, who has no hand; and God the Holy Ghost, who proceeded from the Father and the Son, who is, nevertheless, eternal, though he could not have proceeded from the Son, until he was begotten; three gods, all unlike; and require men to believe these three, but one, on pain of being damned everlastingly.
20. It is no wonder that those who preach this doctrine declare it a mystery. It is a greater mystery, that men have been found to believe it. Well did John the Revelator name the Church in which it originated, “Mystery, Babylon the Great, the Mother of Harlots and abominations of the earth. (Rev. xvii, 5.)
21. She was once the Apostolick Church; the Lamb’s wife; but when she lost the Apostolick Priesthood, and went off in an unholy union with the Kingdoms of this world as her Lord, she became what the Angel declared her to be, a whore; as all her daughters, prostituting themselves to the various national governments, without ever being lawfully joined to Christ are only harlots.
22. To make their Creeds as ridiculous as they are infidel; false as they are heathenish; Catholicks teach that Christ’s mother is the “Mother of God;” as though God was begotten by himself, on a creature of his hands, that he might be eternally begotten.
23. And Protestants, not willing that Catholicks should monopolize all the folly and all the falsehood, have invented, or borrowed from their mother, the doctrine of an infinite
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atonement, by means of infinite sufferings in the crucifixion of one of these three gods.
24. And, as by their faith, these three gods are one and the same god, it follows that the Lord God Almighty, uncreate,
incomprehensible, and eternal, became a Priest unto himself, and offered himself a sacrifice unto himself, to make propitiation unto himself for sins against himself, and became a mediator between himself and his rebellious creatures; and has risen from the dead, though he alone hath immortality, and ascended on high, where he has received all power from himself, and sat down at his own right hand; where, with his human body, flesh and bones, and all that pertains to the perfection of man’s nature, raised to immortality and everlasting life, he “is the express image of the invisible God,” (Col. i, 15. 2d Cor. iv, 4,) “and the express image of his Father’s person,” (Heb. 1, 3,) who has not any such body or any part of it, and is nevertheless the same identical person with himself.
25. This is not the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Ye shall not bow down to the God of Babylon, for the God who spoke
in Sinai, said, “Thou shalt not bow down unto, nor adore anything that thy imagination conceiveth of; but the Lord thy God only.”
26. The God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, was not the offspring of adultery; nor was he born of woman; he was not carried about in a nurse’s arms, nor dependent on his mother’s milk for sustenance; he never died, nor did he cry to himself, and find no helper. (Matt. xxvii, 46. Mark xv, 34.) Eternal ages are but pulsations in his lifetime, and his might is omnipotence.
11. The Lord our God hath an incommunicable name; never polluted by the breath [Page 59]
of the ungodly: which none can know, but he who ministereth in his holy sanctuary; by which he revealed himself unto Moses; and in which he establisheth this law, for an everlasting covenant.
46 words, 214 letters.
This incommunicable name is not Jehovah. That is written instead of it. For his secret name was only written in that copy of the Law kept in the Ark of the Testimony. How ridiculous to believe with Christians, that the name of God which Abraham was not permitted to know, (Ex. vi, 3,) was written in a published book, for all the Heathen to read. It was never spoken out of the Sanctuary, nor above the breath, and then only between three High Priests, after the order of Melchisedek. (See Josephus’ Ant., B. ii, ch. xii, 4,)
12. God alone hath immortality. Adam, the first of men, the Ancient of Days, the great Prince;1 Abraham, to whom God gave an everlasting possession;2 David, whose throne was established as the days of heaven, forever;3 all died. Enoch, who walked with God, and was not found, because God took him;4 and Elijah, who ascended to the throne of God, in his own fiery chariot5 shall return to the earth to sleep with their fathers.6 The change which is sealed upon all the sons of Adam,7 shall come upon the faithful, who stand on the earth, when the Lord Jesus shall be revealed
[1 D. &. C. Sec. iii, p. 28. Dan. vii, 9, 22. [2 Gen. xvii, 8. [3 Ps. lxxxix, 29, 36. 2d Sam.. vii, 16. Isa. ix, 6, 7. Jer. xxxiii, 20-26. Luke i, 32, 33. [4 Gen. v, 24. [5 2d Kings ii, 11. [6 Rev. xi, 7-9. [7 1st Cor. xv, 22.
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from heaven, in flaming fire, taking vengeance on those who know not God, and obey not the gospel.1 And he, the Prince of the Kings of the earth;2 who in the days to come, shall speak with the voice of a trumpet, and the dead shall hear his voice and live;3 died once, that he might live forevermore.4 He praised God, who alone hath immortality, that he would not leave him in the place of the dead:5 he preached the gospel to the spirits in prison,6 and obtained the key of life everlasting:7 but God alone liveth forever: the eternal ages are unto him as moments to us:8 infinities, as units to the mathematician. Our God alone hath immortality.9 Thou shalt love him with all thy heart, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength.
239 words, 1,010 letters.
13. God alone hath omniscience. He clotheth himself in light as a robe: his ministers, who at midday, are as a flaming fire in the dark night, are blind before him; he apprehendeth the motion of the atom which floateth in the invisible element,10 and discerneth the speck in the centre of the star, which the light of the sun hath not reached since the
[1 2d Thess. i, 7, 8. [2 Rev. i, 5. xi, 15. xvii, 14. xix, 16. Dan. vii, 13, 14. 1st Tim. vi, 15. [3 John v, 25, 28. let Cor. xv, 52. 1st
Thess. iv, 16. [4 Rev. i, 18. Heb. vii, 25. [5 Ps. xvi, 10. Acts ii, 27. [6 1st Pet. iii, 19. Luke xxiii, 43. [7 John xvii, 2. xi, 25, 26. [8 Ps. xc, 4. [9 1st Tim. vi, 16. i, 17. 2d Pet. iii, 8. [10 Ps. cxxxix, 12. Dan. ii, 22. Heb. iv, 13.
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day that the sons of God shouted for joy that the earth was created, as a mountain in the eye of mortals. He never sleepeth; his eye closeth not; and there is no darkness before him. Our God alone hath omniscience. Thou shalt love him with all thy heart, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength.
123 words, 512 letters.
14. God alone hath omnipotence. He looketh upon the nations, and they melt in the fury of his countenance:1 he frowneth, and the mountains dissolve to smoke; the vallies are consumed in the breath of his nostrils. He spoke, and worlds were created:2 he thought, and they were lost in space. Earthquakes are but the whisperings of his voice; the rustling of his attire causeth lightning, and thunder; and with the shadow of his garment he blotteth out the sun. The Prince of the Kings of the earth; by whom the world was created;3 and who liveth and reigneth forever receiveth power from him, and rendereth it unto him.4 Who shall stand before him? Our God alone hath omnipotence.5 Thou shalt love him with all thy heart, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength.
136 words, 603 letters.
[1 Jer. x, 10. [2 Ps. xxxiii, 6, 9. Isa. xl, 26, 28. Jer. li, 15. 2d Pet. iii, 5. [3 Eph iii, 9, Col. i, 16, 17. Heb. i, 2. [4 Eph. i, 19-22. 1st Cor. xv, 24. Matt, xxviii, 18. [5 Acts xvii. 24-26. Jer. xxxii. 17. Rom. xi, 36.
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15. God alone is omnipresent. His presence filleth the immensity of space as a point. In the midst of the bottomless pit, is he; the pavilion of his feet, is the face of the earth:1 the stars, are his home: his breath, is fragrant odour to the blessed, in the highest heaven; and it enliveneth the crumbling frame of the dead.2 The rays of the sun, have not found his bourn; nor the light of the stars, the place he inhabiteth not. His rest outspeedeth the lightning; it leaveth the morning ray behind it; and his speed is more rapid than the thought of angels. Our God alone is omnipresent.3 Thou shalt love him with all thy heart and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength.
127 words, 526 letters.
16. God alone is one. There are choirs of angels; hosts of spirits; and multitudes of men: but God hath no fellow. A great King, is to him as the unseen spawn before the monsters of the deep; Methuselah, as the ephemera of a day:4 the most glorious spirit, is bodiless, and a breath. And the Lord Jesus, who created the earth, and redeemed it; whose kingdom filleth the earth, and the heavens; possesseth but a speck, amid the stars he made.
[1 Acts xvii, 27, 28. [2 Ezek. xxxvii, 5, 9, 10, 14. Ps. civ, 29, 30. [3 Ps. cxxxix, 7-10. [4 2d Pet. iii, 8.
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He alone is one.1 Thou shalt love him with all thy heart, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength. Thou shalt adore him, and serve him, and obey him; and beside him, thou shalt have no other God: for he alone hath immortality, and omniscience, and omnipotence, and omnipresence. He alone is one; and they
who obey his law, shall be like him.2
Total--16 sec. 1,492 words, 6,261 letters.
NOTE ON THE TRUE GOD.
1. During the ages immediately following the apostacy of the Christian Church, when nearly all the world had fallen into a state of barbarism, ignorance and superstition, the knowledge which mankind had formerly possessed was so far lost that the wisest and most learned nations had little left of the natural or moral sciences, or the industrial arts.
2. The civilization of modern times is the emergence of the human race from the barbarism of the dark ages. But in this emergence little new has been developed. The chapter of lost arts is nearly a duplicate of that of modern discoveries and inventions.
3. The few streams of learning which flowed on through that period of barbarism, were deep and narrow. A few houses, closed to the gaze of all but their inmates, brought down to modern times much of the old learning.
4. But during the same period, the nations of Europe, and
[1 lst Cor. viii, 6. Deut. iv, 35, 39. Ist Kings viii, 60. Isa. xlv, 5, 6,18, 22. x1vi, 9. Mark xii, 32. [2 lst John iii, 2. Phil. iii, 21.
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around the Mediterranean, engrafted on their religion all manner of superstition, partaking of the popular ignorance and prejudice.
5. Not only was the keeping of the Oracles of God in the hands of the ignorant and superstitious, who by that means not unfrequently corrupted them, but most of the translations into modern languages were made before the light of the newly developed sciences dispelled those superstitions.
6. As a consequence, nearly all religious knowledge among Christian nations was more or less mixed with the falsehood which the ignorance and superstition of the preceding ages inculcated.
7. And as the different systems of religion were fixed and unchangeable, bound up by creeds which it was heresy to question, almost every advance in knowledge was opposed by every influence and injury which ignorance and superstition could inflict.
8. The Clergy having the control of Courts and Legislatures, opposed the progress of knowledge by pains and penalties, until religion, designed by the Almighty to be the school of mankind, in which all knowledge should be gained, became the prisonhouse of the lover of knowledge.
9. Since in a few places on earth, laws have ceased to oppose knowledge, and here and there a benefactor of mankind lives, without the fear of prisons and clanking chains, the superstitious prejudice pursues the friend of man as a shadow, and not unfrequently wreaks on the fame of the dead, the punishment which a virtuous life has scarcely escaped.
10. These are not the worst ills which false religion has inflicted on mankind. The doctrine has been everywhere inculcated that religion is a mere myth; a thing to be believed, to be sure, in some way, but not to be demonstrated as other
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sciences, and to stand upon its intrinsick merits; that though true in some mysterious sense, its truth is opposed to what is also true in other sciences, and that what is true in religion, may be impossible in natural philosophy.
11. A sound mind revolts against this. If the religious sentiments predominate, it believes on, and shuts its eyes to the voice of nature, wandering in the mazes of metaphysicks, and wasting in logomachy the talent, which should have developed valuable ideas.
12. Otherwise, it passes by religion as a thing not to be studied, if believed; rejects the revelations of God’s word, as a means of obtaining knowledge; and, perhaps, without denying that God did in some remote time, in some mysterious way, reveal a religion to man; laughs to scorn the fact that he is known to man in modern times, especially in this enlightened age.
13. Among such men the dogma is universal that the primitive ages of man were ages of barbarism; that civilization originated with man, and was developed in the slow progress of long ages; and that man is the author of the sciences, and the discoverer of the knowledge he possesses.
14. Nothing could be farther from the truth. The history of all the old nations, brings a shadowy knowledge of a civilization earlier than that of the Greeks, the wisdom of which was lost before the days of the earliest author whose works have reached us, though its monuments remain.
15. The golden age was the theme of all the early poets, as its return was the hope of the sages. Without additional
147 words, 605 letters.
confirmation, it was hardly probable that a faith so universal was not founded on true history notwithstanding, most of its witnesses had disappeared.
16. But recent developments in Archaiology have proved
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it true. Of the Egyptian Empire, the earliest whose history has been rescued from oblivion, it is now beyond question that at the beginning of its history, its civilization was of the highest order.
17. The classick historians, Herodotus, Manetho, Eratosthenes, and Diodorus, agree with the monuments and papyri, that Menes was the first sovereign of the Egyptian Empire.
18. His reign is placed by Lepsius at 3,893 years before Christ, or 5,749 years ago; being 1,544 years earlier than the date which Archbishop Usher’s Chronology erroneously gives to the flood.*
19. Yet at that early period Egypt was a powerful and highly civilized Empire, eminent in the sciences and the industrial arts. The name of Menes is gloriously associated with the building of Memphis, the oldest metropolis, of the origin of which we have any knowledge, with foreign conquests, a high state of the arts, a numerous and wealthy population, and a successful system of internal improvements, such as Holland alone affords a parallel, if indeed she does at the present day.
20. The Nile, an immense river, overflows all the arable land of Egypt, and had to be controlled by dykes and canals, more extensive than are found in America, before the country could sustain any other population than a few wandering herdsmen. For this purpose hydraulick engineering must have existed in the highest perfection; an immense population must have pressed down the valley of the river for room, and industry, such as is never found among barbarians, must have been the national characteristick of teeming millions.
*Archbishop Usher’s Chronology is that generally used and found in the margins of most family and pulpit Bibles, though different editors make slight variations from it.
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21. Little of co taneous records of that age remains; most of its monuments are deep buried in the sands, from the Lybian desert; or removed to construct more modern cities.
22. But, two or three centuries later, when we reach the period of abundant and undoubted contemporaneous monuments; walking no longer in a land of shadows, we read Egyptian history upon monuments of granite and paper of papyrus, in the same language which was written during the reign of all the Pharaohs.
23. Fiftythree centuries ago, sepulchres and pyramids; palaces and temples; highways and canals such as in this age would cost millions; dykes and bridges of immense extent; statuary sixty feet high, and delicate tissued paper; reed pens, and red and black ink, which have not yet faded; chemically prepared paints and varnish, the colours of which are as fresh now as those from the best workshops, laid yesterday; and the preservation of the dead uncorrupted, were among the achievements of Egypt.
24. The present times have no parallel to that. The result of all inquiry is, that the earliest civilization was of the highest order. The theory that it was developed by man, and grew up from the necessities of dense populations through long ages, is giving way. It originated with God, who is the author of all the arts and sciences, and taught them to his creatures.
25. That which lays at the foundation of all civilization, all wisdom, all knowledge, man did not possess by nature; could not invent, and until possessed, could have no desire for; articulate language.
26. Man by nature has no articulate language. Certainly no fact is clearer than this. The child never speaks words till he hears them. He uses no words but such as are taught
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to him. He speaks no language but what he learns from others. If he has no opportunity of learning of others, he never speaks. If he is devoid of the faculty of hearing, he never learns to speak.
27. All the animals, or, at least, all the domestick animals, and many not domesticated, all the superiour kinds of animals, and many of the inferiour, have a natural language; a language of the passions. This language is uniform with each species. They learn it from none, but possess it by nature. No one of the species is ever without it.
28. The dog barks, howls, growls and whines. Every dog has these powers by nature. The same species of dog has them substantially alike. And he has the whole of these modes of expression, and all the varieties of them, without learning or hearing them from others. There is a peculiarity in the voice of the dog, when he starts the chase, when he snuffs the track, when he
spies the game, when he drives him to tree or burrow, and when he triumphs over him or tastes his blood.
29. He has a growl of pleasure, a growl of fondness, a growl of anger, and a growl of defiance. And no dog in the species is destitute of it. None learn it; all possess it. Not only do all possess it, but all possess it just in the characteristick of his race and of his particular family or breed. Every hunter distinguishes the voice of each different kind of dog, and the particular passion or
fact expressed by the voice and intonation of the dog.
30. The dissimilarity and unlikeness between the voice of the hound and the terrier, both used much in hunting, and
constantly kennelling together, are very great. Their continual association does not produce any approximation of language, or the slightest change in the tone of the voice.
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It neither adds to or diminishes from the language of either, one intonation.
31. Take the spaniel that has never seen the light, and place him with a hound possessed only of his natural habits, and the
spaniel never learns one sound that belonged not to his nature. Place him where he never sees or hears another dog, and he is deficient in none. If you cross the breed, the new race will have a language between the two; approximating to both, like to neither.
32. You can change the language indefinitely by changing the nature, the blood, or race, but none at all by changing the habits or instruction. These remarks are equally true of all the other animals possessed of a voice. Cows all low and bellow, without being taught. Horses all neigh, though they have never heard it. And to their natural knowledge of this language, instruction can add nothing.
33. Man has a natural language of the same kind, rich and prolifick in the expression of the passions, but barren in abstractions; partially inactive by neglect, but lost by none, and resorted to as often as men meet who have no common articulate language. From the new born child to decrepit old age, in every age, in every country, in every clime, and of every race and family of people, there never was one individual that did not possess it.
34. The common expression of this language is in the laugh, the cry, the shout and the moan, which are the same everywhere. Every child must be taught to speak; none to cry. All have to learn the definition of words. All know what is meant by the laugh. The conqueror speaks of his triumph to men of strange tongue in vain, but the shout that tells of victory is never misunderstood. The dying man’s voice articulates bootless words to those who have not learn-
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ed them, but the moan and the sigh of broken limbs and crushed hearts was never mistaken. The cry of childish fear and pain is comprehended by all ears. How else could infancy tell its sufferings?
35. No one has an articulate language by nature. If articulate language was natural to man, as is the language of the passions to both man and beast, he would be born with it, which no man is; or all would come to possess a uniform language at some definite stage of existence, which is not found at all; or there would be particular forms of language peculiar to particular races, which there is not; and the language would be changed by crossing the breeds, as among animals.
36. The child knows no word till it has been taught. It will use any sound whatever to express any particular idea, just as the tutor pleases to teach it. The English child, placed in a Dutch family, learns and speaks the Dutch as well as a native. The Chinese child, placed in an American family, will not be possessed of one word of the language of his fathers. There is no peculiarity of race which adapts it to one language more than another.
37. There have been, in various countries and in different ages, instances of persons growing up to manhood with all their faculties unimpaired, but so entirely separated from the rest of mankind as to have no opportunity of learning articulate language. And every one of them have been as destitute of it as the beasts of the field. Not many years since a wild boy was found in the swamps of Alabama, who, according to the most plausible conjecture, had been lost at the age of three years. He could not speak one word of any known language. Yet all his natural faculties were decidedly good.
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38. Similar examples are of frequent occurrence. Scarcely a year passes but the newspapers bring us the account of one. And the facts in every case produce the same conclusion; that man by nature has one uniform and universal language of the passions, and that he has no articulate language. So uniform have been results thus far, that in case a wild man should be found, men would just as much expect to find him able to laugh, moan and cry, as to have two ears and one mouth; and would just as little expect him to speak an articulate language, as to understand the art of painting or sculpture.
39. An eminent example of the natural inability of man to speak, is found in Caspar Hausar, of Nuremburg, who was imprisoned from the age of four years to sixteen, during which time he never saw the face or heard the voice of man. He was possessed of natural talent of superiour order, yet he could neither speak or understand one word. But he could cry. That was natural language. He needed none to teach him that.
40. The ancients have recorded several cases of children brought up in utter seclusion, for the purpose of determining what language they would speak; vainly supposing that there was one original language, from which all were derived, and which all the untaught would speak. They spoke none. Why? Simply because they were not taught.
41. As man has never in any known instance been found in possession of an articulate language, and as in millions on millions of cases he is positively known to be destitute of it, the inevitable conclusion is, that by nature he has no articulate language. Did he invent it? Could he originate it? Vain thought! There is not an instance known where he has added one articulate sound to the store of words which man
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possessed at the period of the earliest authentick records.
42. It is hardly conceivable that a man, destitute of language, should know the want of it. Certainly it is impossible that one
who was destitute of all the arts and sciences, should see any need of a language, or have any desire to possess one. And it is not by any means conceivable that a people destitute of language, should possess arts and sciences.
43. Man untaught is one of the weakest most dependent and inefficient of all animals. Other animals, cast off in the early period of their existence, seem very well able to take care of themselves. Man is almost sure to perish. The knowledge which has been made their universal heritage, is usually sufficient to provide for all their wants. In man, even under favourable circumstances, it is barely sufficient to preserve life.
44. Is it possible that man, placed in such circumstances, a mere untutored animal of forests, swamps and meadows, more dependent and inefficient in providing the means of subsistence than any domestick animal, should ever have a desire for an articulate language? Or, that, destitute of such a language, he should ever possess any such knowledge of arts and sciences as would make it desirable?
45. But if it was possible for such a being to desire any mode of expression, beyond the mere language of the passions, which all animals possess, could he invent it? Could he invent radical articulations, capable of infinite combination, join them in words, and fix a meaning which each word should express? And, then, could he compel his fellowman to learn his language?
46. If all this has happened to man, we may expect some day to see a dog on the errand of Cadmus, inventing a language to be spoken by dogs, which shall express ideas, instead
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of passions; reasonings, instead of impulses; and teaching it to his fellowdogs; and, in regular progress, making letters adapted to writing and printing, for general use in the fraternity of dogs.
47. Unseemly and ridiculous as such an idea is, it is more so of the untaught man than the dog; for, unaided by science, the arts, and instruction, man is less capable of providing a subsistence than a dog; and, therefore, has less means of improvement.
48. Man, without instruction, such as the child would be, if separated from all the human race, never hearing the voice or seeing the face of man to learn from him, is so far removed from anything we are in the habit of seeing or contemplating, that it is difficult for us to conceive of such a being; and should we meet with such a one, it would require an effort to esteem him human.
49. No man could for a moment suspect such a being of a capacity to develop the state of civilization, which now exists in the world, by his unaided effort. No one could suspect him of inventing or making a language, nor would any addition to the number increase their capacity for such a work.
50. From whom did man derive articulate language? Not from any of the animals of the earth. None of them possess it. They all have a language of the passions, as a natural endowment; always enjoyed, never acquired. None have anything beyond it.
51. Man, subject to the same wants, and still more helpless by nature, has also a language of the passions, equally expressive; always enjoyed, never acquired. And superadded thereto he has an articulate language, not by original endowment, but by acquisition; altogether artificial, incomparably superiour, and capable of infinite forms of expression.
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52. So far it is perfectly clear that he could not originate it, and while entirely destitute of a language, could have no desire to
acquire one. It is equally certain that he did not derive it from any existing animal. None possess it.
53. It must have been learned of the superiour; from some one to whom it is a positive faculty; not a transitory endowment. 54. Who is that superiour? An animal similar to man, but one step above him in the scale of being? He is not found on earth.
Geologists have not found his fossil remains. Anti-quarians discover none of the works of his hands. The pale faith of the most marvellous tradition has never named him.
55. Articulate language, the language of ideas, of logick, is the gift of God; by him communicated; revealed by him to man. There is no other teacher, in whose school that lesson could have been learned.
56. As this proposition is contrary to the theories most prevalent on the subject, and the demonstration of it makes a full end of the Atheistick controversy, it may not be amiss to pursue the theory of the Atheist to its results, and thus reduce it to an absurdity.
57. No modern pretends that articulate language is a natural endowment The universal experience is too strongly against it. But it is alleged by those who say there is no God, that it originated with man, and grew up with his necessity.
58. Without attempting to show how man, without one word of articulate language, could make any such progress as to feel the need or appreciate the use of it; ignoring the fact that he has never in any known case originated anything which was not analagous to something he had already witnesed, they have assumed that he could feel the necessity; could ap-
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preciate the use, and could invent a thing as unlike anything of which he had any knowledge as articulate language is unlike any natural faculty of man.
59. In attempting to justify this assertion, they have assumed, further, contrary to the principles of every language on earth, that there is some similarity between the sound and signification of words; and, hence, that language originated in the imitation of natural sounds, both of animate and inanimate nature.
60. The universal rule in articulate language is, that the meaning of words is merely arbitrary; entirely independent of the sound, and determined merely by usage; and, consequently, that any word might mean a very different thing from what it does, with the most perfect propriety, if it was only so used.
61. Contrary to this universal rule of language, these infidel theorists allege that the beginning of articulate language was in the imitation of such familiar sounds as the voices of domestick animals, the sound of thunder, wind, and various things in inanimate nature, from which it has gradually progressed to the present state.
62. It is sufficient answer to all this, that not one of all those sounds has become a word in any spoken language, under heaven. More than that, we do not use one of those sounds in naming the sound itself, or the thing which produces it, or in expressing any idea concerning it; and if we should repeat it, it would not express any idea whatever, in any spoken language under heaven.
63. None of the sounds in nature are articulate; therefore, an articulate sound could not be derived from them. We write baaa or maaa for the voice of a sheep; not because the spoken word is like the voice of the sheep; for it is not. If
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it was, we should have but one word for the one sound. The only point of resemblance is a long drawn sound, slightly resembling the continued repetition of short a. There is not the slightest approach to any consonant sound. Consequently, we may substitute any other consonant for the b, or m, and the resemblance to the voice of a sheep will be just precisely the same.
64. In like manner we write booo, looo, and wooo, for the voice of a cow; changing the consonant freely, and the failure to make the true sound is precisely equal in every form, because the voice of the cow is not an articulation, and does not resemble one. The only approach to likeness is in a long drawn sound, bearing a very slight resemblance to the constant repetition of o long and close, as in move. There is not the slightest approach to any consonant sound whatever.
65. Similar is the case of every animal whose voice man has attempted to imitate. Not one of them has been found to articulate a single letter. Not one of them has made the slightest approach to a consonant sound. Not one has ever enunciated a vowel, or any sound that could possibly be mistaken for one.
66. As there are no articulate sounds in nature, either in the voices of men, animals or inanimate nature, man could not get the idea of them from any of those sounds, or learn them by imitating those.
67. No sound in nature is the representative of an idea, nor is any combination of the natural sounds. The voices of animals are the representatives of passions, of feelings, but not ideas; and as such are a universal language, everywhere understood, nowhere learned; but the sounds in inanimate nature do not come up to that; they represent neither ideas nor feelings.
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68. Therefore, in those cases where articulate language approaches nearest to the sounds heard in nature, there is not the slightest similarity in sense. For instance, the voice of a sheep, which makes some slight approach to aaa, or a rapid repetition of short a, is used with slight variations in every feeling that the voice of a sheep can express; whether of pleasure, or pain; joy, or sorrow; love, or hate; triumph, or despair.
69. Yet it would be difficult to find a single instance in any language, of the idea of the same passion or feeling represented by that articulate sound. The same is true of every voice of any known domestick animal.
70. The celebrated Lindley Murray has pursued the subject of sounds corresponding with sense, until he has exhausted it. Nothing can be added to the result of his labours, beyond additional examples on the same points, which he has fully illustrated. (English Reader, Part ii, ch. i)
71. And the result of his labours is, that any words whatever, without reference to the articulate sounds of which they are formed, duly arranged in verse, with the proper succession of long and short syllables, may be so read as in some few studied cases, to produce a similarity, in a single point between the sound of the spoken sentence, and some one idea contained in it. He does not get one step beyond this.
72. In the couplet,
“When Ajax strives some rock’s vast weight to throw, The line too labours, and the words move slow,”
there is not one articulate sound which would not be perfectly appropriate in expressing any other sense, no matter how different. The author, by a skilful selection of long syllables, has put it in the power of the reader to make the sound correspond with the single idea of slow moving force.
73. In other words, if the idea is of a powerful and slow
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effort, the reader, by speaking with a strong breath and full voice, slowly, deliberately, and with emphasis, a succession of long syllables appears to tax his strength, much as the gigantick Ajax did in lifting a heavy rock. And this is the extent of that similarity of sense and sound, out of which men of learning construct their theory of a human origin and progressive development of articulate language.
74. The following is the exact opposite:
“Not so when swift Camilla scours the plain,
Flies o’er th’ unbending corn, and skims along the main.”
Here a skilful combination of short syllables, which the variety of English synonyms puts in the reach of the author, enables the reader to make the sound correspond with the single idea of swiftness.
75. Pursuing the skilful selections of Mr. Murray, we find the following example of a noisy stanza to express the idea of certain work, attended with great noise:
“Loud sounds the axe, redoubling strokes on strokes; On all sides round the forest hurls her oaks Headlong. Deep echoing groan the thickets brown; Then rustling, crackling, crashing, thunder down.”
In this example the sole similarity of sound to sense consists in the use of words spoken with a full quick sound. So far from there being a real likeness in our sounds and the ideas expressed by them, it is an evidence of ability and skill in a writer to so combine his words as to produce some tri-fling resemblance. Should any one say, “in cutting down the oak trees the repeated blows of the axe make a great noise, and in the fall there is a very noisy cracking and crashing of limbs and old dry brush and bushes, with a noise like a clap of thunder when the tree strikes the ground,” he would, by the use of different words express the same idea perfectly, without any similarity of sound and sense.
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76. Without pursuing these examples further, it is sufficient to say that there is no possible similarity between sounds and the great mass of ideas, which language is used to express.
77. Sound can have no similarity to a colour; none to a form. It is not possible that any sound should bear the slightest resemblance to an idea, a reason, a logical sequence, an abstract thought, a ratiocination of the mind; those things which spoken language is chiefly used to express.
78. There is no likeness whatever in the ideas expressed by the words virtue, vice, good, evil, faith, wisdom, folly, logick, reason, sense, seriousness, and the sounds of the words; and the words might be exchanged indifferently, one for another, without
in any sense impairing the language, or the facility of learning it, so the change was generally adopted.
79. Articulate language is, therefore, an endowment of man; not possessed by nature, which he could not derive from anything in inanimate nature, or any of the animals below him in the scale of being; and which he could not originate, nor, until
he was possessed of it, wish to enjoy.
80. In fine, he must have been instructed in it by a being possessed of a high degree of intelligence, of boundless beneficence
and charity to man, to whom it is as much a natural endowment as laughing and crying is to man, or singing to a bird. He must have learned it of just such a being as God has revealed himself, and as he is shown in all his works. Had there been no God, or had he never revealed himself, and become our teacher, man could never have possessed any other language than that of the passions.
81. The oft repeated assertion that language is progressive, is not proved. It is mutative, undergoing perpetual changes; but there is no evidence that on the whole it gains anything in the progress of change. All the sciences, with their new
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wants arising from year to year, find their vocabularies in the ancient languages; and the languages the most unlike, have derived their words from common roots. And if the old languages seem barren to us, we have no assurance that we possess half their words, or know well the use of them.
82. Moreover, man is not formed by nature especially for articulate language. The parrot, the crow, and several other birds, learn to speak words with less difficulty than the infant; though they fail of the intellectual strength to put them to much use.
83. Man, on the other hand, has not a compass of voice sufficient to answer his wants, and frequently finds it difficult or impossible to articulate words which his intelligence develops the want of. There are numerous words, in every language, which most men learn to speak with difficulty, and some not at all; but there is no sound in the natural language of all animated nature but every individual of each species can enunciate, without even the trouble of learning it.
84. Truth will invariably sustain itself against errour, in the long race of time; it is only because it is incessantly opposed by new errours, springing up from day to day, that it receives so little credence. All the battle fields of truth have to be new fought from generation to generation. Every exploded attack of infidelity on revealed truth, is renewed as often as men rise up who do not remember it.
85. Testing the existence of God, and the fact of revelations from him as the great facts in the natural sciences, are most of them tested and proved, and no room is left for doubt.
86. Geography, natural and political, is proved by the testimony of men. Yet its leading facts are undoubted. There probably may not be a man in the United States who has
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seen the city of Tombuctoo, the Chinese wall, or the sea of Aral. Who doubts their existence? Only the idiotick. What has produced such universal credence to facts that none of us know? Simple human testimony. The words of men who have seen them, and their words by hearsay, second, third, and fourth handed.
87. And this testimony has not been by any means uniform. All who had the means of knowing, agree in the main point, the existence of those objects, however much they disagree in the details concerning them. Consequently all men, except the merely insane, believe their testimony that such places really exist, but disagree according to the several witnesses in their characteristicks.
88. The same is true in all the sciences. The facts are picked up here and there, by men of all classes, in every situation and circumstance in life. The statements of many of the witnesses may be anything but reliable; but in the constant accumulation of testimony, after a time, the truth rises, prominent above all errour, and justifies itself before the world.
89. Often the facts are ever present, or at least within our reach, so as to be subject to present experiment, and satisfactory tests. In such cases the triumph of truth is prompt. Ignorance and prejudice take immediate flight.
90. In others the facts are not in our immediate reach, or at best are accumulated in long years of tiresome labour. In the ordinary course of human affairs, they would scarcely be accumulated in sufficient quantities to lead to any result. Some great scholar, or society of philosophers, gather them with tireless pains from the ends of the earth, or the old records of forgotten ages, and the truth is vindicated.
91. If, as in Geology, they can be had by looking for, publick interest and a spirit of inquiry will explore mines, trace
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the tunnels and cuts which engineers have opened through mountains, gather rocks from cleft hillsides, and learn wisdom and
divine truth where the door only wasted his strength, and spoiled his utensils on rocks and uncongenial soil.
92. Or, in Astronomy, the stargazer has, perhaps, noted a fact, not as possessing any consequence of itself, but merely as a phenomenon; a something he could not account for, and had not before witnessed. He cannot repeat it for examination. Perhaps
centuries may elapse before it occurs again.
93. Through long ages the facts accumulate. In the same time many falsehoods are recorded for facts. They also accumulate.
When enough is accumulated, some giant mind seizes them. As with a magician’s wand he brushes the scales from all eyes. Truth stands revealed.
94. In these cases there can be no experiment; no putting theories to the test. They experiment themselves, and test themselves in the revolutions of time. Man has only to see when the universe reveals herself. He cannot question her.
95. So it is in the knowledge of God. He speaks to man when he will; nor does he respond to presumptuous questioning. The fools, who have said in their hearts there is no God, have no claim upon his charity, that he should walk with those who regard him as vanity, and nothing.
96. But, though like eclipses, and the conjunctions of planets, he does not appear to every questioner, to demonstrate his being to ignorant doubters; like them, he is never without witnesses; and like them, the testimony is ever present to the wise.
97. To an Astronomer, an eclipse a hundred ages past, is as certain, and its precise time and appearance as accurately ascertained, as that of yesterday, which he witnessed; and his faith in that which shall occur ten thousand years hence,
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is as steadfast as it can be in the sunrise of tomorrow.
98. So is the faith of the righteous, that God is. That man could never have had a language, except God taught him, is already
shown. Consequently, he must have visited man’s abode, and conversed with him. This necessary sequence is a proved fact: proved by just such testimony as has established the primary facts in all the sciences.
99. God has been seen of men. This fact has been proved by the testimony of men of every nation, kindred, tongue, and people, under the whole heavens, from the days of Adam down till this present time.
100. Neither savage tribe, nor enlightened republick, has refused its testimony to this great fact. The King upon his throne, the Priest at the altar, the Philosopher in his cabinet, the Reformer in the publick assembly, the peasant by his fireside, and the captive in the dungeon, have each and all contributed their share of testimony that God is; which, if written, would crowd libraries, such as great Kings are proud of.
101. Notwithstanding the trifling disagreements found in human testimony on all subjects, all nations of men have agreed in the great leading facts of their testimony; that besides the grosser bodies, ever visible around us, there is another, a more volatile world of animate existence, generally invisible, composed of myriads of persons, of greater or less power, some good and some evil, the greatest and best of whom is God, the Lord.
102. The Mosaick account is anything but without witnesses in the premises. Nor is it supported alone by the Jewish Prophets. The Egyptians, Chinese, Chaldeans, Hindoos, Phoenecians, Greeks, Romans, Scythians, Germans, Britons and Gauls; all the ancient world; had men standing among them, of all ranks, from the King on his throne to the
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peasant in the hovel, who testified that they saw God, and conversed with him.
103. The modern Chinese, Hindoos, Persians, Turks, Greeks, Egyptians, Italians, Germans, French, Britons and
Scandinavians, all have men among them, men of learning and of good report, at this present day, who assert that they have seen God, or some of the myriads of spirits in subjection to him, and in rebellion against him.
104. Among the savage nations of America, Africa, Asia, and the islands of the Indian and Pacifick Oceans, not one people is found where similar testimony is not furnished, from generation to generation.
105. Is this testimony true? Can it be false? Have men in all the ancient nations from China to the Pillars of Hercules, and of all ranks from the king to the beggar, and of all characters from the philosopher to the dunce, with all their national divisions and animosities, conspired together to impose a lie on their fellowmen? And have men of every faith, of every nation, and of every age, from Abraham till James, made their whole lives one living lie, for the purpose of palming off such an imposition on their brothers, their sisters, their wives, and their children?
106. And in such a cause, with scarcely a point of unity but this, and ten thousand points of diversity, many of which have drenched the earth in blood, have such men traversed earth and sea to find fellow conspirators, in the unknown isles, which the covetousness of commerce, and the rapacity of conquest never discovered?
107. Have sages, philosophers and statesmen, joined hands with jugglers, impostors, and frightened fools, to impose bootless
lies on posterity and friends, as well as strangers? And is there no truth in man, that when those nearest and dearest to
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them offered their lives in blood and fire to such a faith, none of these have confessed the imposture, to save a father, a brother, or a child?
108. In all else, the united testimony of those who have studied the facts, is deemed sufficient and satisfactory proof. The facts of Geology, the facts of Astronomy, the facts of Chemistry, the facts of Botany, the facts of Zoology, are all proved by testimony like this in kind, less in accumulation. And upon facts so proved are based the principles of those sciences. The facts were thus determined. And the principles are but deductions from them.
109. The existence of God, the Lord of the universe, a being of intelligence, motive and will, is proved by more testimony than that of Julius Caesar. And a world of spirits is proved by more living witnesses, and has been in every generation of men, than can or ever could be adduced to prove the existence of one half the species of living animals on the earth.
110. Enter into the closet of your friends’ hearts, open the door that shame and the fear of being called superstitious has shut, induce men to speak to you as they commune with their own hearts, and how many will you find, who have never beheld the spiritual? How many who have never been spoken to by the invisible? How many who have never been led by the intangible?
111. The world is now a vast crowd of living witnesses of the spiritual, shamed down to silence by the Atheistical doctrines of modern Christianity. This truth is a spring that can never be dried up.
112. A generation shall yet arise who, taking facts as they find them, will make religion a science, studied by as exact rules as mathematicks. Then will these facts be sought for as are new discoveries in Geology and Astronomy. Facts well attest-
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ed will be generalized. Rules be drawn from them. Man’s prejudices will cease to minister to his blindness. The mouth of the Seer will be opened, and the whole earth enlightened.
113. In the transmission of testimony from generation to generation, it is by many supposed to lose much of its credibility. But this is not true, where it is supported by proper monuments.
114. When a religion has been built up, a new Law, sacrament, or ordinance, engrafted on an existing institution, or any publick monument, erected in pursuance of a particular revelation of God, it is evidence to all succeeding generations, that at the time of the event, the testimony of it was believed by those who had the best means of knowing whether it was true or false, and were most interested in the truth.
115. For instance, the appearance of God to Moses, and to all Israel, in Sinai, could not have been an original falsehood, written by Moses, for if the events did not occur as written, all Israel would have cried out against palming the deception on their children.
116. Nor could it have been subsequently forged; for the Law then instituted was its monument. All the people would have cried out, we received no such Law from our ancestors. They left us no such history. National or great publick events cannot be forged in history. Facts in which multitudes are interested may be distorted, but they cannot be created.
117. That God has been seen by, and has conversed with men, is the best proved fact in history, whether tested by historick testimony, or by induction. These testimonies remain forever, to confound the unbelieving. But to us he has given the inspiration of his Spirit, and the sure word of prophecy; a perpetual and ever present witness.
85 words, 325 letters.
2. Man, being in the likeness of God’s person, they all recognize him as their Lord, and fear him as a God. And notwithstanding his degeneracy, he has retained so much of the divine likeness, that beasts, birds, and fishes, fear him, and his power is over them as a mighty one. It is diminished as he has departed from the likeness and perfections of his Creator: and that spirit of rebellion, which man has received so redundantly, he has communicated to them also, that they rebel
[1 Ex. iii, 15. [2 Gen. i. Ex. xx, 11. xxxi, 17. Neh. ix, 6. Ps. viii 3. xxxiii, 6, 9. lxxxix, 11, 12. Isa. xliv, 24. Jer. x, 12. [3 Gen. i, 26-28. v, 1.
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against him, as he rebels against God. Yet the fear of man is on them continually;1 and his dominion is over them throughout the earth.
111 words, 434 letters.
3. God conversed with Adam as a familiar friend;2 and walked with Enoch,3 who was faithful unto him in the midst of a corrupt race: he communed with Noah,4 the father of a new world; and covenanted by his own oath, with Abraham the faithful.5
44 words, 185 letters.
4. He commanded a fiery law, with a voice of thunder, in Sinai:6 the earth quaked at the tread of his foot: the rustling of his garment was as low thunder; and his voice as a mighty thunderbolt: the beaming of his face was as the sun in the morning; and the flash of his eye as the fierce lightning.7 The nations trembled at his presence;8 and the tribes said, Not unto us; not unto us, Oh Lord God, but unto Moses, be thy voice known.9
85 words, 330 letters.
5. For they heard the voice of God, as the voice of a trumpet; and as loud thunder: and they saw the lightning: and the mountain smoking; and they felt the earth tremble; and they fled far away, crying, Not unto us;
[1 Gen. ix, 2. Ps. viii, 4-8. Jas. iii, 7. [2 Gen. ii, iii.. [3 Gen. v, 24. [4 Gen. vi, 14-21. vii, 1-4. viii, 15-22. ix, 1-17. [5 Gen. xv, 18. xxiv, 7. Heb. vi, 13. [6 Ex. xix, 16, 18. Deut. xxxiii, 2. Job. xxxvii, 2, 5. [7 Hab. iii, 4. 1st Tim. vi, 16. [8 Ps. xcvii, 4. [9 Ex.
xx, 19.
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not unto us: but unto Moses, declare thy law, Oh God, and we will obey his voice, and live,1 for, who shall abide in thy presence?
67 words, 259 letters.
6. His word was made known to the Prophets, and his sacraments were established in Israel. Kings ruled in his glorious name; and the nations who forgot him were destroyed.
29 words, 136 letters.
7. He hath appointed everlasting life in the Lord Jesus; and given the keys of death and of hell2 unto him who alone among mortals, hath kept his glorious word in all things. He hath chosen him the first born among many brethren;3 for he is the first begotten of the dead,4 and hath the keys of the resurrection, and of life forevermore.5
62 words, 263 letters
8. He maketh his Apostles the witnesses of his Law, unto the nations;6 and of his gospel unto every kindred, and tongue, and people. His word is among men; and the revelation of his power, in the midst of the earth.
40 words, 164 letters.
9. The Lord our God is glorious in his perfections; there is none like him. The gods of the heathen have no voice: neither do they
[1 Ex. xx, 18-21. Heb. xii, 19. [2 Rev. i, 18. [3 Rom. viii, 29. Col. i, 15, 18. [4 Rev, i, 5. [5 John xi, 25, 26. [6 Matt. xxviii, 19, 20. Mark xvi, 15. Luke xxiv, 47, 48. Acts i, 8. x, 41, 42.
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see, nor understand. The god of Babylon the Great, the Mother of Churches, before whom all her daughters bow down, is naught; he is as wind, and vanity; he can neither be seen nor heard, nor felt; he hath no dwelling place: where shall any abide with him? Passionless, is he; and can neither love the good, nor hate the evil: who shall adore him, or fear him?
93 words, 374 letters.
10. Without members and parts; he cannot hear, see, feel, smell, or taste. Neither can he speak, nor come unto those that worship him, nor smite the disobedient and rebellious. Handless, footless, mouthless, eyeless, and earless; a shapeless chaos, conceived in the imagination of the vain: ye shall not fear him, nor bow down unto him, nor adore him.
58 words, 271 letters.
1. It is apparent that the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, is not the God of the Christian Churches; either of the Mother Church, or of the generality of the Daughters.
2. The Creed of Saint Athanasius, composed during the reign of the Emperour Constantine, is the most perfect and elaborate statement of the Christian doctrine on that subject in existence, and is adopted by ninetenths of all Christendom.
3. It is as follows:
Whosoever will be saved, before all things it is necessary that he hold the Catholick faith.
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Which faith, except every one do keep whole and undefiled, without doubt he shall perish everlastingly. And the Catholick faith is this: That we worship one God in Trinity, and Trinity in Unity.
Neither confounding the Persons, nor dividing the Substance.
For there is one Person of the Father, another of the Son, and another of the Holy Ghost.
But the Godhead of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, is all one: the Glory equal, the Majesty coeternal. Such as the Father is, such is the Son; and such is the Holy Ghost.
The Father uncreate, the Son uncreate, and the Holy Ghost uncreate.
The Father incomprehensible, the Son incomprehensible, and the Holy Ghost incomprehensible.
The Father eternal, the Son eternal, and the Holy Ghost eternal.
And yet they are not three eternals, but one eternal.
As also there are not three incomprehensibles, nor three uncreated; but one uncreated, and one incomprehensible. So likewise the Father is Almighty, the Son Almighty, and the Holy Ghost Almighty.
And yet they are not three Almighties, but one Almighty.
So the Father is God, the Son is God, and the Holy Ghost is God.
And yet they are not three Gods, but one God.
So likewise the Father is Lord, the Son Lord, and the Holy Ghost Lord.
And yet they are not three Lords, but one Lord.
For like as we are compelled by the Christian verity, to ac-knowledge every Person by himself to be God and Lord; So are we forbidden by the Catholick Religion to say, there be three Gods, or three Lords.
The Father is made of none; neither created, nor begotten.
The Son is of the Father alone; not made, nor created, but begotten.
The Holy Ghost is of the Father and of the Son; neither made, nor created, nor begotten, but proceeding.
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So there is one Father, not three Fathers; one Son, not three Sons; one Holy Ghost, not three Holy Ghosts. And in this Trinity none is afore, or after other; none is greater, or less than another;
But the whole three Persons are coeternal together, and co-equal.
So that in all things, as is aforesaid, the Unity in Trinity, and the Trinity in Unity, is to be worshipped.
He therefore that will be saved, must thus think of the Trinity.
Furthermore, it is necessary to everlasting salvation, that he also believe rightly the Incarnation of our Lord Jesus Christ.
For the right Faith is, that we believe and confess, that our Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, is God and Man:
God, of the Substance of the Father, begotten before the worlds: and Man, of the Substance of his Mother, born in the world; Perfect God, and perfect Man: of a reasonable soul and human flesh subsisting:
Equal to the Father, as touching his Godhead; and inferiour to the Father, as touching his Manhood.
Who, although he be God and Man, yet he is not two, but one Christ;
One, not by conversion of the Godhead into flesh, but by taking of the Manhood into God;
One altogether, not by confusion of Substance, but by unity of Person.
For as the reasonable soul and flesh is one Man, so God and Man is one Christ;
Who suffered for our salvation; descended into hell, rose again the third day from the dead.
He ascended into heaven; he sitteth on the right hand of the Father, God Almighty; from whence he shall come to judge the
quick and the dead.
At whose coming all men shall rise again with their bodies, and shall give account for their own works.
And they that have done good shall go into life everlasting; and they that have done evil into everlasting fire.
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This is the Catholick Faith; which except a man believe faithfully, he cannot be saved.
Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost.
As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be; world without end. Amen.
4. Among all Christian denominations, except the few small sects known as Unitarians, this creed is substantially, if not
literally, subscribed to; the principal departure from it being that the Greek, and a few small Eastern Churches, hold that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father only; not the Father and Son.
5. In the Catholick and most of the Protestant Churches, this is the declared Creed; but in those where it is not read, and its existence probably unknown, the same doctrine is set down in some different form of words: thus they all bow down before the same God: but not the God of Patriarchs, Prophets, and Apostles.
6. Among the Articles of Religion, of the Episcopal Churches, are the following:
I. There is but one living and true God, everlasting, without body, parts, or passions; of infinite power, wisdom and goodness; the Maker and Preserver of all things, both visible and invisible. And in unity of this Godhead there be three Persons, of one substance, power, and eternity; the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.
II. The Son, which is the Word of the Father, begotten from everlasting of the father, the very and eternal God, and of one substance with the Father, took Man’s nature in the womb of the blessed Virgin, of her substance: so that two whole and perfect Natures, that is to say, the Godhead and Manhood, were joined together in one Person, never to be divided, whereof is one Christ, very God, and very Man; who truly suffered, was crucified, dead, and buried, to reconcile his
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Father to us, and to be a sacrifice, not only for original guilt, but also for actual sins of men.
V. The Holy Ghost, proceeding from the Father and the Son, is of one substance, majesty, and glory, with the Father and the
Son, very and eternal God.
7. The Methodist Articles of Religion are a transcript, with slight variations, from the Episcopal; the chief variation being that
in the later editions of the Discipline of the Methodists of America, it is not alleged that God is passionless.
8. Abraham, Isaac and Jacob worshipped no such God. None of the Patriarchs knew him. None of the Prophets gave us his
word. None of the Apostles were his witnesses.
9. The God who created Adam had a body, with all its parts; for as truly as Adam, when he begat a son, begat him in his own
likeness, after his image, (Gen. v, 3) so truly God, when he created Adam, made him in the likeness and after the image of God. (Gen. i, 26, 27. v, 1. ix, 6. 1st Cor. xi, 7. Jas. iii, 9.)
10. Abraham worshipped the same God; for when God visited him, Abraham at first mistook him for a man; and, with genuine Patriarchal hospitality, invited him into the tent to eat, and offered to wash his feet. (Gen. xviii.)
11. Jacob also, worshipped the same God; for after wrestling with him, he tells us he saw him face to face. (Gen. xxxii, 24, 28, 30.) Surely the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, has a body and parts, face and feet.
12. The God who spoke to Moses from the fire in the bush, and in a voice of thunder in Sinai, gave the Commandments; wrote the Commandments on tables of stone, with his finger; (Deut. ix, 10;) conversed with Moses face to face, as a man converses with his friend; (Ex. xxxii, 11;) passed by
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covering Moses with his hand, and allowed him to behold his back parts. (Ex. xxxiii, 22, 23.) Truly this is not the God without body or parts, which Episcopalians, Methodists, and all other Christians worship.
13. The God of the Prophets and Apostles was in bodily form, with all the appropriate parts, as imaged in his creature man; for he had
Arms, (Jer. xxi, 5. Job xl, 9. Ps. lxxxix 13. Isa. lii 10. Luke i, 51,)
Hands, (Jer. xxi, 5. Hab. iii, 4. Ex. xxxiii, 22, 23. Acts vii, 55, 56. v, 31. Rom. viii, 34,) Loins, (Ezek. i, 27. viii, 2,)
Feet, (Ezek. xliii, 7. Hab. iii, 5. Gen. xviii, 4,)
Face, (Gen. xxii, 30. Ex. xxxiii, 11, 23. Num. xiv, 14. Luke i, 76,)
Eyes, (2d Kings xix, 16. Deut. xxxii, 10. Hab. i, 13. Heb. iv, 13,)
Ears, (2d Kings xix, 16. Num. xiv, 28. 2d Sam. xxii, 7. Ps. xxxiv, 15,)
Nostrils, (Ex. xv, 8. 2d Sam. xxii, 16,)
Mouth, (Isa. xxx, 2. Lam. iii, 38,)
Lips, (Isa. xxx, 27. Ps. xvii, 4,)
And tongue, (Isa. xxx, 27.)
14. The appearance of God was the likeness of man, when he appeared to Ezekiel, and called him to the Prophetick office; though he was surrounded with fire and a glorious radiance, from his loins upwards and downwards (Ezek. i, 26, 27.)
15. Their God was stirred up with the passions of
Love, (Deut. vii, 8. Jer. xxxi, 3. John iii, 16. xvii, 23. 1st John iv, 16. Mal. i, 2. Rom. ix,13.)
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Jealousy, (Ex. xx, 5. xxxiv, 14. Deut. iv, 24. v, 9. vi, 15. Josh. xxiv, 19. Ezek. xxxix, 25. Nah. i, 2. Zech. viii, 2. 1st Cor. x, 22. 2d Cor. xi, 2,)
Anger, (Ps. vi, 1. vii, 11. Isa. xxx, 27. Jer. xxi, 5. Nah. i, 3, 6. Hab. iii, 8, 12,) Indignation, (Isa. xxx, 27. Nah. i, 6. Hab. iii, 12. Zech. i, 12,)
Wrath, (Jer. xxi, 5. Nab. i, 2, 6. Hab. iii, 2, 8)
Hatred, (Jer. xii, 8. Hosea ix, 15. Mal. i, 3. ii, 16. Rom. ix. 13. Prov. vi, 16. Isa. lxi, 8,) Fury, (Jer. xxi, 5. Nah. i, 2, 6,)
And revenge, (Nah. i, 2.)
16. It is sometimes objected, that “God is a spirit.” (John iv, 24.) So are Angels “spirits sent forth to minister to them who shall be heirs of salvation:” (Heb. i, 14:) yet when Abraham and Lot saw them they mistook them for men, (Gen. xviii, 2, 5, 16- 20. xix, 1, 15,) and John the Revelator mistook one for God, and was about to worship him, but he said, “See thou do it not: for I am thy fellow servant, and of thy brethren the Prophets” (Rev. xxii, 8, 9.)
17. Those who worship a God without body, parts, or passions, do not worship the God of Abraham, of whom Prophets spoke and Apostles bore witness; but an idol--a false god, which their imagination conceives of; and as by their Creed, he is a nonentity, their faith is Atheism.
18. Close upon the tail of this Atheism, follows Polytheism. For as the Creed declares that the Father is Lord God Almighty, uncreate, eternal, aud incomprehensible; the Son, Lord God Almighty, uncreate, eternal, and incomprehensible; and the Holy Ghost, Lord God Almighty, uncreate, eternal, and incomprehensible; it is most indisputably the Creed of three gods, notwithstanding the disclaimer, which says they are one God.
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19. Thus they worship God the Father, “without body, parts, or passions;” and God the Son, begotten by the Father, with “body, flesh, and bones, and all things appertaining to the perfection of man’s nature,” sitting at the right hand of God, the Father, who has no hand; and God the Holy Ghost, who proceeded from the Father and the Son, who is, nevertheless, eternal, though he could not have proceeded from the Son, until he was begotten; three gods, all unlike; and require men to believe these three, but one, on pain of being damned everlastingly.
20. It is no wonder that those who preach this doctrine declare it a mystery. It is a greater mystery, that men have been found to believe it. Well did John the Revelator name the Church in which it originated, “Mystery, Babylon the Great, the Mother of Harlots and abominations of the earth. (Rev. xvii, 5.)
21. She was once the Apostolick Church; the Lamb’s wife; but when she lost the Apostolick Priesthood, and went off in an unholy union with the Kingdoms of this world as her Lord, she became what the Angel declared her to be, a whore; as all her daughters, prostituting themselves to the various national governments, without ever being lawfully joined to Christ are only harlots.
22. To make their Creeds as ridiculous as they are infidel; false as they are heathenish; Catholicks teach that Christ’s mother is the “Mother of God;” as though God was begotten by himself, on a creature of his hands, that he might be eternally begotten.
23. And Protestants, not willing that Catholicks should monopolize all the folly and all the falsehood, have invented, or borrowed from their mother, the doctrine of an infinite
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atonement, by means of infinite sufferings in the crucifixion of one of these three gods.
24. And, as by their faith, these three gods are one and the same god, it follows that the Lord God Almighty, uncreate,
incomprehensible, and eternal, became a Priest unto himself, and offered himself a sacrifice unto himself, to make propitiation unto himself for sins against himself, and became a mediator between himself and his rebellious creatures; and has risen from the dead, though he alone hath immortality, and ascended on high, where he has received all power from himself, and sat down at his own right hand; where, with his human body, flesh and bones, and all that pertains to the perfection of man’s nature, raised to immortality and everlasting life, he “is the express image of the invisible God,” (Col. i, 15. 2d Cor. iv, 4,) “and the express image of his Father’s person,” (Heb. 1, 3,) who has not any such body or any part of it, and is nevertheless the same identical person with himself.
25. This is not the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Ye shall not bow down to the God of Babylon, for the God who spoke
in Sinai, said, “Thou shalt not bow down unto, nor adore anything that thy imagination conceiveth of; but the Lord thy God only.”
26. The God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, was not the offspring of adultery; nor was he born of woman; he was not carried about in a nurse’s arms, nor dependent on his mother’s milk for sustenance; he never died, nor did he cry to himself, and find no helper. (Matt. xxvii, 46. Mark xv, 34.) Eternal ages are but pulsations in his lifetime, and his might is omnipotence.
11. The Lord our God hath an incommunicable name; never polluted by the breath [Page 59]
of the ungodly: which none can know, but he who ministereth in his holy sanctuary; by which he revealed himself unto Moses; and in which he establisheth this law, for an everlasting covenant.
46 words, 214 letters.
This incommunicable name is not Jehovah. That is written instead of it. For his secret name was only written in that copy of the Law kept in the Ark of the Testimony. How ridiculous to believe with Christians, that the name of God which Abraham was not permitted to know, (Ex. vi, 3,) was written in a published book, for all the Heathen to read. It was never spoken out of the Sanctuary, nor above the breath, and then only between three High Priests, after the order of Melchisedek. (See Josephus’ Ant., B. ii, ch. xii, 4,)
12. God alone hath immortality. Adam, the first of men, the Ancient of Days, the great Prince;1 Abraham, to whom God gave an everlasting possession;2 David, whose throne was established as the days of heaven, forever;3 all died. Enoch, who walked with God, and was not found, because God took him;4 and Elijah, who ascended to the throne of God, in his own fiery chariot5 shall return to the earth to sleep with their fathers.6 The change which is sealed upon all the sons of Adam,7 shall come upon the faithful, who stand on the earth, when the Lord Jesus shall be revealed
[1 D. &. C. Sec. iii, p. 28. Dan. vii, 9, 22. [2 Gen. xvii, 8. [3 Ps. lxxxix, 29, 36. 2d Sam.. vii, 16. Isa. ix, 6, 7. Jer. xxxiii, 20-26. Luke i, 32, 33. [4 Gen. v, 24. [5 2d Kings ii, 11. [6 Rev. xi, 7-9. [7 1st Cor. xv, 22.
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from heaven, in flaming fire, taking vengeance on those who know not God, and obey not the gospel.1 And he, the Prince of the Kings of the earth;2 who in the days to come, shall speak with the voice of a trumpet, and the dead shall hear his voice and live;3 died once, that he might live forevermore.4 He praised God, who alone hath immortality, that he would not leave him in the place of the dead:5 he preached the gospel to the spirits in prison,6 and obtained the key of life everlasting:7 but God alone liveth forever: the eternal ages are unto him as moments to us:8 infinities, as units to the mathematician. Our God alone hath immortality.9 Thou shalt love him with all thy heart, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength.
239 words, 1,010 letters.
13. God alone hath omniscience. He clotheth himself in light as a robe: his ministers, who at midday, are as a flaming fire in the dark night, are blind before him; he apprehendeth the motion of the atom which floateth in the invisible element,10 and discerneth the speck in the centre of the star, which the light of the sun hath not reached since the
[1 2d Thess. i, 7, 8. [2 Rev. i, 5. xi, 15. xvii, 14. xix, 16. Dan. vii, 13, 14. 1st Tim. vi, 15. [3 John v, 25, 28. let Cor. xv, 52. 1st
Thess. iv, 16. [4 Rev. i, 18. Heb. vii, 25. [5 Ps. xvi, 10. Acts ii, 27. [6 1st Pet. iii, 19. Luke xxiii, 43. [7 John xvii, 2. xi, 25, 26. [8 Ps. xc, 4. [9 1st Tim. vi, 16. i, 17. 2d Pet. iii, 8. [10 Ps. cxxxix, 12. Dan. ii, 22. Heb. iv, 13.
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day that the sons of God shouted for joy that the earth was created, as a mountain in the eye of mortals. He never sleepeth; his eye closeth not; and there is no darkness before him. Our God alone hath omniscience. Thou shalt love him with all thy heart, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength.
123 words, 512 letters.
14. God alone hath omnipotence. He looketh upon the nations, and they melt in the fury of his countenance:1 he frowneth, and the mountains dissolve to smoke; the vallies are consumed in the breath of his nostrils. He spoke, and worlds were created:2 he thought, and they were lost in space. Earthquakes are but the whisperings of his voice; the rustling of his attire causeth lightning, and thunder; and with the shadow of his garment he blotteth out the sun. The Prince of the Kings of the earth; by whom the world was created;3 and who liveth and reigneth forever receiveth power from him, and rendereth it unto him.4 Who shall stand before him? Our God alone hath omnipotence.5 Thou shalt love him with all thy heart, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength.
136 words, 603 letters.
[1 Jer. x, 10. [2 Ps. xxxiii, 6, 9. Isa. xl, 26, 28. Jer. li, 15. 2d Pet. iii, 5. [3 Eph iii, 9, Col. i, 16, 17. Heb. i, 2. [4 Eph. i, 19-22. 1st Cor. xv, 24. Matt, xxviii, 18. [5 Acts xvii. 24-26. Jer. xxxii. 17. Rom. xi, 36.
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15. God alone is omnipresent. His presence filleth the immensity of space as a point. In the midst of the bottomless pit, is he; the pavilion of his feet, is the face of the earth:1 the stars, are his home: his breath, is fragrant odour to the blessed, in the highest heaven; and it enliveneth the crumbling frame of the dead.2 The rays of the sun, have not found his bourn; nor the light of the stars, the place he inhabiteth not. His rest outspeedeth the lightning; it leaveth the morning ray behind it; and his speed is more rapid than the thought of angels. Our God alone is omnipresent.3 Thou shalt love him with all thy heart and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength.
127 words, 526 letters.
16. God alone is one. There are choirs of angels; hosts of spirits; and multitudes of men: but God hath no fellow. A great King, is to him as the unseen spawn before the monsters of the deep; Methuselah, as the ephemera of a day:4 the most glorious spirit, is bodiless, and a breath. And the Lord Jesus, who created the earth, and redeemed it; whose kingdom filleth the earth, and the heavens; possesseth but a speck, amid the stars he made.
[1 Acts xvii, 27, 28. [2 Ezek. xxxvii, 5, 9, 10, 14. Ps. civ, 29, 30. [3 Ps. cxxxix, 7-10. [4 2d Pet. iii, 8.
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He alone is one.1 Thou shalt love him with all thy heart, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength. Thou shalt adore him, and serve him, and obey him; and beside him, thou shalt have no other God: for he alone hath immortality, and omniscience, and omnipotence, and omnipresence. He alone is one; and they
who obey his law, shall be like him.2
Total--16 sec. 1,492 words, 6,261 letters.
NOTE ON THE TRUE GOD.
1. During the ages immediately following the apostacy of the Christian Church, when nearly all the world had fallen into a state of barbarism, ignorance and superstition, the knowledge which mankind had formerly possessed was so far lost that the wisest and most learned nations had little left of the natural or moral sciences, or the industrial arts.
2. The civilization of modern times is the emergence of the human race from the barbarism of the dark ages. But in this emergence little new has been developed. The chapter of lost arts is nearly a duplicate of that of modern discoveries and inventions.
3. The few streams of learning which flowed on through that period of barbarism, were deep and narrow. A few houses, closed to the gaze of all but their inmates, brought down to modern times much of the old learning.
4. But during the same period, the nations of Europe, and
[1 lst Cor. viii, 6. Deut. iv, 35, 39. Ist Kings viii, 60. Isa. xlv, 5, 6,18, 22. x1vi, 9. Mark xii, 32. [2 lst John iii, 2. Phil. iii, 21.
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around the Mediterranean, engrafted on their religion all manner of superstition, partaking of the popular ignorance and prejudice.
5. Not only was the keeping of the Oracles of God in the hands of the ignorant and superstitious, who by that means not unfrequently corrupted them, but most of the translations into modern languages were made before the light of the newly developed sciences dispelled those superstitions.
6. As a consequence, nearly all religious knowledge among Christian nations was more or less mixed with the falsehood which the ignorance and superstition of the preceding ages inculcated.
7. And as the different systems of religion were fixed and unchangeable, bound up by creeds which it was heresy to question, almost every advance in knowledge was opposed by every influence and injury which ignorance and superstition could inflict.
8. The Clergy having the control of Courts and Legislatures, opposed the progress of knowledge by pains and penalties, until religion, designed by the Almighty to be the school of mankind, in which all knowledge should be gained, became the prisonhouse of the lover of knowledge.
9. Since in a few places on earth, laws have ceased to oppose knowledge, and here and there a benefactor of mankind lives, without the fear of prisons and clanking chains, the superstitious prejudice pursues the friend of man as a shadow, and not unfrequently wreaks on the fame of the dead, the punishment which a virtuous life has scarcely escaped.
10. These are not the worst ills which false religion has inflicted on mankind. The doctrine has been everywhere inculcated that religion is a mere myth; a thing to be believed, to be sure, in some way, but not to be demonstrated as other
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sciences, and to stand upon its intrinsick merits; that though true in some mysterious sense, its truth is opposed to what is also true in other sciences, and that what is true in religion, may be impossible in natural philosophy.
11. A sound mind revolts against this. If the religious sentiments predominate, it believes on, and shuts its eyes to the voice of nature, wandering in the mazes of metaphysicks, and wasting in logomachy the talent, which should have developed valuable ideas.
12. Otherwise, it passes by religion as a thing not to be studied, if believed; rejects the revelations of God’s word, as a means of obtaining knowledge; and, perhaps, without denying that God did in some remote time, in some mysterious way, reveal a religion to man; laughs to scorn the fact that he is known to man in modern times, especially in this enlightened age.
13. Among such men the dogma is universal that the primitive ages of man were ages of barbarism; that civilization originated with man, and was developed in the slow progress of long ages; and that man is the author of the sciences, and the discoverer of the knowledge he possesses.
14. Nothing could be farther from the truth. The history of all the old nations, brings a shadowy knowledge of a civilization earlier than that of the Greeks, the wisdom of which was lost before the days of the earliest author whose works have reached us, though its monuments remain.
15. The golden age was the theme of all the early poets, as its return was the hope of the sages. Without additional
147 words, 605 letters.
confirmation, it was hardly probable that a faith so universal was not founded on true history notwithstanding, most of its witnesses had disappeared.
16. But recent developments in Archaiology have proved
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it true. Of the Egyptian Empire, the earliest whose history has been rescued from oblivion, it is now beyond question that at the beginning of its history, its civilization was of the highest order.
17. The classick historians, Herodotus, Manetho, Eratosthenes, and Diodorus, agree with the monuments and papyri, that Menes was the first sovereign of the Egyptian Empire.
18. His reign is placed by Lepsius at 3,893 years before Christ, or 5,749 years ago; being 1,544 years earlier than the date which Archbishop Usher’s Chronology erroneously gives to the flood.*
19. Yet at that early period Egypt was a powerful and highly civilized Empire, eminent in the sciences and the industrial arts. The name of Menes is gloriously associated with the building of Memphis, the oldest metropolis, of the origin of which we have any knowledge, with foreign conquests, a high state of the arts, a numerous and wealthy population, and a successful system of internal improvements, such as Holland alone affords a parallel, if indeed she does at the present day.
20. The Nile, an immense river, overflows all the arable land of Egypt, and had to be controlled by dykes and canals, more extensive than are found in America, before the country could sustain any other population than a few wandering herdsmen. For this purpose hydraulick engineering must have existed in the highest perfection; an immense population must have pressed down the valley of the river for room, and industry, such as is never found among barbarians, must have been the national characteristick of teeming millions.
*Archbishop Usher’s Chronology is that generally used and found in the margins of most family and pulpit Bibles, though different editors make slight variations from it.
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21. Little of co taneous records of that age remains; most of its monuments are deep buried in the sands, from the Lybian desert; or removed to construct more modern cities.
22. But, two or three centuries later, when we reach the period of abundant and undoubted contemporaneous monuments; walking no longer in a land of shadows, we read Egyptian history upon monuments of granite and paper of papyrus, in the same language which was written during the reign of all the Pharaohs.
23. Fiftythree centuries ago, sepulchres and pyramids; palaces and temples; highways and canals such as in this age would cost millions; dykes and bridges of immense extent; statuary sixty feet high, and delicate tissued paper; reed pens, and red and black ink, which have not yet faded; chemically prepared paints and varnish, the colours of which are as fresh now as those from the best workshops, laid yesterday; and the preservation of the dead uncorrupted, were among the achievements of Egypt.
24. The present times have no parallel to that. The result of all inquiry is, that the earliest civilization was of the highest order. The theory that it was developed by man, and grew up from the necessities of dense populations through long ages, is giving way. It originated with God, who is the author of all the arts and sciences, and taught them to his creatures.
25. That which lays at the foundation of all civilization, all wisdom, all knowledge, man did not possess by nature; could not invent, and until possessed, could have no desire for; articulate language.
26. Man by nature has no articulate language. Certainly no fact is clearer than this. The child never speaks words till he hears them. He uses no words but such as are taught
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to him. He speaks no language but what he learns from others. If he has no opportunity of learning of others, he never speaks. If he is devoid of the faculty of hearing, he never learns to speak.
27. All the animals, or, at least, all the domestick animals, and many not domesticated, all the superiour kinds of animals, and many of the inferiour, have a natural language; a language of the passions. This language is uniform with each species. They learn it from none, but possess it by nature. No one of the species is ever without it.
28. The dog barks, howls, growls and whines. Every dog has these powers by nature. The same species of dog has them substantially alike. And he has the whole of these modes of expression, and all the varieties of them, without learning or hearing them from others. There is a peculiarity in the voice of the dog, when he starts the chase, when he snuffs the track, when he
spies the game, when he drives him to tree or burrow, and when he triumphs over him or tastes his blood.
29. He has a growl of pleasure, a growl of fondness, a growl of anger, and a growl of defiance. And no dog in the species is destitute of it. None learn it; all possess it. Not only do all possess it, but all possess it just in the characteristick of his race and of his particular family or breed. Every hunter distinguishes the voice of each different kind of dog, and the particular passion or
fact expressed by the voice and intonation of the dog.
30. The dissimilarity and unlikeness between the voice of the hound and the terrier, both used much in hunting, and
constantly kennelling together, are very great. Their continual association does not produce any approximation of language, or the slightest change in the tone of the voice.
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It neither adds to or diminishes from the language of either, one intonation.
31. Take the spaniel that has never seen the light, and place him with a hound possessed only of his natural habits, and the
spaniel never learns one sound that belonged not to his nature. Place him where he never sees or hears another dog, and he is deficient in none. If you cross the breed, the new race will have a language between the two; approximating to both, like to neither.
32. You can change the language indefinitely by changing the nature, the blood, or race, but none at all by changing the habits or instruction. These remarks are equally true of all the other animals possessed of a voice. Cows all low and bellow, without being taught. Horses all neigh, though they have never heard it. And to their natural knowledge of this language, instruction can add nothing.
33. Man has a natural language of the same kind, rich and prolifick in the expression of the passions, but barren in abstractions; partially inactive by neglect, but lost by none, and resorted to as often as men meet who have no common articulate language. From the new born child to decrepit old age, in every age, in every country, in every clime, and of every race and family of people, there never was one individual that did not possess it.
34. The common expression of this language is in the laugh, the cry, the shout and the moan, which are the same everywhere. Every child must be taught to speak; none to cry. All have to learn the definition of words. All know what is meant by the laugh. The conqueror speaks of his triumph to men of strange tongue in vain, but the shout that tells of victory is never misunderstood. The dying man’s voice articulates bootless words to those who have not learn-
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ed them, but the moan and the sigh of broken limbs and crushed hearts was never mistaken. The cry of childish fear and pain is comprehended by all ears. How else could infancy tell its sufferings?
35. No one has an articulate language by nature. If articulate language was natural to man, as is the language of the passions to both man and beast, he would be born with it, which no man is; or all would come to possess a uniform language at some definite stage of existence, which is not found at all; or there would be particular forms of language peculiar to particular races, which there is not; and the language would be changed by crossing the breeds, as among animals.
36. The child knows no word till it has been taught. It will use any sound whatever to express any particular idea, just as the tutor pleases to teach it. The English child, placed in a Dutch family, learns and speaks the Dutch as well as a native. The Chinese child, placed in an American family, will not be possessed of one word of the language of his fathers. There is no peculiarity of race which adapts it to one language more than another.
37. There have been, in various countries and in different ages, instances of persons growing up to manhood with all their faculties unimpaired, but so entirely separated from the rest of mankind as to have no opportunity of learning articulate language. And every one of them have been as destitute of it as the beasts of the field. Not many years since a wild boy was found in the swamps of Alabama, who, according to the most plausible conjecture, had been lost at the age of three years. He could not speak one word of any known language. Yet all his natural faculties were decidedly good.
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38. Similar examples are of frequent occurrence. Scarcely a year passes but the newspapers bring us the account of one. And the facts in every case produce the same conclusion; that man by nature has one uniform and universal language of the passions, and that he has no articulate language. So uniform have been results thus far, that in case a wild man should be found, men would just as much expect to find him able to laugh, moan and cry, as to have two ears and one mouth; and would just as little expect him to speak an articulate language, as to understand the art of painting or sculpture.
39. An eminent example of the natural inability of man to speak, is found in Caspar Hausar, of Nuremburg, who was imprisoned from the age of four years to sixteen, during which time he never saw the face or heard the voice of man. He was possessed of natural talent of superiour order, yet he could neither speak or understand one word. But he could cry. That was natural language. He needed none to teach him that.
40. The ancients have recorded several cases of children brought up in utter seclusion, for the purpose of determining what language they would speak; vainly supposing that there was one original language, from which all were derived, and which all the untaught would speak. They spoke none. Why? Simply because they were not taught.
41. As man has never in any known instance been found in possession of an articulate language, and as in millions on millions of cases he is positively known to be destitute of it, the inevitable conclusion is, that by nature he has no articulate language. Did he invent it? Could he originate it? Vain thought! There is not an instance known where he has added one articulate sound to the store of words which man
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possessed at the period of the earliest authentick records.
42. It is hardly conceivable that a man, destitute of language, should know the want of it. Certainly it is impossible that one
who was destitute of all the arts and sciences, should see any need of a language, or have any desire to possess one. And it is not by any means conceivable that a people destitute of language, should possess arts and sciences.
43. Man untaught is one of the weakest most dependent and inefficient of all animals. Other animals, cast off in the early period of their existence, seem very well able to take care of themselves. Man is almost sure to perish. The knowledge which has been made their universal heritage, is usually sufficient to provide for all their wants. In man, even under favourable circumstances, it is barely sufficient to preserve life.
44. Is it possible that man, placed in such circumstances, a mere untutored animal of forests, swamps and meadows, more dependent and inefficient in providing the means of subsistence than any domestick animal, should ever have a desire for an articulate language? Or, that, destitute of such a language, he should ever possess any such knowledge of arts and sciences as would make it desirable?
45. But if it was possible for such a being to desire any mode of expression, beyond the mere language of the passions, which all animals possess, could he invent it? Could he invent radical articulations, capable of infinite combination, join them in words, and fix a meaning which each word should express? And, then, could he compel his fellowman to learn his language?
46. If all this has happened to man, we may expect some day to see a dog on the errand of Cadmus, inventing a language to be spoken by dogs, which shall express ideas, instead
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of passions; reasonings, instead of impulses; and teaching it to his fellowdogs; and, in regular progress, making letters adapted to writing and printing, for general use in the fraternity of dogs.
47. Unseemly and ridiculous as such an idea is, it is more so of the untaught man than the dog; for, unaided by science, the arts, and instruction, man is less capable of providing a subsistence than a dog; and, therefore, has less means of improvement.
48. Man, without instruction, such as the child would be, if separated from all the human race, never hearing the voice or seeing the face of man to learn from him, is so far removed from anything we are in the habit of seeing or contemplating, that it is difficult for us to conceive of such a being; and should we meet with such a one, it would require an effort to esteem him human.
49. No man could for a moment suspect such a being of a capacity to develop the state of civilization, which now exists in the world, by his unaided effort. No one could suspect him of inventing or making a language, nor would any addition to the number increase their capacity for such a work.
50. From whom did man derive articulate language? Not from any of the animals of the earth. None of them possess it. They all have a language of the passions, as a natural endowment; always enjoyed, never acquired. None have anything beyond it.
51. Man, subject to the same wants, and still more helpless by nature, has also a language of the passions, equally expressive; always enjoyed, never acquired. And superadded thereto he has an articulate language, not by original endowment, but by acquisition; altogether artificial, incomparably superiour, and capable of infinite forms of expression.
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52. So far it is perfectly clear that he could not originate it, and while entirely destitute of a language, could have no desire to
acquire one. It is equally certain that he did not derive it from any existing animal. None possess it.
53. It must have been learned of the superiour; from some one to whom it is a positive faculty; not a transitory endowment. 54. Who is that superiour? An animal similar to man, but one step above him in the scale of being? He is not found on earth.
Geologists have not found his fossil remains. Anti-quarians discover none of the works of his hands. The pale faith of the most marvellous tradition has never named him.
55. Articulate language, the language of ideas, of logick, is the gift of God; by him communicated; revealed by him to man. There is no other teacher, in whose school that lesson could have been learned.
56. As this proposition is contrary to the theories most prevalent on the subject, and the demonstration of it makes a full end of the Atheistick controversy, it may not be amiss to pursue the theory of the Atheist to its results, and thus reduce it to an absurdity.
57. No modern pretends that articulate language is a natural endowment The universal experience is too strongly against it. But it is alleged by those who say there is no God, that it originated with man, and grew up with his necessity.
58. Without attempting to show how man, without one word of articulate language, could make any such progress as to feel the need or appreciate the use of it; ignoring the fact that he has never in any known case originated anything which was not analagous to something he had already witnesed, they have assumed that he could feel the necessity; could ap-
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preciate the use, and could invent a thing as unlike anything of which he had any knowledge as articulate language is unlike any natural faculty of man.
59. In attempting to justify this assertion, they have assumed, further, contrary to the principles of every language on earth, that there is some similarity between the sound and signification of words; and, hence, that language originated in the imitation of natural sounds, both of animate and inanimate nature.
60. The universal rule in articulate language is, that the meaning of words is merely arbitrary; entirely independent of the sound, and determined merely by usage; and, consequently, that any word might mean a very different thing from what it does, with the most perfect propriety, if it was only so used.
61. Contrary to this universal rule of language, these infidel theorists allege that the beginning of articulate language was in the imitation of such familiar sounds as the voices of domestick animals, the sound of thunder, wind, and various things in inanimate nature, from which it has gradually progressed to the present state.
62. It is sufficient answer to all this, that not one of all those sounds has become a word in any spoken language, under heaven. More than that, we do not use one of those sounds in naming the sound itself, or the thing which produces it, or in expressing any idea concerning it; and if we should repeat it, it would not express any idea whatever, in any spoken language under heaven.
63. None of the sounds in nature are articulate; therefore, an articulate sound could not be derived from them. We write baaa or maaa for the voice of a sheep; not because the spoken word is like the voice of the sheep; for it is not. If
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it was, we should have but one word for the one sound. The only point of resemblance is a long drawn sound, slightly resembling the continued repetition of short a. There is not the slightest approach to any consonant sound. Consequently, we may substitute any other consonant for the b, or m, and the resemblance to the voice of a sheep will be just precisely the same.
64. In like manner we write booo, looo, and wooo, for the voice of a cow; changing the consonant freely, and the failure to make the true sound is precisely equal in every form, because the voice of the cow is not an articulation, and does not resemble one. The only approach to likeness is in a long drawn sound, bearing a very slight resemblance to the constant repetition of o long and close, as in move. There is not the slightest approach to any consonant sound whatever.
65. Similar is the case of every animal whose voice man has attempted to imitate. Not one of them has been found to articulate a single letter. Not one of them has made the slightest approach to a consonant sound. Not one has ever enunciated a vowel, or any sound that could possibly be mistaken for one.
66. As there are no articulate sounds in nature, either in the voices of men, animals or inanimate nature, man could not get the idea of them from any of those sounds, or learn them by imitating those.
67. No sound in nature is the representative of an idea, nor is any combination of the natural sounds. The voices of animals are the representatives of passions, of feelings, but not ideas; and as such are a universal language, everywhere understood, nowhere learned; but the sounds in inanimate nature do not come up to that; they represent neither ideas nor feelings.
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68. Therefore, in those cases where articulate language approaches nearest to the sounds heard in nature, there is not the slightest similarity in sense. For instance, the voice of a sheep, which makes some slight approach to aaa, or a rapid repetition of short a, is used with slight variations in every feeling that the voice of a sheep can express; whether of pleasure, or pain; joy, or sorrow; love, or hate; triumph, or despair.
69. Yet it would be difficult to find a single instance in any language, of the idea of the same passion or feeling represented by that articulate sound. The same is true of every voice of any known domestick animal.
70. The celebrated Lindley Murray has pursued the subject of sounds corresponding with sense, until he has exhausted it. Nothing can be added to the result of his labours, beyond additional examples on the same points, which he has fully illustrated. (English Reader, Part ii, ch. i)
71. And the result of his labours is, that any words whatever, without reference to the articulate sounds of which they are formed, duly arranged in verse, with the proper succession of long and short syllables, may be so read as in some few studied cases, to produce a similarity, in a single point between the sound of the spoken sentence, and some one idea contained in it. He does not get one step beyond this.
72. In the couplet,
“When Ajax strives some rock’s vast weight to throw, The line too labours, and the words move slow,”
there is not one articulate sound which would not be perfectly appropriate in expressing any other sense, no matter how different. The author, by a skilful selection of long syllables, has put it in the power of the reader to make the sound correspond with the single idea of slow moving force.
73. In other words, if the idea is of a powerful and slow
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effort, the reader, by speaking with a strong breath and full voice, slowly, deliberately, and with emphasis, a succession of long syllables appears to tax his strength, much as the gigantick Ajax did in lifting a heavy rock. And this is the extent of that similarity of sense and sound, out of which men of learning construct their theory of a human origin and progressive development of articulate language.
74. The following is the exact opposite:
“Not so when swift Camilla scours the plain,
Flies o’er th’ unbending corn, and skims along the main.”
Here a skilful combination of short syllables, which the variety of English synonyms puts in the reach of the author, enables the reader to make the sound correspond with the single idea of swiftness.
75. Pursuing the skilful selections of Mr. Murray, we find the following example of a noisy stanza to express the idea of certain work, attended with great noise:
“Loud sounds the axe, redoubling strokes on strokes; On all sides round the forest hurls her oaks Headlong. Deep echoing groan the thickets brown; Then rustling, crackling, crashing, thunder down.”
In this example the sole similarity of sound to sense consists in the use of words spoken with a full quick sound. So far from there being a real likeness in our sounds and the ideas expressed by them, it is an evidence of ability and skill in a writer to so combine his words as to produce some tri-fling resemblance. Should any one say, “in cutting down the oak trees the repeated blows of the axe make a great noise, and in the fall there is a very noisy cracking and crashing of limbs and old dry brush and bushes, with a noise like a clap of thunder when the tree strikes the ground,” he would, by the use of different words express the same idea perfectly, without any similarity of sound and sense.
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76. Without pursuing these examples further, it is sufficient to say that there is no possible similarity between sounds and the great mass of ideas, which language is used to express.
77. Sound can have no similarity to a colour; none to a form. It is not possible that any sound should bear the slightest resemblance to an idea, a reason, a logical sequence, an abstract thought, a ratiocination of the mind; those things which spoken language is chiefly used to express.
78. There is no likeness whatever in the ideas expressed by the words virtue, vice, good, evil, faith, wisdom, folly, logick, reason, sense, seriousness, and the sounds of the words; and the words might be exchanged indifferently, one for another, without
in any sense impairing the language, or the facility of learning it, so the change was generally adopted.
79. Articulate language is, therefore, an endowment of man; not possessed by nature, which he could not derive from anything in inanimate nature, or any of the animals below him in the scale of being; and which he could not originate, nor, until
he was possessed of it, wish to enjoy.
80. In fine, he must have been instructed in it by a being possessed of a high degree of intelligence, of boundless beneficence
and charity to man, to whom it is as much a natural endowment as laughing and crying is to man, or singing to a bird. He must have learned it of just such a being as God has revealed himself, and as he is shown in all his works. Had there been no God, or had he never revealed himself, and become our teacher, man could never have possessed any other language than that of the passions.
81. The oft repeated assertion that language is progressive, is not proved. It is mutative, undergoing perpetual changes; but there is no evidence that on the whole it gains anything in the progress of change. All the sciences, with their new
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wants arising from year to year, find their vocabularies in the ancient languages; and the languages the most unlike, have derived their words from common roots. And if the old languages seem barren to us, we have no assurance that we possess half their words, or know well the use of them.
82. Moreover, man is not formed by nature especially for articulate language. The parrot, the crow, and several other birds, learn to speak words with less difficulty than the infant; though they fail of the intellectual strength to put them to much use.
83. Man, on the other hand, has not a compass of voice sufficient to answer his wants, and frequently finds it difficult or impossible to articulate words which his intelligence develops the want of. There are numerous words, in every language, which most men learn to speak with difficulty, and some not at all; but there is no sound in the natural language of all animated nature but every individual of each species can enunciate, without even the trouble of learning it.
84. Truth will invariably sustain itself against errour, in the long race of time; it is only because it is incessantly opposed by new errours, springing up from day to day, that it receives so little credence. All the battle fields of truth have to be new fought from generation to generation. Every exploded attack of infidelity on revealed truth, is renewed as often as men rise up who do not remember it.
85. Testing the existence of God, and the fact of revelations from him as the great facts in the natural sciences, are most of them tested and proved, and no room is left for doubt.
86. Geography, natural and political, is proved by the testimony of men. Yet its leading facts are undoubted. There probably may not be a man in the United States who has
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seen the city of Tombuctoo, the Chinese wall, or the sea of Aral. Who doubts their existence? Only the idiotick. What has produced such universal credence to facts that none of us know? Simple human testimony. The words of men who have seen them, and their words by hearsay, second, third, and fourth handed.
87. And this testimony has not been by any means uniform. All who had the means of knowing, agree in the main point, the existence of those objects, however much they disagree in the details concerning them. Consequently all men, except the merely insane, believe their testimony that such places really exist, but disagree according to the several witnesses in their characteristicks.
88. The same is true in all the sciences. The facts are picked up here and there, by men of all classes, in every situation and circumstance in life. The statements of many of the witnesses may be anything but reliable; but in the constant accumulation of testimony, after a time, the truth rises, prominent above all errour, and justifies itself before the world.
89. Often the facts are ever present, or at least within our reach, so as to be subject to present experiment, and satisfactory tests. In such cases the triumph of truth is prompt. Ignorance and prejudice take immediate flight.
90. In others the facts are not in our immediate reach, or at best are accumulated in long years of tiresome labour. In the ordinary course of human affairs, they would scarcely be accumulated in sufficient quantities to lead to any result. Some great scholar, or society of philosophers, gather them with tireless pains from the ends of the earth, or the old records of forgotten ages, and the truth is vindicated.
91. If, as in Geology, they can be had by looking for, publick interest and a spirit of inquiry will explore mines, trace
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the tunnels and cuts which engineers have opened through mountains, gather rocks from cleft hillsides, and learn wisdom and
divine truth where the door only wasted his strength, and spoiled his utensils on rocks and uncongenial soil.
92. Or, in Astronomy, the stargazer has, perhaps, noted a fact, not as possessing any consequence of itself, but merely as a phenomenon; a something he could not account for, and had not before witnessed. He cannot repeat it for examination. Perhaps
centuries may elapse before it occurs again.
93. Through long ages the facts accumulate. In the same time many falsehoods are recorded for facts. They also accumulate.
When enough is accumulated, some giant mind seizes them. As with a magician’s wand he brushes the scales from all eyes. Truth stands revealed.
94. In these cases there can be no experiment; no putting theories to the test. They experiment themselves, and test themselves in the revolutions of time. Man has only to see when the universe reveals herself. He cannot question her.
95. So it is in the knowledge of God. He speaks to man when he will; nor does he respond to presumptuous questioning. The fools, who have said in their hearts there is no God, have no claim upon his charity, that he should walk with those who regard him as vanity, and nothing.
96. But, though like eclipses, and the conjunctions of planets, he does not appear to every questioner, to demonstrate his being to ignorant doubters; like them, he is never without witnesses; and like them, the testimony is ever present to the wise.
97. To an Astronomer, an eclipse a hundred ages past, is as certain, and its precise time and appearance as accurately ascertained, as that of yesterday, which he witnessed; and his faith in that which shall occur ten thousand years hence,
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is as steadfast as it can be in the sunrise of tomorrow.
98. So is the faith of the righteous, that God is. That man could never have had a language, except God taught him, is already
shown. Consequently, he must have visited man’s abode, and conversed with him. This necessary sequence is a proved fact: proved by just such testimony as has established the primary facts in all the sciences.
99. God has been seen of men. This fact has been proved by the testimony of men of every nation, kindred, tongue, and people, under the whole heavens, from the days of Adam down till this present time.
100. Neither savage tribe, nor enlightened republick, has refused its testimony to this great fact. The King upon his throne, the Priest at the altar, the Philosopher in his cabinet, the Reformer in the publick assembly, the peasant by his fireside, and the captive in the dungeon, have each and all contributed their share of testimony that God is; which, if written, would crowd libraries, such as great Kings are proud of.
101. Notwithstanding the trifling disagreements found in human testimony on all subjects, all nations of men have agreed in the great leading facts of their testimony; that besides the grosser bodies, ever visible around us, there is another, a more volatile world of animate existence, generally invisible, composed of myriads of persons, of greater or less power, some good and some evil, the greatest and best of whom is God, the Lord.
102. The Mosaick account is anything but without witnesses in the premises. Nor is it supported alone by the Jewish Prophets. The Egyptians, Chinese, Chaldeans, Hindoos, Phoenecians, Greeks, Romans, Scythians, Germans, Britons and Gauls; all the ancient world; had men standing among them, of all ranks, from the King on his throne to the
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peasant in the hovel, who testified that they saw God, and conversed with him.
103. The modern Chinese, Hindoos, Persians, Turks, Greeks, Egyptians, Italians, Germans, French, Britons and
Scandinavians, all have men among them, men of learning and of good report, at this present day, who assert that they have seen God, or some of the myriads of spirits in subjection to him, and in rebellion against him.
104. Among the savage nations of America, Africa, Asia, and the islands of the Indian and Pacifick Oceans, not one people is found where similar testimony is not furnished, from generation to generation.
105. Is this testimony true? Can it be false? Have men in all the ancient nations from China to the Pillars of Hercules, and of all ranks from the king to the beggar, and of all characters from the philosopher to the dunce, with all their national divisions and animosities, conspired together to impose a lie on their fellowmen? And have men of every faith, of every nation, and of every age, from Abraham till James, made their whole lives one living lie, for the purpose of palming off such an imposition on their brothers, their sisters, their wives, and their children?
106. And in such a cause, with scarcely a point of unity but this, and ten thousand points of diversity, many of which have drenched the earth in blood, have such men traversed earth and sea to find fellow conspirators, in the unknown isles, which the covetousness of commerce, and the rapacity of conquest never discovered?
107. Have sages, philosophers and statesmen, joined hands with jugglers, impostors, and frightened fools, to impose bootless
lies on posterity and friends, as well as strangers? And is there no truth in man, that when those nearest and dearest to
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them offered their lives in blood and fire to such a faith, none of these have confessed the imposture, to save a father, a brother, or a child?
108. In all else, the united testimony of those who have studied the facts, is deemed sufficient and satisfactory proof. The facts of Geology, the facts of Astronomy, the facts of Chemistry, the facts of Botany, the facts of Zoology, are all proved by testimony like this in kind, less in accumulation. And upon facts so proved are based the principles of those sciences. The facts were thus determined. And the principles are but deductions from them.
109. The existence of God, the Lord of the universe, a being of intelligence, motive and will, is proved by more testimony than that of Julius Caesar. And a world of spirits is proved by more living witnesses, and has been in every generation of men, than can or ever could be adduced to prove the existence of one half the species of living animals on the earth.
110. Enter into the closet of your friends’ hearts, open the door that shame and the fear of being called superstitious has shut, induce men to speak to you as they commune with their own hearts, and how many will you find, who have never beheld the spiritual? How many who have never been spoken to by the invisible? How many who have never been led by the intangible?
111. The world is now a vast crowd of living witnesses of the spiritual, shamed down to silence by the Atheistical doctrines of modern Christianity. This truth is a spring that can never be dried up.
112. A generation shall yet arise who, taking facts as they find them, will make religion a science, studied by as exact rules as mathematicks. Then will these facts be sought for as are new discoveries in Geology and Astronomy. Facts well attest-
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ed will be generalized. Rules be drawn from them. Man’s prejudices will cease to minister to his blindness. The mouth of the Seer will be opened, and the whole earth enlightened.
113. In the transmission of testimony from generation to generation, it is by many supposed to lose much of its credibility. But this is not true, where it is supported by proper monuments.
114. When a religion has been built up, a new Law, sacrament, or ordinance, engrafted on an existing institution, or any publick monument, erected in pursuance of a particular revelation of God, it is evidence to all succeeding generations, that at the time of the event, the testimony of it was believed by those who had the best means of knowing whether it was true or false, and were most interested in the truth.
115. For instance, the appearance of God to Moses, and to all Israel, in Sinai, could not have been an original falsehood, written by Moses, for if the events did not occur as written, all Israel would have cried out against palming the deception on their children.
116. Nor could it have been subsequently forged; for the Law then instituted was its monument. All the people would have cried out, we received no such Law from our ancestors. They left us no such history. National or great publick events cannot be forged in history. Facts in which multitudes are interested may be distorted, but they cannot be created.
117. That God has been seen by, and has conversed with men, is the best proved fact in history, whether tested by historick testimony, or by induction. These testimonies remain forever, to confound the unbelieving. But to us he has given the inspiration of his Spirit, and the sure word of prophecy; a perpetual and ever present witness.