A Legacy to the Friends of Free Discussion: Principal Historical Facts and Personages of the Books Known as The Old and New Testament; With Remarks on the Morality of NatureOffen, Benjamin
Religion
A Legacy to the Friends of Free Discussion: Principal Historical Facts and Personages of the Books Known as The Old and New Testament; With Remarks on the Morality of Nature
Offen, Benjamin
Bible -- Criticism, interpretation, etc.
This curiosity, no doubt, originated in a state of ignorance. And even
in the present day, man has yet to learn the inutility of every attempt
to discover any thing as to the being and nature of a Supreme Power that
is supposed to govern the universe. We are lost in wonder and admiration
when we contemplate the mighty universe! but of the Grand Regulator of
all, we are, and no doubt shall ever remain, in total ignorance. It is a
libel on man, then, to teach that human beings are at enmity against
God. I ask my readers, both male and female, whether they ever had those
feelings of hatred against the unknown Governor of the grand and sublime
universe? But Christian priests proclaim it; and to those who believe
it, it is a source of lamentation; and being under the belief that man
is the natural enemy of God, the minds of such persons become
prostrated, and then this otherwise happy world is despised and
neglected for a future state of supposed bliss.
Let any one attend a Protracted Meeting, where there may be some
hundreds of persons, and among the number, many youths of both sexes;
both young and old are appealed to by the speakers, who describe them as
enemies of God, and as having turned their backs on the God of goodness.
They become alarmed, not having before conceived that they could have
been so wicked. I have seen upwards of fifty, at one time, sobbing and
crying and imploring mercy, who, poor, weak mortals, until this
foolishness of being at enmity with God was preached to them, had no
conception of their dreadful enormities and danger. By exciting the
feelings with falsehood, this process is called conversion and the work
of the Holy Ghost. At the same time that the most virtuous females are
denounced as deserving damnation for their wickedness, and told that,
without repentance, their future state will be wretched to all eternity,
should one word derogatory to the character of these females, thus
represented by the priests, be spoken by any body else, an action for
slander would be instituted.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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