The Writings of Thomas Paine — Volume 4 (1794-1796): The Age of Reason — John Shaqi
The Writings of Thomas Paine — Volume 4 (1794-1796): The Age of ReasonPaine, Thomas
Religion
The Writings of Thomas Paine — Volume 4 (1794-1796): The Age of Reason
Paine, Thomas
Philosophy and religion; Political science; Rationalism
I recollect not enough of the passages in Job to insert them correctly;
but there is one that occurs to me that is applicable to the subject I
am speaking upon. “Canst thou by searching find out God; canst thou
find out the Almighty to perfection?”
I know not how the printers have pointed this passage, for I keep no
Bible; but it contains two distinct questions that admit of distinct
answers.
First, Canst thou by searching find out God? Yes. Because, in the first
place, I know I did not make myself, and yet I have existence; and by
searching into the nature of other things, I find that no other thing
could make itself; and yet millions of other things exist; therefore it
is, that I know, by positive conclusion resulting from this search,
that there is a power superior to all those things, and that power is
God.
Secondly, Canst thou find out the Almighty to perfection? No. Not only
because the power and wisdom He has manifested in the structure of the
Creation that I behold is to me incomprehensible; but because even this
manifestation, great as it is is probably but a small display of that
immensity of power and wisdom, by which millions of other worlds, to me
invisible by their distance, were created and continue to exist.
It is evident that both of these questions were put to the reason of
the person to whom they are supposed to have been addressed; and it is
only by admitting the first question to be answered affirmatively, that
the second could follow. It would have been unnecessary, and even
absurd, to have put a second question, more difficult than the first,
if the first question had been answered negatively. The two questions
have different objects; the first refers to the existence of God, the
second to his attributes. Reason can discover the one, but it falls
infinitely short in discovering the whole of the other.
I recollect not a single passage in all the writings ascribed to the
men called apostles, that conveys any idea of what God is. Those
writings are chiefly controversial; and the gloominess of the subject
they dwell upon, that of a man dying in agony on a cross, is better
suited to the gloomy genius of a monk in a cell, by whom it is not
impossible they were written, than to any man breathing the open air of
the Creation. The only passage that occurs to me, that has any
reference to the works of God, by which only his power and wisdom can
be known, is related to have been spoken by Jesus Christ, as a remedy
against distrustful care. “Behold the lilies of the field, they toil
not, neither do they spin.” This, however, is far inferior to the
allusions in Job and in the 19th Psalm; but it is similar in idea, and
the modesty of the imagery is correspondent to the modesty of the man.
CHAPTER XI.
OF THE THEOLOGY OF THE CHRISTIANS; AND THE TRUE THEOLOGY.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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