[The Writings of Thomas Paine Volume IV. by Thomas Paine]@TWC D-Link bookThe Writings of Thomas Paine Volume IV. CHAPTER IX - IN WHAT THE TRUE REVELATION CONSISTS 1/3
BUT some perhaps will say--Are we to have no word of God--no revelation? I answer yes.
There is a Word of God; there is a revelation. THE WORD OF GOD IS THE CREATION WE BEHOLD: And it is in this word, which no human invention can counterfeit or alter, that God speaketh universally to man. Human language is local and changeable, and is therefore incapable of being used as the means of unchangeable and universal information. The idea that God sent Jesus Christ to publish, as they say, the glad tidings to all nations, from one end of the earth unto the other, is consistent only with the ignorance of those who know nothing of the extent of the world, and who believed, as those world-saviours believed, and continued to believe for several centuries, (and that in contradiction to the discoveries of philosophers and the experience of navigators,) that the earth was flat like a trencher; and that a man might walk to the end of it. But how was Jesus Christ to make anything known to all nations? He could speak but one language, which was Hebrew; and there are in the world several hundred languages.
Scarcely any two nations speak the same language, or understand each other; and as to translations, every man who knows anything of languages, knows that it is impossible to translate from one language into another, not only without losing a great part of the original, but frequently of mistaking the sense; and besides all this, the art of printing was wholly unknown at the time Christ lived. It is always necessary that the means that are to accomplish any end be equal to the accomplishment of that end, or the end cannot be accomplished.
It is in this that the difference between finite and infinite power and wisdom discovers itself.
Man frequently fails in accomplishing his end, from a natural inability of the power to the purpose; and frequently from the want of wisdom to apply power properly. But it is impossible for infinite power and wisdom to fail as man faileth.
<<Back Index Next>> D-Link book Top TWC mobile books
|