VI.
This being determined, let us examine the ideas which the Prophets had of God, and we will smile at their grossness and contradictions. To believe them, God is a purely corporeal being. Micah sees him seated. Daniel clothed in white and in the form of an old man, and Ezekiel like a fire. So much for the Old Testament, now for the New. The disciples of J. C. imagined the Holy Spirit in the figure of a dove; the apostles, in the form of tongues of fire, and St. Paul, as a light which dazzled the sight unto blindness.
To show their contradictory opinions, Samuel, ([I. ch. 15, v. 29]), believed that God never repented of his own resolution. Again, Jeremiah, ([ch. 18, v. 10]), says that God repented of a resolve he had taken. Joel, ([ch. 2, v. 13]), says that he only repents of the evil he has done to mankind. Genesis, ([ch. 4, v. 7]), informs us that man is prone to evil, but that He has nothing for him but blessings. On the contrary, St. Paul, ([Romans, ch. 9, v. 10]), says that men have no command of concupiscence except by the grace and particular calling of God. These are the noble sentiments that these good people have of God, and what they would have us believe. Sentiments, however, entirely sensible, and quite material as we see, and yet they say that God has nothing in common with matter, is a sensible and material being, and that he is something incomprehensible to our understanding. I should like to be informed how these contradictions may be harmonized, and how, under such visible and palpable conditions it is proper to believe them. Again, how can we accept the testimony of a people so clownish that they, notwithstanding all the artifices of Moses, should imagine a calf to be their God! But not considering the dreams of a race raised in servitude, and among the superstitious, we can agree that ignorance has produced credulity, and credulity falsehood, from whence arises all the errors which exist today.
[1] In “Volney’s Lectures on History,” it is said: “If a work be translated it always receives a colouring which is more or less faint or is vivid according to the opinions and ability of the Translator.” From an examination of other translations of this Treatise, I am assured that Volney’s statement above has actuated and governed all who have been previously engaged with this work. I can assure the readers hereof, that the Treatise contained herein is a literal translation of the manuscript and the notes found therein, and no liberties have been taken with the text.
Any additional notes from other sources are so marked. A. N. [↑]
[2] Moses killed at one time 24,000 men for opposing his law. [↑]
[3] It is written in the [First Book of Kings, ch. 22, v. 6], that Ahab, King of Israel, consulted 400 prophets, and found them entirely false in the success of their predictions. [↑]