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Untitled Article
S . 5 . And as in education it is not indifferent in what order the powers of man are developed , as it cannot give mankind every thing at once ; in like manner God has been forced toobserve a certain order , and advance gradually in his revelation .
& 6 . JtLven it the tirst man were at once endowed with a notion of the one God , this imparted and not acquired notion could not possibly long preserve its purity . As soon as humani reason , left to itself , began to brood over and modify this first idea , it analyzed the immense One , and divided it into several
beings wanting the infinity ; included m the first idea ; and gave to each of these beings a sign and name . S * 7 . And thus polytheism and idolatry naturally arose *
And who can say how mariy millions of years human reason might have wandered ia these mazes ( although at all times and every where single persons recognized that they were mazes ) , if it had not pleased God to give it a better direction by a new impulse ?
S . 8 . But as he neither could nor would make distinct revelations to every individual , he selected a single people , that he might give them an education apart ; and that he might begin from the very beginning , he selected a people ^ too , the the most uncultivated and rude . S . 9 . This was the people of Israel , of whom it is not even
known what sort of a worship of God they had in Egypt ; for slaves so contemned were not allowed to take any share in the religious services of the Egyptians , and they liad lost all knowledge of the God of their fathers * S . 10 * Perhaps the Egyptians had expressly forbidden them to have any gods or god , and had thrust them into the belief that they had none ; and that to have a god or gods was the privilege of their more distinguished masters ; and they possibly did this , in order that they might with more plausibility tyrannize over them . Do Christians at the present time
manage u mucn witn their slaves t S . 11 . God , therefore , at first caused himself to be announced to this people merely as the God of their fathers , in order to make them fon the present acquainted with , and familiar to the notion of a God belonging to them alone .
So 12 . By the miracles , by means of which he led them out of Egypt , and established them in Canaan , he shewed himself at once as mightier than any other God . S . 13 « , And in proceeding to shew himself as the mightiest of all ( but only One can be the mightiest } $ he accustomed them by degrees to the notion of the one God . S . 14 . But how far was this notion of the One , beneath the true transcendental notion of The One , which reason , after &
Untitled Article
The Education of Ike Human Bacc . 41 ^
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Aug. 2, 1806, page 413, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1727/page/21/
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