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Untitled Article
4 hens who , in the knowledge of God seem even now to have advanced beyond the chosen people , prove nothing against revelation . The child of education begins with slow but sure steps ; he is long before he overtakes many a more happily organize ! child of nature , blit he still does overtake him , and is then never again in his turn overtaken *
S . 22 , To say nothing of the doctrine of the unity of God * whether it be or be no& to be found in the books of the Old Testament ; I affirm that the total absence of the doctrine of the immortality of the soul , and of the allied doctrine
ofpunishments and rewards in a future life , proves nothing against the divine origin of these books . All the miracles and prophecies contained in them may still be true ; for let us suppose that those doctrines were not only not there , they were not even true : let us suDnose that in truth this life were everv
thinofor man—would the being of a God be therefore less proved ? Would God be therefore less able , or would it less become him to be immediately solicitous for the temporal interest of some one people of our transient race ? The miracles which he wrought for the Jews , and the prophecies which he caused to
be made through them , did not respect alone the few individual Jews who lived while these things were wrought and made : he might have had purposes which respected the whole Jewish people and the whole human race , which he might perhaps have ordained to continue on this earth to all eternity , though each individual of it dies to all eternity . the of in
S . 23 . Further ^ absence those doctrines the writings of the Old Testament proves nothing against their divinity . Moses was still sent from God , though the sanction of his law extended itself only to this life . And why should it extend further ? He was sent onl y to the people of Israel , and
to the people who then lived ; and his commission was perfectly adapted to the knowledge , faculties , and inclinations of the Israelites thea living , and to the destiny of the future people of Israel - That is
enough-S . 24 . Warburton ^ ought to have proceeded thus far , and no further . But this great scholar shot beyond the mark , It was not enough that the want of these doctrines did not affect the credibility of the divine legation of Moses : it should even prove that divine legation . Had he only sought to prove the want of the fitness of such a law for such a people ! But he
took recourse to an uninterruptedly continued miracle from Moses to Christ , according to which God made each individual Jew just as happy or unhappy as his obedience or disobedience towards the law merited . This miracle , it is said , has made up for the want of those doctrines , without which no state can
Untitled Article
The Education of the Human Race * 41 £
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Aug. 2, 1806, page 415, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1727/page/23/
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