it
could be demonstrated that there _is_ a super-human Being, it cannot be
proper to clothe him in the noblest human attributes--still less can it
be justifiable in pigmies, such as we are, to invest Him with odious
attributes belonging only to despots ruling over slaves. Besides, how
can we imagine a God who is 'totally destitute of body and of corporeal
figure,' to have any kind of attributes? Earthly emperors we know to be
substantial and common-place sort of beings enough, but is it not sheer
abuse of reason to argue as though the character of God were at all
analogous to theirs; or rather, is it not a shocking abuse of our
reasoning faculties to employ them at all about a Being whose existence,
if it really have an existence, is perfectly enigmatical, and allowed to
be so by those very men who pretend to explain its character and
attributes? We find no less a sage than Newton explicitly declaring as
incontestable truth, that God exists necessarily--that the same
necessity obliges him to exist always and everywhere--that he is all
eyes, all ears, all brains, all arms, all feeling, all intelligence, all
action--that he exists in a mode by no means corporeal, and yet this
same sage, in the self-same paragraph, acknowledges God is _totally
unknown to us_.

Now, we should like to be informed by what _reasonable_ right Newton
could pen a long string of 'incontestible truths,' such as are here
selected from his writings, with respect to a Being of whom, by his own
confession, he had not a particle of knowledge. Surely it is not the
part of a wise man to write about that which is 'totally unknown' to
him, and yet that is precisely what Newton did, when he wrote about God.

There is, however, one remark of his respecting the God he thought
necessarily existed, worthy of notice, which is, that 'human beings
revere and adore Gad on account of his (supposed) sovereignty, and
worship him like his slaves;' for to all _but_ worshippers, the practice
as well as principle of worship does appear pre-eminently slavish.
Indeed, the Author has always found himself unable to dissociate the
idea of worshipping beings or things of which no one has the most remote
conception, from that of genuine hypocrisy. Christians despise the rude
Heathen for praying to a Deity of wood or stone, whom he soundly cudgels
if his prayer is not granted; and yet their own treatment of Jehovah,
though rather more respectful, is equally ridiculous. When prayi