me observations on the word
'revelation.' Revelation when applied to religion, means something
communicated immediately from God to man.

No one will deny or dispute the power of the Almighty to make such a
communication if he pleases. But admitting, for the sake of a case, that
something has been revealed to a certain person, and not revealed to any
other person, it is revelation to that person only. When he tells it to
a second person, a second to a third, a third to a fourth, and so on, it
ceases to be a revelation to all those persons. It is revelation to the
first person only, and hearsay to every other, and, consequently, they
are not obliged to believe it.

It is a contradiction in terms and ideas to call anything a revelation
that comes to us at second hand, either verbally or in writing.
Revelation is necessarily limited to the first communication. After
this, it is only an account of something which that person says was
a revelation made to him; and though he may find himself obliged to
believe it, it cannot be incumbent on me to believe it in the same
manner, for it was not a revelation made to me, and I have only his word
for it that it was made to him.

When Moses told the children of Israel that he received the two tables
of the commandments from the hand of God, they were not obliged to
believe him, because they had no other authority for it than his telling
them so; and I have no other authority for it than some historian
telling me so, the commandments carrying no internal evidence of
divinity with them. They contain some good moral precepts such as any
man qualified to be a lawgiver or a legislator could produce himself,
without having recourse to supernatural intervention. [NOTE: It is,
however, necessary to except the declamation which says that God 'visits
the sins of the fathers upon the children'. This is contrary to every
principle of moral justice.--Author.]

When I am told that the Koran was written in Heaven, and brought to
Mahomet by an angel, the account comes to near the same kind of hearsay
evidence and second hand authority as the former. I did not see the
angel myself, and therefore I have a right not to believe it.

When also I am told that a woman, called the Virgin Mary, said, or gave
out, that she was with child without any cohabitation with a man, and
that her betrothed husband, Joseph, said that an angel told him so, I
have a right to believe them or not: such a circumstance r