an out-cast, as a beggar, as a mumper, as
one thrown as it were on a dunghill, at an immense distance from his
Creator, and who must make his approaches by creeping, and cringing to
intermediate beings, that he conceives either a contemptuous disregard
for everything under the name of religion, or becomes indifferent, or
turns what he calls devout. In the latter case, he consumes his life
in grief, or the affectation of it. His prayers are reproaches. His
humility is ingratitude. He calls himself a worm, and the fertile earth
a dunghill; and all the blessings of life by the thankless name of
vanities. He despises the choicest gift of God to man, the GIFT OF
REASON; and having endeavoured to force upon himself the belief of a
system against which reason revolts, he ungratefully calls it human
reason, as if man could give reason to himself.

Yet, with all this strange appearance of humility, and this contempt for
human reason, he ventures into the boldest presumptions. He finds fault
with everything. His selfishness is never satisfied; his ingratitude is
never at an end. He takes on himself to direct the Almighty what to do,
even in the govemment of the universe. He prays dictatorially. When
it is sunshine, he prays for rain, and when it is rain, he prays for
sunshine. He follows the same idea in everything that he prays for;
for what is the amount of all his prayers, but an attempt to make the
Almighty change his mind, and act otherwise than he does? It is as if he
were to say--thou knowest not so well as I.

CHAPTER IX - IN WHAT THE TRUE REVELATION CONSISTS.

BUT some perhaps will say--Are we to have no word of God--no revelation?
I answer yes. There is a Word of God; there is a revelation.

THE WORD OF GOD IS THE CREATION WE BEHOLD: And it is in this word,
which no human invention can counterfeit or alter, that God speaketh
universally to man.

Human language is local and changeable, and is therefore incapable of
being used as the means of unchangeable and universal information.
The idea that God sent Jesus Christ to publish, as they say, the glad
tidings to all nations, from one end of the earth unto the other, is
consistent only with the ignorance of those who know nothing of the
extent of the world, and who believed, as those world-saviours
believed, and continued to believe for several centuries, (and that in
contradiction to the discoveries of philosophers and the experience of
navigators,) that the eart