[The Writings of Thomas Paine Volume IV. by Thomas Paine]@TWC D-Link bookThe Writings of Thomas Paine Volume IV. CHAPTER X - CONCERNING GOD, AND THE LIGHTS CAST ON HIS EXISTENCE 4/4
Reason can discover the one, but it falls infinitely short in discovering the whole of the other. I recollect not a single passage in all the writings ascribed to the men called apostles, that conveys any idea of what God is.
Those writings are chiefly controversial; and the gloominess of the subject they dwell upon, that of a man dying in agony on a cross, is better suited to the gloomy genius of a monk in a cell, by whom it is not impossible they were written, than to any man breathing the open air of the Creation. The only passage that occurs to me, that has any reference to the works of God, by which only his power and wisdom can be known, is related to have been spoken by Jesus Christ, as a remedy against distrustful care. "Behold the lilies of the field, they toil not, neither do they spin." This, however, is far inferior to the allusions in Job and in the 19th Psalm; but it is similar in idea, and the modesty of the imagery is correspondent to the modesty of the man..
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