First: it was by no means probable to be
supposed anteriorly, that the God should be clearly comprehensible: yet
he must be one: and oneness is the idea most easily apprehended of all
possible ideas. The meanest of intellectual creatures could comprehend
his Maker, and in so far top his heights, if God, being truly one in one
view, were yet only one in every view: if, that is to say, there existed
no mystery incidental to his nature: nay, if that mystery did not
amount to the difficulty of a seeming contradiction. I judge it likely,
and with confidence, that Reason would prerequire for his God, a Being,
at once infinitely easy to be apprehended by the lowest of His spiritual
children, and infinitely difficult to be comprehended by the highest of
His seraphim. Now, there can be guessed only two ways of compassing such
a prerequirement: one, a moral way; such as inventing a deity who could
be at once just and unjust, every where and no where, good and evil,
powerful and weak; this is the heathen phase of Numen's character, and
is obviously most objectionable in every point of view: the other would
be a physical way; such as requiring a God who should be at once
material and immaterial, abstraction and concretion; or, for a still
more confounding paradox to Reason (considered as antagonist to Faith,
in lieu of being strictly its ally), an arithmetical contradiction, an
algebraic mystery, such as would be included in the idea of Composite
Unity; one involving many, and many collapsed into one.
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