And here
we must look down the forward stream of Time, and search among the
creatures whom thereafter God should make, to arrive at some good reason
for, some antecedent probability of, the form which he should thus
frequently inhabit. Fire, for example, a pure and spirit-like nature,
would not have been a guess unworthy of reason: but this, besides its
humbler economic uses, would endanger an idolatry of the natural emblem.
So also would light be no irrational thought. And it is true that God
might, and probably would, invest Himself in one or both of these pure
essences, so seemingly congenial to a nature higher than ours: but then
there would be some nucleus to the brilliancy and the burning; these
would be as a veil to the Divinity; we should have need, before He were
truly visible, that the veil were laid aside: we should have to shred
away to the nucleus, which (and not the fire or light) would be the form
of God. Similar objections, in themselves or in their idolatrizing
tendencies, would lie against any such shape as a cloud, or a rainbow,
or an angel (whatever such a being may resemble), or in fact any other
conceivable creature, whether good as the angelic case or indifferent as
that of the cloud, which the Deity, though assuming often, would
nevertheless in every instance assume in conjunction with such his
ordinary creature, and could not entirely monopolize.
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