The Author of this Apology was recently in Scotland, where a vast number
of religious tracts were put into his hand, one of which contains the
following among other striking paragraphs:--
'Man could, not _create_ himself, and far less can he save himself. When
God made him, he brought him out of nothing; when God. saves him, he
brings him out of a state far lower and worse than nothing. If in the
one case, then, everything depended, upon God's will and decree, much
more in the other. There can be no injustice here. Had God pleased, He
might have saved the whole world. But he did not; and thousands are now
in hell, and shall be to all eternity.'
'Hell is peopled already with millions of immortal souls doomed to fiery
wrath; while Heaven is filled with ransomed sinners as vile, yea perhaps
viler than they.' [83:1]
If the writer of this horrid nonsense do not blaspheme, there surely can
be no possibility of blaspheming. If he do not impute to his God of
mercy cruelty and injustice the most monstrous that can enter into human
conception, all language is void of meaning, and men had far better
cease 'civilising,' and betake themselves to woods and wilds and
fastnesses, to enjoy the state of mere brutishness so infinitely
preferable to that _reasonable_ state in which they are shaken and
maddened by terrible dreams of a vengeful cruel God.
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