If consistent he
must clothe Him with Calvinistic attributes. To present Him stripped of
foreknowledge, or omnipotency would outrage all just conception of that
'Immense Being' who brought his worshippers out of nothing. And yet if
we allow him these attributes there is no help for us, headlong we go
into the dark and fathomless doctrine of predestination, than which no
religious doctrine is so consistent or so revolting. Receive it, and at
once you find yourself bound heart and brain to belief in a supernatural
MONSTER--'a vengeful, pitiless, and Almighty Fiend, whose mercies are a
nickname for the rage of hungry tigers.'
The believers in this terrible offspring of heated imagination,
naturally aim at imitating, and thus rendering themselves acceptable, to
Him. Here is the source, whence for ages have flowed the bitter waters
of religious intolerance. If Calvin had not worshipped a cruel God, he
never could have hoped to please Him by the murder of Servetius. If
Cranmer had wanted lively faith in a God who people's Hell 'with
millions of immortal souls,' he never would have brought Joan Bocher to
the stake.
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