to God to give commands to his creatures. For, it seems, if he _did_
command, we, instead of obeying, should discuss whether the command
was right and reasonable; and if we thought it otherwise, should
conclude that God never gave it. The extirpation of the Canaanites
is compared by divines to the execution of a criminal; and it is
insisted, that if the voice of society may justify the executioner,
much more may the voice of God--But I now saw the analogy to be
insufficient and unsound. Insufficient, because no executioner
is justified in slaying those whom his conscience tells him to be
innocent; and it is a barbarous morality alone, which pretends that
he may make himself a passive tool of slaughter. But next, the analogy
_assumes_, (what none of my very dictatorial and insolent critics make
even the faintest effort to prove to be a fact,) that God, like man,
speaks from without: that what we call Reason and Conscience is _not_
his mode of commanding and revealing his will, but that words
to strike the ear, or symbols displayed before the senses, are
emphatically and exclusively "Revelation." Besides all this, the
command of slaughter to the Jews is not directed against the seven
nations of Canaan only, as modern theologians often erroneously
assert: it is a _universal_ permission, of avaricious massacre and
subjugation of "the cities which are very far off from thee, which are
_not_ of the cities of these nations," Deut, xx. 15.

The thoughts which here fill but a few pages, occupied me a long while
in working out; because I consciously, with caution more than
with timidity, declined to follow them rapidly. They came as dark
suspicions or as flashing possibilities; and were again laid aside for
reconsideration, lest I should be carried into antagonism to my old
creed. For it is clear that great error arises in religion, by the
undue ardour of converts, who become bitter against the faith which