philosopher, would infallibly conclude some unfortunate lunatic had
given birth to it. That there is no creature now tenanting Bedlam who
would or could scribble purer nonsense about God than this of Newton's,
we are well convinced--for how could the most frenzied of brains imagine
anything more repugnant to every principle of good sense than a
self-existent, eternal, omnipotent, omnipresent Being, creator of all
the worlds, who acts the part of 'universal emperor,' and plays upon an
infinitely large scale, the same sort of game as Nicholas of Russia, or
Mohammed of Egypt plays upon a small scale. There cannot be slavery
where there is no tyranny, and to say as Newton did, that we stand in
the same relation to a universal God, as a slave does to his earthly
master, is practically to accuse such God, at reason's bar, of
_tyranny_. If the word of God is relative, and relates itself with
slaves, it incontestably follows that all human beings are slaves, and
Deity is by such reasoners degraded into the character of universal
slave-driver. Really theologians and others who declaim so bitterly
against 'blasphemers,' and take such very stringent measures to punish
'infidels,' who speak or write of their God, should seriously consider
whether the worst, that is, the least religious of infidel writers, ever
penned a paragraph so disparaging to the character of that God they
affect to adore, as the last quoted paragraph of Newton's. If even it
could be demonstrated that there _is_ a super-human Being, it cannot be
proper to clothe him in the noblest human attributes--still less can it
be justifiable in pigmies, such as we are, to invest Him with odious
attributes belonging only to despots ruling over slaves. Besides, how
can we imagine a God who is 'totally destitute of body and of corporeal
figure,' to have any kind of attributes? Earthly emperors we know to be
substantial and common-place sort of beings enough, but is it not sheer
abuse of reason to argue as though the character of God were at all
analogous to theirs; or rather, is it not a shocking abuse of our