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A Series of Letters in Defence of Divine Revelation by Hosea Ballou
page 37 of 342 (10%)
Hebrew are not concerned? Have chemists been always of one opinion?'
&c. which must be answered in the negative. Nevertheless I may take
liberty to observe that inasmuch as they have disagreed, it shews that
the subjects about what they have disagreed, are as yet obscure, and
therefore perhaps none of them are entitled to full and complete
'confidence:' for whatever is plain and obvious, men seldom disagree
about. That the sun and moon are _globes_, and not _triangles_, all
are agreed; and it would be impossible to raise a dispute on the
subject: but whether either or both of them are inhabited, or even
capable of being inhabited, by rational beings, similar or like unto
ourselves, is a proposition not so clear, and respecting which the
greatest philosophers might possibly disagree. The above remarks are
intended to shew that when men differ in opinion, whether learned or
unlearned, it is obvious that the truth about which they differ, to
say the most of it, is yet but obscurely made manifest to their
understanding.

"In order to remove an objection, to the idea of revelation, on
account of its being made only to one nation, &c. our friend says, 'It
is true, I may be unable to see why a revelation was not equally
necessary to one nation as well as to another, and at the same time;
but is this a proof that no revelation was ever made to any nation at
any time?' I am very ready to answer this question in the _negative_.
But at the same time I must be excused for not being able to see any
analogy between revelation and the discovery of the laws of
electricity; as mentioned by our brother; and therefore my mind is not
to be relieved from its difficulty in this way. If it could be proved
that the principles manifested by revelation were like the principles
in nature, against the developement of which there is no great barrier
at one time than at another except what exists in the ignorance of
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