But
miracles, even those of the Redeemer himself, could not open the eyes
of the self-blinded, of the Sadducean sensualist, or the self-
righteous Pharisee--while to have said, I SAW THEE UNDER THE FIG-
TREE, sufficed to make a Nathanael believe.
To assert and to demand miracles without necessity was the vice of
the unbelieving Jews of old; and from the Rabbis and Talmudists the
infection has spread. And would I could say that the symptoms of the
disease are confined to the Churches of the Apostasy! But all the
miracles, which the legends of Monk or Rabbi contain, can scarcely be
put in competition, on the score of complication, inexplicableness,
the absence of all intelligible use or purpose, and of circuitous
self-frustration, with those that must be assumed by the maintainers
of this doctrine, in order to give effect to the series of miracles,
by which all the nominal composers of the Hebrew nation before the
time of Ezra, of whom there are any remains, were successively
transformed into AUTOMATON compositors--so that the original text
should be in sentiment, image, word, syntax, and composition an exact
impression of the divine copy! In common consistency the
theologians, who impose this belief on their fellow Christians, ought
to insist equally on the superhuman origin and authority of the
Masora, and to use more respectful terms, than has been their wont of
late, in speaking of the false Aristeas's legend concerning the
Septuagint.
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