Page:Rousseau - Profession of Faith of a Savoyard Vicar, 1889.djvu/94



That, indeed, is another thing. God hath spoken! This is saying a great deal: but to whom hath he spoken?

He hath spoken to man.

How comes it then that I heard nothing of it?

He hath appointed others to teach you his word.

I understand you. There are certain men who are to tell me what God has said. I had much rather have heard it from himself. This, had he so pleased, he could easily have done; and I should then have run no risk of deception. Will it be said I am secured from that by his manifesting the mission of his messengers by miracles? Where are those miracles to be seen? Are they related only in books? Pray, who wrote those books?

Men.

Who were witnesses to these miracles?

Men.

Always human testimony! It is always men who tell me what other men have told them. What a number of those are constantly between me and the Deity! We are always reduced to the necessity of examining, comparing, and verifying such evidence. O! that God had deigned to have saved me all this anxiety! Should I in that case have served him with a less willing heart?

Consider, my friend, in what a terrible discussion I am already engaged; what immense erudition I stand in need of to recur back to the earliest antiquity—to examine, to weighs to confront prophecies, revelations, frets, with all the monuments of faith that have made their appearance in all the countries of the world; to ascertain their time, place, authors, and