No Response<br><br>-
And our first principle is, that God must be represented as he is; not
as the author of all things, but of good only. We will not suffer the
poets to say that he is the steward of good and evil, or that he has two
casks full of destinies;--or that Athene and Zeus incited Pandarus to
break the treaty; or that God caused the sufferings of Niobe, or of
Pelops, or the Trojan war; or that he makes men sin when he wishes to
destroy them. Either these were not the actions of the gods, or God was
just, and men were the better for being punished. But that the deed was
evil, and God the author, is a wicked, suicidal fiction which we will
allow no one, old or young, to utter. This is our first and great
principle--God is the author of good only.