A Memorable Fancy II.
The Prophets Isaiah and Ezekiel dined with me, and I asked
them how they dared so roundly to assert that God spake to them;
and whether they did not think at the time, that they would be
misunderstood, & so be the cause of imposition.
Isaiah answer'd. 'I saw no God, nor heard any, in a finite
organical perception; but my senses discover'd the infinite in
every thing, and as I was then perswaded, & remain confirm'd,
that the voice of honest indignation is the voice of God, I cared
not for consequences but wrote.'
Then I asked: 'does a firm perswasion that a thing is so, make it so?'
He replied: 'All poets believe that it does, & in ages of imagination
this firm perswasion removed mountains; but many are not capable
of a firm perswasion of any thing.'
Then Ezekiel said. 'The philosophy of the east taught the first
principles of human perception: some nations held one
principle for the origin & some another; we of Israel taught
that the Poetic Genius (as you now call it) was the first
principle and all the others merely derivative, which was the
cause of our despising the Priests & Philosophers of other
countries, and prophecying that all Gods would at last be
proved to originate in ours & to be the tributaries of the
Poetic Genius; it was this that our great poet King David
desired so fervently & invokes so pathetic'ly, saying by this he
conquers enemies & governs kingdoms; and we so loved our God.
that we cursed in his name all the deities of surrounding
nations, and asserted that they had rebelled; from these opinions
the vulgar came to think that all nations would at last be
subject to the jews.'
'This' said he, 'like all firm (...)
(......)
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