Revelation then, so far as the term has relation between
God and man, can only be applied to something which God
reveals of his will to man ; but though the power of the
Almighty to make such a communication is necessarily ad-
mitted, because to that power all things are possible, yet,
the thing so revealed (if any thing ever was revealed, and
which, by the bye, it is impossible to prove) is revelation to
the person only to whom it is made. His account of it to
another is not revelation ; and whoever puts faith in that
account, puts it in the man from whom the account comes ;
and that man may have been deceived, or may have dreamed

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it ; or he may be an impostor and may lie. There is no pos-
sible criterion whereby to judge of the truth of what he tells ;
for even the morality of it would be no proof of revelation.
In all such cases, the proper answer should be, " When it is
revealed to me, I will believe it to be revelation ; but it is
not and cannot be incumbent upon me to believe it to be
revelation before ; neither is it proper that I should take the
word of man as the word of God, and put man in the place
of God." This is the manner in which I have spoken of
revelation in the former part of The Age of Reason ; and
which, whilst it reverentially admits revelation as a possible
thing, because, as before said, to the Almighty all things are
possible, it prevents the imposition of one man upon another,
and precludes the wicked use of pretended revelation.
