97. CHAPTER XCVII.
A thing incredible is about to be related; but a thing
may be incredible and still be true; sometimes it is incredible
because it is true. And many infidels but disbelieve the
least incredible things; and many bigots reject the most obvious.
But let us hold fast to all we have; and stop all
leaks in our faith; lest an opening, but of a hand's breadth,
should sink our seventy-fours. The wide Atlantic can rush
in at one port-hole; and if we surrender a plank, we surrender
the fleet. Panoplied in all the armor of St. Paul,
morion, hauberk, and greaves, let us fight the Turks inch by
inch, and yield them naught but our corpse.
But let us not turn round upon friends, confounding them
with foes. For dissenters only assent to more than we.
Though Milton was a heretic to the creed of Athanasius,
his faith exceeded that of Athanasius himself; and the
faith of Athanasius that of Thomas, the disciple, who with
his own eyes beheld the mark of the nails. Whence it
comes that though we be all Christians now, the best of us
had perhaps been otherwise in the days of Thomas.
The higher the intelligence, the more faith, and the less
credulity: Gabriel rejects more than we, but out-believes us
all. The greatest marvels are first truths; and first truths
the last unto which we attain. Things nearest are furthest
off. Though your ear be next-door to your brain, it is forever
removed from your sight. Man has a more comprehensive
view of the moon, than the man in the moon himself.
We know the moon is round; he only infers it. It is because
we ourselves are in ourselves, that we know ourselves
not. And it is only of our easy faith, that we are not infidels
throughout; and only of our lack of faith, that we
believe what we do.
In some universe-old truths, all mankind are disbelievers.
Do you believe that you lived three thousand years ago?
That you were at the taking of Tyre, were overwhelmed
in Gomorrah? No. But for me, I was at the subsiding
of the Deluge, and helped swab the ground, and build the
first house. With the Israelites, I fainted in the wilderness;
was in court, when Solomon outdid all the judges before
him. I, it was, who suppressed the lost work of Manetho,
on the Egyptian theology, as containing mysteries not to be
revealed to posterity, and things at war with the canonical
scriptures; I, who originated the conspiracy against that
purple murderer, Domitian; I, who in the senate moved,
that great and good Aurelian be emperor. I instigated the
abdication of Diocletian, and Charles the Fifth; I touched
Isabella's heart, that she hearkened to Columbus. I am he,
that from the king's minions hid the Charter in the old oak
at Hartford; I harbored Goffe and Whalley: I am the
leader of the Mohawk masks, who in the Old Common-wealth's
harbor, overboard threw the East India Company's
Souchong; I am the Vailed Persian Prophet; I, the man
in the iron mask; I, Junius.
