61

And this at least Christ was the first to teach.  For although, already before Him, the belief had been introduced among many nations, that bad actions have yet to be punished in that life; yet they were only such actions as were injurious to civil society, and consequently, too, had already had their punishment in civil society.  To enforce an inward purity of heart in reference to another life, was reserved for Him alone.

62

His disciples have faithfully propagated these doctrines:  and if they had even had no other merit, than that of having effected a more general publication, among other nations, of a Truth which Christ had appeared to have destined only for the Jews, yet would they have even on that account alone, to be reckoned among the Benefactors and Fosterers of the Human Race.

63

If, however, they transplanted this one great Truth together with other doctrines, whose truth was less enlightening, whose usefulness was of a less exalted character, how could it be otherwise.  Let us not blame them for this, but rather seriously examine whether these very commingled doctrines have not become a new impulse of directions for human reason.

64

At least, it is already clear that the New Testament Scriptures, in which these doctrines after some time were found preserved, have afforded, and still afford, the second better Primer for the race of man.

65

For seven hundred years past they have exercised human reason more than all other books, and enlightened it more, were it even only through the light which the human reason itself threw into them.

66

It would have been impossible for any other book to become so generally known among different nations:  and indisputably, the fact that modes of thought so diverse from each other have been occupied on the same book, has helped on the human reason more than if every nation had had its own Primer specially for itself.

67

It was also highly necessary that each people for a period should hold this Book as the ne plus ultra of their knowledge.  For the youth must consider his Primer as the first of all books, that the impatience to finish this book, may not hurry him on to things for which he has, as yet, laid no basis.

68

And one thing is also of the greatest importance even now.  Thou abler spirit, who art fretting and restless over the last page of the Primer, beware!  Beware of letting thy weaker fellow scholars mark what thou perceivest afar, or what thou art beginning to see!

Until these weaker fellow scholars are up with thee, rather return once more into this Primer, and examine whether that which thou takest only for duplicates of the method, for a blunder in the teaching, is not perhaps something more.

70

Thou hast seen in the childhood of the human race, respecting the doctrine of God’s unity, that God makes immediate revelations of mere truths of reason, or has permitted and caused pure truths of reason to be taught, for some time, as truths of immediate revelation, in order to promulgate them the more rapidly, and ground them the more firmly.