American Revolutionary War hero (1738-1789)
The gods of the valley are not the gods of the hills, and you shall understand it.
ETHAN ALLEN
reply to the King's attorney-general, Jun. 1770
It is bad policy to fear the resentment of an enemy.
ETHAN ALLEN
response to the Continental Congress, refusing to move war materials captured from the British to a place of safe keeping until it could be returned
A spiritualizing teacher is nearly as well acquainted with the kingdom of heaven as a man can be with his home lot. He knows the road to heaven and eternal blessedness, to which happy regions, with the greatest assurance, he presumes to pilot his dear disciples and unfold to them the mysteries of the canonical writings, and of the world to come; they catch the enthusiasm and see with the same sort of spiritual eyes, with which they can pierce religion through and through, and understand the spiritual meaning of the scriptures, which before had been "a dead letter" to them, particularly the revelations of St. John the divine, and the allusion of the horns therein mentioned. The most obscure and unintelligible passages of the Bible come within the compass of their spiritual discerning as apparently as figures do to a mathematician: then they can sing songs out of the Canticles, saying, "I am my beloved's and my beloved is mine;" and being at a loose from the government of reason, please themselves with any fanaticisms they like best.
ETHAN ALLEN
Reason: The Only Oracle of Man
Virtue and vice are the only things in this world, which, with our souls, are capable of surviving death; the former is the rational and only procuring cause of all intellectual happiness, and the latter of conscious guilt and misery; and therefore, our indispensable duty and ultimate interest is, to love, cultivate and improve the one, as the means of our greatest good, and to hate and abstain from the other, as productive of our greatest evil.
ETHAN ALLEN
Reason: The Only Oracle of Man
If the scriptures had been written with one half of the care and ability with which they have been explained and defended, they would not have been the cause of so much contention and mischief, and they would not have stood in need of so much explanation and defense.
ETHAN ALLEN
Reason: The Only Oracle of Man
Undoubtedly it is our duty, and for our best good, that we occupy and improve the faculties, with which our creator has endowed us, but so far as prejudice, or prepossession of opinion prevails over our minds, in the same proportion, reason is excluded from our theory or practice. Therefore if we would acquire useful knowledge, we must first divest ourselves of those impediments and sincerely endeavor to search out the truth: and draw our conclusions from reason and just argument, which will never conform to our inclination, interest or fancy but we must conform to that if we would judge rightly.
ETHAN ALLEN
Reason: The Only Oracle of Man
Those who invalidate reason, ought seriously to consider, whether they argue against reason, with or without reason; if with reason, then they establish the principle, that they are laboring to dethrone; but if they argue without reason, (which, in order to be consistent with themselves, they must do,) they are out of the reach of rational conviction, nor do they deserve a rational argument.
ETHAN ALLEN
Reason: The Only Oracle of Man
The discoveries of science have proved that the opinions concerning a firmament above, and a flat earth beneath, are completely inaccurate; but faith delights more in sublimity than truth; it soars far above science in its discoveries, and holds accuracy in contempt.
ETHAN ALLEN
Reason: The Only Oracle of Man
To suppose that God Almighty has confined his goodness to this world, to the exclusion of all others, is much similar to the idle fancies of some individuals in this world, that they, and those of their communion or faith, are the favorites of heaven exclusively; but these are narrow and bigoted conceptions, which are degrading to a rational nature, and utterly unworthy of God, of whom we should form the most exalted ideas.
ETHAN ALLEN
Reason: The Only Oracle of Man
I found myself in possession of happiness once more, and the evils I had lately suffered, gave me uncommon relish for it.
ETHAN ALLEN
A Narrative of Colonel Ethan Allen's Captivity
The idea of a God we infer from our experimental dependence on something superior to ourselves in wisdom, power and goodness, which we call God; our senses discover to us the works of God which we call nature, and which is a manifest demonstration of his invisible essence. Thus it is from the works of nature that we deduce the knowledge of a God, and not because we have, or can have any immediate knowledge of, or revelation from him.
ETHAN ALLEN
Reason: The Only Oracle of Man
In those parts of the world where learning and science has prevailed, miracles have ceased; but in such parts of it as are barbarous and ignorant, miracles are still in vogue; which is of itself a strong presumption that in the infancy of letters, learning and science, or in the world's non-age, those who confided in miracles, as a proof of the divine mission of the first promulgators of revelation, were imposed upon by fictitious appearances instead of miracles.
ETHAN ALLEN
Reason: The Only Oracle of Man
Morality does not derive its nature from books, but from the fitness of things.
ETHAN ALLEN
Reason: The Only Oracle of Man
It may be objected that a man cannot subsist in the sun; but does it follow from thence, that God cannot or has not constituted a nature peculiar to that fiery region, and caused it to be as natural and necessary for it to suck in and breathe out flames of fire, as it is for us to do the like in air.
ETHAN ALLEN
Reason: The Only Oracle of Man
It appears that mankind in this life are not agents of trial for eternity, but that they will eternally remain agents of trial. To suppose that our eternal circumstances will be unalterably fixed in happiness or misery, in consequence of the agency or transactions of this temporary life, is inconsistent with the moral government of God, and the progressive and retrospective knowledge of the human mind. God has not put it into our power to plunge ourselves into eternal woe and perdition; human liberty is not so extensive, for the term of human life bears no proportion to eternity succeeding it; so that there could be no proportion between a momentary agency, (which is liberty of action,) or probation, and any supposed eternal consequences of happiness or misery resulting from it.
ETHAN ALLEN
Reason: The Only Oracle of Man
But among all the pretended miracles performed by Jesus Christ, none make so great a figure as that of casting out devils; the number of people said to have been possessed with these evil spirits, seem to have been great indeed. This is a disease apparently unknown in any former age of the world, except in the case of Saul, who had one sent from God to trouble him; and it is also unknown (among enlightened people) in any other age or country since, it seems peculiar to God's own people alone, at this particular time. The accounts of this imaginary possession with the devil, have arisen out of the ignorance and superstition of these authors, in ascribing every unknown and violent disease to the influence of the devil; and their earnest wish to show the power of their hero in subduing him. In all the accounts that have been given of the Gods, or incarnations of God, by the Greeks, Romans, Hindus, and almost every other people, it appears indispensible, in order to exhibit his power, to create some opposite principle to vanquish, that his power may be better displayed. The case has been the same with the Evangelists, as with others; in their ignorant devotion, they have conjured up the devil as an antagonist, to make Jesus triumph over him. It seems by their accounts, that he and the devil were at this time striving which to get possession of the earth; and though they represent Jesus as victorious, yet the devil was not destroyed, and mankind were tormented between them, without any benefit.
ETHAN ALLEN
Reason: The Only Oracle of Man
For many centuries after the establishment of Christianity, mankind became more barbarous, ignorant, and miserable than before, instead of assisting the human mind in its progress to improvement, that system completely retarded it; a gloomy superstition, which sprung out of these gospels, cramped its energies, and fettered its exertions; instead of guiding society to freedom, peace, and happiness, there was founded on the authority of these writings a system of the most horrible and debasing oppression.
ETHAN ALLEN
Reason: The Only Oracle of Man
Though "none by searching can find out God, or the Almighty to perfection," yet I am persuaded, that if mankind would dare to exercise their reason as freely on those divine topics as they do in the common concerns of life, they would, in a great measure, rid themselves of their blindness and superstition, gain more exalted ideas of God and their obligations to him and one another, and be proportionally delighted and blessed with the views of his moral government, make better members of society, and acquire, manly powerful incentives to the practice of morality, which is the last and greatest perfection that human nature is capable of.
ETHAN ALLEN
Reason: The Only Oracle of Man
Who would imagine that the Deity conducts his providence similar to the detestable despots of this world? Oh horrible? most horrible impeachment of Divine Goodness!
ETHAN ALLEN
Reason: The Only Oracle of Man
Perhaps we are the most selfish, oddest, and cunningest medley of beings of our size in the universe. However to complete the scale of being, it seems to have been requisite that the link of being called man must have been, and since under the Divine government, we have a positive existence, we cannot ultimately fail of being better than not to have been.
ETHAN ALLEN
Essay on the Universal Plenitude of Being and on the Nature and Immortality of the Human Soul and Its Agency