Hannah Adams, A Dictionary of All Religions and Religious Denominations… (1817)
“ Now there is nothing without or foreign to the Deity but matter: therefore matter is the centre and source of all evil. Having assumed these principles, they proceeded further, and affirmed that matter was eternal, and derived its present form, not from the will of the supreme God, but from the creating power of some inferiour intelligence, to whom the world and its inhabitants owed their existence. ”
Hannah Adams, A Dictionary of All Religions and Religious Denominations… (1817)
“ They looked upon matter as the source of all evil, and argued in this manner: There are many evils in this world, and men seem impelled by a natural instinct to the practice of those things which reason condemns; but that eternal mind, from which all spirits derive their existence, must be inaccessible to all kinds of evil, being of a most perfect and beneficent nature. Therefore the origin of those evils with which the universe abounds, must be sought somewhere else than in the Deity. ”
Hannah Adams, A Dictionary of All Religions and Religious Denominations… (1817)
“ In their system it was generally supposed, that all intelligences had only one source, viz. the Divine Mind. And to help out the doctrine concerning the origin of evil, it was imagined, that though the Divine Being himself was essentially and perfectly good, those intelligences, or spirits, who were derived from him, and especially those who were derived from them, were capable of depravation. ”
