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FORM NO. 609: 10. 2, SI. lOOH.

AJT

APOLOGY

FOR THE

B I B L E.

/

AM

APOLOGY

rOR THE O^A\j(/^\

B I B L E,

IN A

SERIES OF LETTERS,

ADDRESSED TO

THOMAS PAINE,

Author of a Book entitled, The Age of Reafon, Part the Second, being an Inveftigation of True and of Fabulous Theology,

, By K. WATSCN, D.D,F.R.S.

>0SD BISHOP OF LANDA'ii, aN 3 'l-i 6 Ili S P R OF E SSOR OF BIVINJTy iN TriE U'i:i7ERSXTY OF CAMBRIDGE*

NEJV- YORK:

Printed by T. & J. SWORDS, No. 99 Pearl-StrceL

— 1796.—

IW

f'ih,..

'Sffffs /^p

' jt^ ..*

AN

APOLOGY

FOR THE

BI BL E.

LETTER I:.

SIR,

I HAVE lately met with a book of your's, entitled— The Age of Reason, part the fecond, being an inveftigation of true and of fa- bulous theology ;— and I think it not inconfiftent with my flation, and the duty I owe to fociety, to trouble you and the world with fome obferva- tions on fo extraordinary a performance. Ex- traordinary I efteem it ; not from any novelty in the objedlions which you have produced againO: revealed religion, (for I find little or no novelty in them) but from the zeal with which you la- bour to diflfeminate your opinions, and from the confidence with which you efteem them true.^ — s. You perceive, by this, that I give you credit for your fincerity, how much foever J may queftioa your wifdom, in writing in fuch a manner on luch a fiibjedl : and 1 have no relu6lance in ac- A'^ knowledging^

/ ( 6 )

knowledging, that you p-ofl^fs- a confiderable fliaie of energy of language, and acutenefs of invefligation ; though I muft'be allowed to la- ment, that thefe talents have not been applied in a manner niore ufeful to human kind, and more creditable to yourfelf.

I begin with your preface. You therein ftate, that you had long had an intention of publiihing your thoughts upon religion, but that you had originally referved it to a later period in life. — I hope there is no want of charity in faying, that it would have been fortunate for the chriflian world, had your life been terminated before you had fulfilled your intention. In accomplifliing your purpofe, you will have unfettled the faith of thoufands ; rooted from the minds of the un- happy virtuous all their comfortable affurance of a future recompence ; have annihilated, in the minds of the flagitious, all their fears of future punifhment ; — you will have given the reins to the domination of every paffion, and have thereby contributed to the incrodu6t:ion of the public in- fecurity, and of the private unhappinels, ufually and almaOil neceffarily accompanying a flate of corrupted morals.

No cne can think worfe of confeffion to a prieft, and fubfequent abfolution, as pracStifed in the church of Rome, than I do : but I cannot, with you, attribute the guiilotine-mafTacres to that caufe. Men's minds were not prepared, as you fuppofe, for the commiflion of all manner of crimes, by any dodlrines of the church of Kome, corrupted as I efteem it, but by their not

thoroughly

( 1 )_, ^ .

thoroughly believing evei^ th'af religion. Whatr may not fociety expe6t from thofe who (hall im- bibe the principles of your book?

A fever, which you and thofe about you ex- pe6ted would prove mortal,^nade you remember, with renewed fatisfa6lion, that you had written the former part of your Age of Reafon — and you know therefore, you fay, by experience, the confcientious trial or your own principles. I admit this declaration to be a proof of the fince- rity of your perfuafion; but I cannot admit it to be any proof of the truth of your principles. What is confclence? Is it, as has been thought^ an internal monitor implanted in us by the Su- preme Being, and di6tating to us, on all occa- fions, what is right or wrong ? Or is it merely our own judgment of the moral red^itude or tur- pitude of our own a6tions ? I take the word (with Mr. Locke) in the latter, as in the only intelligible fenfe. Novv^, who fees not that our judgments of virtue and vice, right and wrong, are not always formed from an enlightened and difpalTionate ufe of our reafon, in the inveftiga- tion of truth? They are more generally formed from the nature of the religion we profefs ; from the quality of the civil government under which we live ; from the general manners of the age, or the particular manners of the perfons with whom we affociate; from the education we have had in our youth ; from the books we have read at a more advanced period ; and from other accidental caufes. Who fees not that, on this account, confcience may be conformable or repugnant to

the

( 8 )

ttie law of nature — may be certain or dou-btful ? and that it can be no criterion of moral re6titude, even when it is certain, becaufe the certainty of an opinion is no proof of its being a right opi- nion ? A man may be certainly perfuaded of an error in reafoning, or of an untruth in matters of fa6l. It is a maxim of every - law, human and divine, that a man ought never to a6l in op- pofition to his confcienee: but it will not from thence follow, that he will, in obeying the dic- tates of his confcienee, on all occafions a6t right. An inquifitor, who burns- jews and heretics ; a Robefpierre, who mafTacres innocent and harsi- lefs women ; a robber, who thinks that all things ought to be in common, and that a ftate of pro- perty is an unjuft infringement of natural liberty: — thefe, and a thoufand perpetrators of different crimes, may ail follow die di6lates of confcienee ; and may, at the real or fuppofed approach of death, remember, " w-ith renewed fatisfa6lion," the worft of their tranfa6lions^ and experience, without difmay, " a confcientious trial of their principles." But this their confcientious com- pofure can be no proof to others of the redlitude of their principles, and ought to be no pledge to themfelves of their innocence, in adhering to them.

I have thought fit to make this remark, with : a view of fuggefling to you a conlideration of great importance — whether you have examined calmly, and according to the beft of your ability, the arguments by which the truth of revealed re- ligion may, in the judgment of learned and im- partial men, be eftabiilhed ? — You will allow,

diat

( 9 )

tliat thoufinds of learned and Impartial mcir, (t fpeak not of priefts, who, however, are, I truft, as learned and impartial as yourfelf, but of lay- men of the moft fplendid talents) — you will al- low, that thoufands of thefe, in all ages, have embraced revealed religion as true. Whether thefe men have all been in an error, envelc;ped in the darknefs of ignorance, (hackled by the chains of fuperftition, wliilPc you and a few orhers have enjoyed light and liberty, is a queftion I fubmit to the decifion of your readers.

If you have made the beft examination you can, and yet rejecl revealed religion as an im- pofture, T pray that God may pardon what i efleem your error. And whether you have made this examination or not, does not become me or any man to determine. That gofpel which you defpife, has taught me this moderation: it has faid to me — " Who art thou that judgeft another man's fervant? To his own mafter he ftandeth or failech." — I think that you are in an error; but whedier that error be to you a vincible or an invincible error, I prefume not to determine, I know indeed where it is faid, " that the preach- ing of die crofs is to them that perifli fooliflmefs, • — and that if the gofpel be hid, it is hid to them that are loil." — The confequence of your unbe- lief muft be left to the jull and merciful judg- ment of him, who alone knoweth the mechanifm and the liberty of our underftandings, the origin of our opinions, the ftrength of our prejudices, the excellencies and the dete6ts of our reafoning faculties.

I fhalU

( 10 j

I ihall , defigiiedly, write this and the follow- ing letters in a popular manner; hoping, that thereby they may ftand a chance of being pe- rufed by that clafs of readers, for whom your work leems to be particularly calculated, and who are the moft likely to be injured by it. The really learned are in no danger of being infefted by the poifon of infidelity: they will excufe me, therefore, for having entered, as little as poflible,- into deep difquiiitions concerning the authenticity of the Bible. The fubjedl has been fo learnedly and fo frequently handled by other writers, that it does not want (I had almoft faid, it does not ad- mit) any farther proof. And it is the more ne- ceflary to adopt this mode of anfwering your book, becaufe you difclaim all learned appeals to other books, and undertake to prove, from the Bible itfelf, that it is unworthy of credit. I hope to {hev7, from the Bible itfelf, thedire6t contrary. But in- cafe any of your readers ihould think that you had not put forth all your ftrength, by not referring for proof of your opinion to ancient authors; left they flioald fufpedl: that all ancient authors are in your favour; I will venture to affirm, that had you made a learned appeal to all the ancient books ui the world, facred or profane, chriftian, jewiCh, or pagan, inftead of lefTening, they would have eftabliihed, the credit and autho- rity of tbe Bible as the Word of God.

Quitting your preface, let us proceed to the work itfelf; in which there is much repetition, and a de.e6l of proper arrangement. I will fol- low your track, however, as nearly as I can. —

Tl^

( M 3

The firft quefllon you propofe for confideration is — << Whether there is fufficient authority for believing the Bible to be the Word of God, or whether there is not?" — You determine this queftion in the negative, upon what you are pleafed to call moral evidence. You hold it im^ poflible that the Bible can be the Word of God, becaufe it is therein faid, that the Ifraelites de- ftroyed the Canaanites by the exprefs command of God: and to believe the Bible to be true, we muft, you affirm, unbelieve all our belief of the moral juftice of God ; for wherein, you afk, could crying or fmiling infants oifend? — I am aftonifhed that fo acute a reafoner fhould attempt to difparage the Bible, by bringing forward this exploded and frequently refuted objedlion of Morgan, Tindal, and Bolingbroke. You pro- fefs yourfelf to be a deift, and to believe that there is a God, who created the univerfe, and eftablifh- ed the laws of nature, by which it is fuftained -in exiftence. You profefs, that, from the con- templation of the works of God, you derive a knowledge of his attributes ; and you reje6i: the Bible, becaufe it afcribes to God things inconfift- ent (as you fuppofe) with the attributes which you have difcovered to belong to him; in parti- cular, you think it repugnant to his moral juftice, that he (hould doom to deftrudtion the crying or fmiling infants of the Ganaanites. — Why do you not maintain it to be repugnant to his moral juf- tice, that he fhould fuiFcr crying or fmiling infants to be fwallowed up by an earthquake, drov/ned :by an inundation, confumed by a fire, flarved by

a famiuey

( 12 )

a famine," or deftroyed by a peftilence? The Word of God is in perieO: harmony with his work ; crying or fmiling infants are fubjedted to death in both. We believe that the earth, at the cxprefs command of God, opened her mouth, and fwallowed up Korah, Dathan, and Abiram, with their wives, their fons, and their little ones. This you efteem fo repugnant to God\s moral juftice, that you fpurn, as fpurious, the book ia which the circumftance is related. When Cata- nia, Lima, and Lifbon, were feverally deftroyed by earthquakes, men, with their wives, their fons, and their little ones, were fwallowed up alive :—^ why do you not fpurn, as fpurious, the book of nature, in which this fa6t is certainly written, and from tbe perufal of which you infer the mo- ral juftice of God ? You will, probably, reply, that the evils which the Canaanites fuffered from the exprefs command of God, were different from thofe which are brought on mankind by the ope- ration of the laws of nature. — Different] in what? — Not in the magnitude of the evil—not in the fubjecSts of fufferanee — not in the author of it: for my philofophy, at leaft, inftrucSts me to believe, that God iK>t only primarily formed, but that he hath, through all ages, executed, the laws of nature; and that he will through all eternity adminifter them, for the general happinefs of his creatures, whether we can, on every occafion, difcern that end ornot.

I am far from being guilty of thie impiety of qucftioning the exiftence of the moral juftice of God, as proved either by natural or revealed: re^

ligion:

( t3 ) Ifgion : what I contend for is fliortly this — that you have no right, in fairnefs of reafoning, to urge any apparent deviation from moral juliice, as an argument againfl: revealed religion, becaufe you do not urge an equally apparent deviation from it, as an argument againfl: natural religion : you reje6l the former, and admit the latter, with- out cc-^ "dering that, as to your objedlion, they muft fta. or fall together.

As to the Canaanites, it is needlefs to enter into any proof of the depraved (late of dieir mo- rals ; they were a wicked people in the time of Abraham, and they, even then, were devoted to defl:ru6tion by God ; but their iniquity was not then full. Tn the time of Mofes, they were ido- laters ; facrificers of their own crying or fmiling infants; devourers of human flefh; addicted to unnatural lull: ; immerfed in the filthinefs of all manner of vice. Now, I think, it will be impof- ilble to prove, that it was a proceeding contrary to God's moral juflice, to exterminate fo wicked a people. He made the Ifraelitcs the executors of his vengeance ; and, in doing this, he gave fuch an evident and terrible proof of his abomJnatioii of vice, as could not fail to ftrike the furrounding nations with aftonifhm.ent and terror, and to im- prefs on the minds of the Ifraelites what they were to expedV, if they followed the example of the nations whom h-e commanded them to cut ofF. *^ Ye fhall not commit any of thefe abominations — that the land fpue not you out alfo, as it fpued out the nations that were before you." How ilrong and defcriptive this language ! the vices of B the

{ H )

the inhabitants were fo abominable, that the very land was fick of them, and forced to vomit them forth, as the ftomach difgorges a deadly poifon.

1 have often wondered what could be the rea-- fon that men, not deftitute of talents, fliould be defn'OQs of undermining the authority of revealed religion, and iludious in expofmg, with a malig- nant and illiberal exultation, every iitde difficulty attending the fcriptures, to popular animadverfion and contempt. 1 am not willing to attribute this ftrange propenfity to what Plato attributed the atheifm of his time — to profligacy of manners — to afFe6lation of fmgularlty— to grofs ignorance, afTuming the femblance of deep refearch and fupe-- rior fagacity ;— I had rather refer it to an impro- priety of judgment, refpe61;ing the manners, and mental acquirements, of human kind, in the firft ages of the world. Mo ft unbelievers argue as if they thought that man, in remote and rude anti-, quity, in the very birth and infancy of our fpe- cles, had the fame diftlnct conceptions of one, eter- nal, Invlfible, incorporeal, infinitely wife, power- ful, and good God, which they themfelves have now. This I look upon as a great miftake, and a pregnant fource of infidelity. Human kind, by long experience ; by the Inftitutions of civil fo- clety ; by the cultivation of arts and fciences ; by, as Ibelieve, divine Inftruilion a6tually given to feme, and traditionally communicated to all ; is in a far more diftlnguifhed fituation, as to the powers of the mind, than it was in the childhood of the world. The hiftory of man is the hiftory

of

( 15 )

of the providence of God; who, willing the fu- preme felicity of all his creatures, has adapted his government to the capacity of thofe who, in dif- ferent ages, were the fuhjects of it. The hiflory of any one nation throughout all ages, and that of ail nations in the fame age, are hut feparate parts of one great plan, which God is carrying on for the moral melioration of mankind. But who can comprehend the whole of this immenfe defign ? The (iiortnefs of life, the weaknefs of our facul- ties, the inadequacy of our means of information, tonfpire to mtike it impoffible for us, worms of the earth ! infers of an hour ! completely to un- derftand any one of its parts. No man, wlio weU weighs the fubje6l, ought to be fui-prifed, that in the hiftories of ancient times many things fhoukl occur foreign to our manners, the propriety and neceiTity of which we cannot clearly apprehend.

It appears incredible to many, that God Al- mighty fliould havehad colloquial intercourfe with our firft parents ; that he (lioud have contra£ied a kind of frienddiip for the patriarchs, and entered into covenants with them ; that hefhouldhavefuf- pended the laws of nature in Egypt ; fhould have been fo apparently partial as to become the God and governor of one particular nation ; and fhould have {o far demeaned himfelf> as to give to that people a burdenfome ritual of worfhip, ftatutes and ordinances, many of which feem to be be- neath the dignity of his attention, unimportant, and impolitic. * have converfed with many deifts, and have always found that the flrangenefs of ihefe things was the only reafon for their difbelief

of

f i6 )

of them : nothing fimilar has happened In their time ; they will not, therefore, admit, that theie events have really taken place at any time. As well might a child, when arrived at a ftate of man- hood, contend that he had never either ftood in need of, or experienced the foitering care of a mo- ther's kindnefs, the wearifome attention of his nurfe, or ^the inftruftion and difcipline of his ichoolmafter. The Supreme Being feied:ed one family from an idolatrous world; nurfed it up, by various a6ts of his providence, into a great nation j communicated to that nation a knowledge of his > holinefs, juftice, mercy, power, and wifdom ; dif- feminated them, at various times, through every part of tlie earth, that they might be a " leaven to leaven the whole lump," that they might af- fure all other nations of the exiflence of one Su- preme God, the creator and preferver of the world, the only proper object of adoration. With what reafoR can v/e expe6l, that what was done to one nation, not out of any partiality to them, but for the general good, ihould be done to all i" that the mode of inftrudlion, which was fuited to the infancy of the world, flrould be extended to the maturity of its manhood, or to the imbecility of its old age ? I own to you, that when I confider how nearlv man, in a favage ftate, approaches to the brute creation, as to intelle6lual excellence ; and when I contemplate his miferable attainments, as to the knowledge of God, in a civilized ftate, when he has had no divine inftru6li(*ii on the fub- je£t, or when that inftrudlion has been forgotten, (for all men have known fomething of God from

tradition;)

( '7 ) tradition,) I cannot but adniire the wlfdom ami- goodncis of the Supreme Being, in having let hiiufclf down to our apprehei\(ions ; in havini^ given to mankind, in the earliell: ages, fenfible and extraordinary proofs of his exigence and attri- butes; in having made die jewifli and chriftian difpenfations mediums to convey to all men, through all ages, that knowledge concerning him- felf, which he had vouchfafed to give immediately to the firft. I own it is ftrange, very ftrange, that he rtiould have made an immediate manifeft^ion of himfelf in the firfl: ages of the w^orld; but what is there that is not ftrange ? It is ftrange that you and I are here — that there is water, and earth, and air, and iire — that there is a fun, and moon, and ftars — that there is generation, corruption, repro- duction., lean account ultimately for none of thefe things, w^ithout recurring to him who made every thing. I alfo am his workmaniliip, and look up to him with hope of prefervation through all eternity; 1 adore him for his word as well as for his work : his work I cannot comprehend, but his word hath affured me of all that I am con^- cerned to know — that he hath prep-ired everlafting happinefs for thofe who love and obey him. This you will call preachment, — I will have done with it; but the fuhjedf is fo vaft, and the plan of proviiience, in my opinion, fo obvioufly wife and good, that I can never think of it without having my mind iillcd w^ith piety, admiration, and grati- tude.

In addition to the moral evidence (as you are-

pleafed to think it) againft the Bible, you threaten,.

B %' isi

( i8 )

in the progrefs of your work, to produce fucb other evidence as even a prieft cannot deny. A philofopher in fearcli of truth forfeits with me all claim to candour and impartiality, when he in- troduces railing for reafoning, vulgar and illiberal farcafm in the room of argument. I will not imitate the example you fet me ; but examine what you fhall produce, with as much coolnefs and refpe61:, as if you had given the priefts no provo- cation ; as if you were a man of the moll; un- blemiOied charadler, fubjeft to no prejudices, ac^ tuated by no bad deligns, not hable to have abufe retorted upon you with fuccefs.

LETTER IL

BEFORE you commence your grand' attack upon the Bible, you willi to eftabJifli a dif- ference between the evidence neceffary to prove the authenticity of the Bible, and that of any other ancient book. I am not furprifed at your anxiety on this head ; for ail writers on the fubjedt have agreed in thinking that St. Auftin reafoned well,. when, in vindicating the genuinenefs of the Bible, he a(ked — '' What proofs have we that the works of Plato, Ariftotle, Cicero, Varro, and other profane authors, were written by thofe whofe names they bear; unlefs it be that this has been an opinion generally received at all times, and by

all

( 19 5 all thofe who have lived fince thefe authors?" — This writer was convinced, that the evidence which eftablifhed tlie genuinenefs of any profane book, would eftablifh that of a facred book; and I profefs myfelf to be of the fame opinion, not- withftanding what you have advanced to the contrary.

In this part your ideas feem to me to be coii- fufed: I do not fay that you, defigiiedly, jumble together mathematical fcience and hiftorical evi- dence ; the knowledge acquired by demonftration, and the probability derived from tefliimony. — You^ know but of one ancient book, that authoritative- ly challenges univerfal confent and belief, and' that is Euclid's Elements. — If I were difpofed to make frivolous obje61:ions, I fhould fay that even Euclid's Elements had not met with univerfal confent; that there had been men, both in an- cient and modern times, who had queftioned the ■intuitive evidence of fome of his axioms, and de- nied the juftnefs of fome of his demonftrations : but, admitting the truth, I do not fee the perti- nency of your obfervation. You are attempting to fubvert the au-thenticity of the Bible, and you tell us that Euclid's Elements are certainly true. "What then ? Does it follow that the Bible is certainly falfe ? The mofb illiterate fcrivener in the kingdom does not want to be informed, that the examples in his Wingate's Arithmetic are proved by a different kind of reafoning from that by which he perfuades himfelf to believe, that there was fuch a perfon as Henry VIII. or that there is fuch a city as Paris.

It

( M )

It may be of ufe, to remove this confulion m your argument, to ftate, diftindlly, the difference between the genuinenefs and the authenticity of a book. A genuine book is that which was written by the peribn whofe namd it bears as the author of it^ An authentic book is that which relates matters of fa6t, as they really happened. A book may be genuine without being authentic ; and a book may be authentic without being ge- nuine. The books written by Richardfon and Fielding are genuine books, though the hi (lories of Ctariffa and Tom Jones are fables. The hif- tory oi the ifland of Formofa is a genuine book ; it was written by Pfahnanazar; but it is not an autlientic book, (though it was long efteemed as fuch, and tranflated into dliFerent languages) for the author, in the latter part of his life, took fhame to himfelf for having impofed on the world, and confelled that it was a m.ere romance. Anfon's Voyage may be confidered as an audientic book ; , it, probably, containing a true narration of the, principrd events recorded in it ; but it is not a ge- nuine book, having not been written by Walters, , to whom it is afcribed, but by Robins. .

This difiindlion between the genuinenefs and authenticity of a book, will affiil: us in detedling the fcdlacy of an argument, which you llate with great conhdence in the part of your work now. under conhderadon, and which you frequently allude to, in other parts, as conclufive evidence againil: the truth of the Bible. Your argument ftands thus — If it be found that the books afcribed to Mofes, Joihua, anfl Samuel, vvere not writtea

by

(' 21 )

by Mofes, Jolliua, and Samuel, every part of the authority and authenticity of thefe books is gone at once. — 1 prefume to think otherwife. The genuinenefs of thefe books (in the judgment of thofe who fay that they were written by thefe au- thors) will certainly be gone ; but their authenti- city may remain; they may ftiil contain a true account of real tranfa^tions, though the names •of the writers of them fhould be found to be dif- ferent from what they are generally efteemed to be.

Had, indeed, Mofes faid that he wrote the five firft books of the Bible ; and had Jofhua and Samuel faid that they wrote the books which are refpecStively attributed to them ; and had it been found, that Mofes, Jodiua, and Samuel, did not write thefe books ; then, I grant, the authority of the whole would have been gone at once ; thefe men would have been found liars, as to the ge- nuinenefs of the books, and this proof of their want of veracity, in one point, would have in- validated their teftimony in every other ; thefe books would have been juftly ftigmatized, as nei- ther genuine nor authentic.

An hiftory may be true, though it (hould not only be afcribed to a wrong author, but though the author of it fhould not be known : anony- mous teftimony does not deftroy die reality of fa6ts, whether natural or miraculous. Had Lord Clarendon publifhed his Hiftory of the Rebellion without prefixing his name to it; or had the hif- tory of Titus Livius come down to us under the ijame of Valerius Fiaccus, oi Valerius Maximus,

the

( 22 ^^

the h'Scs mentioned in theie hlilories would have been equally certain.

As to your alTertion, that the miracles recorded ill Tacitus, and in other profane hiiLories, are quite as well autheriticaied as thofe of the Bible — it, being a mere aiTertion deftitute of proof, may be properly anfwered by a contrary affertion. I take the liberty then to fay, that the evidence for the miracles recorded in the Bible is, both in kind and degree, fo greatly fuperior to that for the prodigies mentioned by Livy, or thcmiracies re- lated by Tacitus, as to jufTlfy us in giving credit to the one as the work of God, and in withhold- ing it from the other as the efFe6l of fuperftition and impofture. This method of derogating from the credibility of cbriftianity, by oppofing to the miracles of our Saviour the tricks of ancient im~ polliors, feems to have originated with Flierocles in the fourth century ; and it has been adopted by unbelievers from that time to diis ; with this dif- ference, indeed, that the heathens of the third and fourth century admitted that Jefus wrought mira- cks ; but lefc that admiflion fhould have compel- led them to abandon their gods and become chrif- tians, they laid, that their ApoUonius, their Apu- leius, their Arljleas^ did as great : whilil modei'n deifts deny the fa6l of jefus having ever wrought a miracle. And they have fome reafon for this proceeding ; they are fenfible that the gofpel mi- racles are fo different, in all their circumftances, from thofe related in pagan ftory, that, if diey^ admit them to have been performed, they muft sdiiiit chriftianiiy to be true \ hence they have fa- bricated:

( 23 ) brirated a kind of deifllcal axiom — that no hu- man teftimonv can eliablilh die credibility of a miracle. — This, though it has been an hundred times refuted, is ftill inijllcd upon, as if its truth had never been queftioiicd, and could not be dif- proved.

You " proceed to examine the authenticity of the Bible; and you begin, you fay, with what are called the five books of Mofes, Genefis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and, Deuterono- my. Your intention, you profefs, is to fhew that thefe books are fpurious, and that Mofes is not the author of them,; and flill farther, that they were not written in the time of Mofes, nor till feveral hundred years afterwards ; that they are no other than an attempted hiftory of the life of Mofes, and of the times in which he is faid to have lived, and alfo of the times prior thereto, written by fome-very ignorant and flupid pre- tender to authorfhip, feveral hundred years after the death of Mofes.'' — In this pafiage the utmoft force of your attack on the authority of the five books of Mofes is clearly fcated. You are not the firfl: who has flarted this difficulty ; it is a difUculty, indeed, of modern date; having not been heard of, either in the fynagogue, or out of it, till the twelfth century. About that time Aben E%ra^ a jew of great erudition, noticed fpme pafTages (the fame that you have brought forward) in the five firil books of the Bible, which he thought had not been written by Mo- fes, but inferted by fome perfon after the death of Mofes. But he was far from maintaining, as

you

( U )

yon do, that thefe books were written by fome ignorant and ftupld pretender to authorfhip, ma- ny hundred years after the death of Mofes. Hobbes contends that the books of Mofes are fo called, not from their having been written by Mofes, but from their containing an account of Mofes. Spinoza fupported the fame opinion; and Le Chrc^ a very able theological critic of the laft and prefent century, ance entertained the fame notion. You fee that this fancy has had fome patrons before you; the merit or the deme- rit, the fagacity or the temerity of having aflert- ed, that Mofes is not tlie author of the Penta- teuch, is not exclufively your's. Le Clerc, in- deed, you muffc not boaft of. When his judg- ment was matured by age, he was afhamed of -what he had written on the fubjefb in his younger years; he made a public recantation of his error, by annexing to his commentary on Genefis, a Latin diiTertation, concerning Mofes, the author of the Pentateuch, and his defign in compofmg it. If, in your future life, you Ihould chance to change your opinion on the fubjedl, it will be an honour to your character to emulate the integ- rity, and to imitate the example of Lc Clerc. — The Bible is not the only book which has under- gone the fate of being reprobated as fpurious, af- ter it had been received as genuine and authentic for many ages. It has been maintained, that the hiffcory of Herodotus was written in the time of Conftantine\ and diat the Claffics are forgeries rof the thirteenth or fourteenth century. Thefe jejitravagant reveries amufed the world at the time

.of

1 25 ) 'of their publication, and have long Hoce funk into oblivion. You efteem all prophets to be fuch lying rafcals, that I dare not venture to prcdidl the fate of your book.

Before you produce your main objeclions to the genuinenefs of the books of Mofes, you aflert, *' that there is no affirmative evidence that Mofes is the author of them." — What! no affirmative evidence ! In the eleventh century Alaimonides drew up a confeffion of faith for the jews, which all of them at this day admit ; it confifts of only thirteen articles ; and two of them have refpe6l to Mofes ; one affirming the authenticity, the other the genuinenefs of his books. — The docftrine and prophecy of Mofes is true. — The law that we have was given by Mofes. — This is the faith of the jews at prefent, and has been their faith ever "fince the deflru6lion of their city and temple ; it- was their faitii in the time when the authors of the New Teftament wrote; it was their faith during their captivity in Babylon ; in the time of their kings and judges ; and no period can be fhewn, from the age of Mofes to the prefent hour, in which it was not their faith. — Is this no affirma- tive evidence? I cannot defire a ftronger. yo- fephusy in his book againfl Appwn^ writes thus — *' We have only two-and-twenty books which are to be believed as of divine authority, and which comprehend the hiftory of all ages ; five belong to Mofes, v/hich contain the original of man, and the tradition of the fucceffion of gene- rations, down to his death, which takes in a com- pafs of about three thoufand years." Do you C conlider

( 26 )

confider this as no affirmative evidence? W'hy iliOLild I mention yui^enal fpeaking of the volume which Mofes had written ? Why enumerate a long hft of profane authors, all bearing teflimony to the fa 61 of Mofes being the leader and the law- giver of the jewiili nation ? and if a law-giver, lurely, a writer of the laws. But what fays the Bible ? In Exodus It fays — " Mofes wrote all the v,'ords of the Lord, and took the book of the covenant, and read in the audience of the people.'' ' — In Deuteronomy it fays — *' And it came to pafs, when Mofes had mjade an end of writing the words of this law in a book, until they were finiflied, (this furely imports the finifhing a labo- rious work,) that Mofes commanded the Levites which bare the ark of the covenant of the Lord, faying, Take this book of the law, and put it in the fide of the ark of the covenant of the Lord your God, that -it may be there for a witnefs againf!: thee." This is fa id in Deuteronomy, which is a kind of repetition or abridgement of the four preceding books : and it is well known that the jews gave the name of the law to the firft five books of the Old Teftament. What poffible doubt can there be that Mofes wrote the books in queflion ? I could accumulate many other paf- fages from the fcriptures to this purpofe; but if what I have advanced will not convince you that there is affirmative evidence, and of the llrongeft kind, for Mofes's being the author of thefe books, nothing that I can advance will convince you.

What if I rhould grant all you undertake to prove, the llupidity and ignorance of the writer

excepted ?

( 27 }

excepted ? — Wliat if I Hiould admit, that Samuel^ or Ezrr/, or fome odier learned jew, compofed thefe books, from public records, many years after the deadi of Mofcs ? Will it follow that thefe was no truth in them ? According to my logic, it will only follow, that they are not genuine books ; every fadt recorded in them may be true, whenever, or by whomfoever they were written. It cannot be faid that the jews had no public re- cords; the Bible furnidies abundance of proof to the contrary. I by no means admit, that thefe books, as to the main part of them, were not writ- ten by Mofes ; but I do contend, that a book may contain a true hiftory, though we know not the audior of it, or though we may be mifcaken in afcribing it to a wrong author.

The tirft argument you produce againfl Mofes being the author of thefe books is fo old, that I do not know its original author ; and it is fo mife- rable an one, that I wonder you fhould adopt it — " Thefe books cannot be written by Moles, be- taufe they are written in the third perfon — it is always. The Lord faid unto Mofes, or Mofes faid unto the Lord. This," you fay, " is the fiyle and manner that hiftorians ufe, in fpeaking of the perfons whofe lives and a6lions they are writing." This obfervation is true, but it does not extend far enough ; for this is the ftyle and manner not only ot hiftorians wTiting of other perfons, but of emi- nent men, fuch as Xenophon and Jofephus^ writ- ing of themfelves. XiGtVitx-dS-WaJliington flioold write the hiftory of the American war, and (hould, from his great modefty, ipeak of himfelf in the

third

f 28 )

third perfon, would you think it reafonable tlnf, two or three thouiand years hence, any perfon Should, on that account, contend that the hiftory- was not true ? Cafar writes of himfelf in the third perfon^ — it is always, Caefar made a fpeech, or a fpeech was made to Caefar, Caefar crofTed the Rhine, Caefar invaded Britain \ but every fchool- boy knows that this circumftance cannot be ad- duced as a ferlous argument againfl: Caefar's be- ing the author of his own Commentaries.

But Mofes, you urge, cannot be the author of the book of Numbers, — becaufe he fays of him- felf, " that Mofes was a very meek man, above all the men that were on the face of the earth." If he faid this of himfelf, he was, you fay, " g, vain and arrogant coxcomb, (fuch is your phrafe!) ■ and unworthy of credit — and if he did not fay it, the books are without authority/* This, your dilemma, is perfesSlly harmlefs ; it has not an hoiii to hurt the weakeft logician. If Mofes did not write this little verfe, if it was inferted by Samuel, or any of his countrymen, who knew his cha- racter and revered his memory, will it follow that he did not write any other part of the book of Numbers ? Or if he did not write any part of the book of Numbers, will it follow that he did not write any of the other books of which he is ufually reputed d:ie author? And if he did write this of himfelf, he was juftified by the occafiou which extorted from him this commendation. Had this expreflion been written in a modern flyle and manner, it would probably have given you uo offence. For who would be fo failidious as

tQ.

( 29 ) to find fliulr with an illuftrious man, who, being calumniated hv his nearefl: relations, as guilty of pride and fond of power, iliould vindicate his chara6ler by faying, My temper was naturally as meek and unaifaming as that of any man upon earth ? There are occahons, In which a modeffc man, who fpeaks truly, may fpeak proudly of himfelf, without forfeiting his general chara6ler ; and there is no occafion, which either more re- quires, or more excufes diis condu'fl:, than when he is repelling the foul and envious afperfions of thofe who both knew his character, and had expe- rienced his kindnefs ; and in that predicament ftood Aaron and Miriam, the accufers of Mofes. You ypurfelfhave, probably, felt the ifing of calumny, and have been anxious to remove the impreffion. I do not call you a vain and arrogant coxcomb for 'vindicating your character, v^hen in die latter part of this very work you boaft, and I hope truly, /' that the m:in does not exilf that can fay I have perfccuted him, or any man, or any fet of men, in the American revolution, or in the French rc^ volution ; or that I have in an^ cafe returned evil for evil." I. know not what kings a.nd priefts may fay to this; you may not have returned to diern evil for evil, becaufe they never, I believe, did you any harm,; but you have ujne diem, all the hanu you could, and that without provocation.

I think it needlefs to notice your obfervatiou upon what you call the dramatic (lyle of Deute- ronomy;, it is an ill-faunded hypothefis. Yoii might, as well a&, where the author of C^far's Commentaries got the fpeeches of Csefar, as where

( 30 j-

the author of Deuteronomy got the fpeeches o£ Mofes. But your argument — that Mofes was not the author of Deuteronomy, becaufe the rea- fon given in that book for the obfervation of the fabbath is different from that given in Exodus, merits a reply.

You need not be told that the very name of this book imports, in Greek, a repetition of a law; and that the Hebrew do6lors have called it by a word, of the fame meaning. In the fifth verfe of the firft chapter, it is faid, in our Bibles, " Mofes began to declare this law ;" but tlie He- brew words, more properly tranflated, import that Mofes " began, or determined, to explain the law\" This is no iliift of mine to get over a difficulty; the words are fo rendered in moft of the ancient verfions, and by Fagius^ Fatablus,. and Le Clerc, men eminently fkilled in the He- brew language. This repetition and explanatioa of the law was a wife and benevolent proceed- ing in Mofes; that thofe who were either not born, or were mere infants, when it was firft (forty years before) delivered in Horeb, might have an opportunity of knowing it ; efpecially as Mofes their leader was foon to be taken from them, and they w^ere about to be fettled in the midft of nations given to idolatry, and funk in< vice. Now, where is the wonder that fome va- riations, and fome additions, fhould be made to a law when a legiflator thinks fit to re-publifli it lyiany years after its firfl promulgation ?

With refpe6l to the fabbath, the learned are di- vided in opinion concerning its origin ; fomecon-.-

tending,.

( 3' )

tending, that it was fan^tified from the creation of" the world; that it was obferved by the patriarchs before the flood; that it was ne2;le6led by the If- raelites during their bondage in Egypt ; revived on the falling of manna in the wildernefs; and en- joined, as a pofitive law, at mount Sinai. Odiers efteem its inflitution to have been no older than the age of Mofes ; and argue, that what is faid of the fan61:i{ication of the fabbath in the book of Geneiis, is faid by way of anticipation. There may be truth in both thefe accounts. To me it is probable that the memory of the creation was handed down from Adam to all his pofterity ; and that the feventh day was, for a long time, held facred by all nations, in commemoration of that event; but that the peculiar rigidnefs of its ob- fervance was enjoined by Mofes to the Ifraelites alone. As to there being two reafons given for its being kept holy, — one, that on that day God refted from the work of creation — the other, that on that day. God had given them reft from the fervitude of Egypt — I fee no contradiction in the accounts. If a man, in writing the hiftory of England, fliould inform his readers, that the par- liament had ordered the fifth of November to be kept holy, becaufe on that day God had delivered the nation from a bloody -intended maflacre by gun-powder; and if, in another part of his hiftory, lie ftiould ailign the deliverance of our church and; nation from popery and arbitrary power, by th© arrival of King William, as a reafon for its being l^ept holy ; would any one contend, that he was. not juftificd in both thefe ways of expreffion, or

tl:iat

( 32 )

that we ought from them to conclude, that he was not the authoi- of them bot:h ?

You think — " that law in Deuteronomy in- huQian am! brutal, v/hich authorizes parents, the father and :he mother, to bring their own children to have them ftoned to death for what it is pleaf- ed to call ilubbornnefs." — You are aware, 1 fup- p -ie. that parental power, amongft the Romans^ the Gauls, the Perjians, and other nations, was of the mofl arbitrary kind ; that it extended to the taking away the lite of the child. I do not know whedier the liraelites, in the time of Mofes, exer- ciied \h\s paternal power; it was not a cuilorn adopted by all nations, but it was by many; and in the infancy of fociety, before individual families had coalefced into com.munities, it was probably very general. Now Mofes, by this law, which you efteem brutal and inhuman, hindered fuch an extravagant power from being cither introduced or exercifed amongft the Ifraeiites. I'liis law is fo far from countenancing the arbitrary powder of a father over the life of his child, that it takes from him the power of accufmg the child before a ma- giftrate — -the father and the mother of the child muft agree in bringing the child to judgment— and it is not by their united will that die chikl was to be condemned to death.; the elders of the city were to judge whether the accufation was true; and the accufation was to be not m.erelv, as you inhnuate, that the child was ftubborn, but that he was "ftubborn and rebellious, a glutton and a drunkard." Confidered in this light, you muft allow the law to have been an humane relfricf icu

of

( 33 ) of a power improper to be lodged' with any pa- rent.

That you may abufe the priefts, you abandon your fubje6l — "' Priefts," you fay, ''• preach up Deuteronomy, for Deuteronomy preaches up tythes." — I do not know that pricrts preach up^ ^Deuteronomy moi-e than they preacli up other books of fcripture ; but I do know that tythes are not preached up in Deuteronomy more than in Leviticus, in Numbers, in Chronicles, in Mala-- chi, in the law, the hiftory, and the propliets of the jewifh nation. — You go on — " It is from diis book, chap. xxv. ver. 4. they have taken the phrafe, and applied it to tything, ' Thou ihak not muzzle the ox when he treadeth out the corn ;' and that this might not efcape obfervation, they have noted it in the table of contents at the head of the chapter, though it is only a fingle verfe of lefs than two lines. O prlefts ! priefts ! ye are willing to be com.pared to an ox for the- fake of tythes !" — I cannot call this reafoning-^- and T will not pollute my page by giving it a pro- per appellation. Had the table of contents, in- Ifead of iimply faying — the ox is not to be muz- zled— faid — tythes enjoined, or prietls to be main- tained— there would have been a little ground for your cenfure. Whoever noted this phrafe at the head of the chapter, had better reafon for doing it than you have attributed to them. They did it, becaufe St. Paul had quoted it, when he was provini^ to the Corinthians, that they who preach- ed the gofpel had a right to live by the gofpel ; it was Paulj and not the priefts, who firft applied

( 34 ) this phrafe to tything. St. Paul, indeed, did not avail himfelf of the right he contended for; he was not, therefore, interefted in what he iViid. The reafon on which he grounds the right is not merely this quotation, w^hich you ridicule ; nor the appointment of the law of Moies, which you think fabulous ; nor the injunction of Jefus, which you defpife : no, it is a reafon founded in the nature of things, and which no philofopher, no unbeliever, no man of common fenfe can deny- to be a folid reafon; it amounts to this — that *' the labourer is worthy of his hire." Nothing is fo much a man's own as his labour and inge- nuity ; and it is entirely confonant to the law of nature, that by the innocent ufe of thefe he Ihould provide for his fubfiftence. Hufbandmen, arti'fts, foldiers, phyhcians, lawyers, all let out their la- bour and talents for a iVipulated reward: why may not a prieft do the famie? Some accounts of you have been pubhfhed in England; but, conceiving them to have proceeded from adefigii to injure your charadler, I never read them. I know nothing of your parentage, your educa- tion, or condition in life. You may have been elevated, by your birth, above the neceffity of acquiring the means of fuftaining life by the la- bour either of hand or head : if this be the cafe, you ought not to defpife thofe who have come into the world in lefs favourable circumftances. It your origin has been lefs fortunate, you mufl havefupported yourfelf, eidier by manual labour, or the exercile of your genius. Why fliould you think that coiidu6l difreputable in priefts, which

you

( 35 ) you probably confider as laudable in yourfelf? I know not whedicr you have not as great a diflikc of kings as of prieiis : but that you may be in- duced to think more favourably of men of my profeflfion, I will juft mention to you that the payment of tythes is no new inftltution, but that they were paid in the mofl ancient times, not to priefts only, but to kings. I could give you an hundred inftances of this : two may be fufficient. Abraham paid tythes to the king of Salem, four hundred years before the law of Mofes was given. "The king of Salem was pried alfo of the mofl high God. Prieifs, you fee, exiifed in the world, and were held in high eftimation, for kings were priefts, long before the impoftures, as you efteem them, of the jewifh and chriftian difpenfations were heard of. But as this inftance is taken from a book which you call "a book of contradictions and lies" — -the Bible, — I will give you another, from a book, to the authority of which, as it is written by a profane author, you probably will not object. Diogenes Laertius^ in his life of Solon, cites a letter of P'ljijiratus to that law- giver, in which he fays — " I, Pififtratus, the tyrant, am contented with the ftlpends which were paid to thofe who reigned before me; the 'people of Athens fet apart a tenth of the fruits of their land, not for my private ufe, but to be -expended in the public facriiices, and for the ge- neral good.'

LETTER

( 36 )

LETTER m.

HAVING done with what you call the grammatical evidence that Mofes was not the author of the books attributed to him, you come to your hiftorical and chronological evi- dence ; and you begin with Genefis. Your firft argument is taken from the fmgle word — Dan — being found in Genefis, when it appears from the book of Judges, that the town of Laifh was not called Dan, till above three hundred and thirty years after the death of Mofes ; therefore the wri- ter of Genefis, you conclude, muft have lived after the town of Laifh had the name of Dan given to it. Left this objedtion fhould not be obvious enough to a common capacity, you illuftrate it in the following manner: " Havre-de-Grace was called Havre-Marat in 1793; fliould then any . datelefs writing be found, in after times, with the name of Havre-Marat, it would be certain evi- dence that fuch a writing could not have been written till after the year 1793." This is a wrong conclufion. Suppofe fome hot republican fhould at this day publifli a new edition of any old hiftory of France, and inftead of Havre-de-Grace fliould write Havre-Marat : and that, two or three thou- fand years hence, a man, like yourfelf, fhould, on that account, reject the whole hiflory as fpu- rious, would he be juftifiedin fo doing ? Would

it

( 37 ) it not be reafonable to tell him — that the iiaiTye Havre-Marat had been inferted, not by the origi- nal audior of the hiftory, but by a fubfequent edi- tor of it; and to refer him, for a proof of the ge- nuinenefs of the book", to the teftimony "of the whole French nation? This fuppofition fo obr vioufly applies to your difficulty, that I cannot but recommeirJ it to your impartial attention. But if this folution does not pleafe you, I defire it may be proved, that the Dan, mentioned in Genefis, was the fame town as the Dan, mentioned iri Judges. I defire, further, to have it proved, that ihe Dan, mentioned in Genefis, was the name of •a town, and not of a river. It is merely faid — Abram purfued them, the enemies of Lot, to Dan. Now a river was full as likely as a town to ftop a purfuit. Lot, we kno^^% was fettled in the plain of Jordan;, and Jordan, we know, was compofed of the united flreams of two rivers^ called Jor and Dan,

Your next difficulty refpeds its being faid in Genefis — " Thefe are the kings that reigned in Edom before there reigned any king over the children of Ifrael : — this paffage could only have been written, you fay, (and 1 think you fay right- ly) after the firfl: king iDegan to reign over Ifrael ; fo far fron) being written by Mofes, it could not have been written till the time of Saul at the leaft." I admit this inference, but I deny its application. A fmail addition to a book does not deftroy either the genuinenefs or the authenticity of the whole t)Ook. I am not ignorant of the manner in which commentators have anfwered this Dbje61:ion of D Sninoza.

{ ss )

Spinoza, without making the conceffion which I have made; but I have no fcruple in admitting, that the paiTage in queftion, confifting of nine Verfes, containing the genealogy of fome kings of Edom, might have been inferted in the book of Genefis, after the book of Chronicles (which was called in Greek by a name importing that it con- tained things left out in other books) was written. The learned have fhewn, that interpolations have happened to other books ; but thefe infertions, by other hands, have never been confidered as inva- lidating the authority of thofe books.

" Take away from Genefis," you fay, " the belief that Mofes was the author, on which only the ftrange belief that rt is the Word of God has fliood, and there remains nothing of Genefis but an anonymous book of ftories, fables, traditionary or invented abfurdities, or of downright lies." — What ! is it a ftory then, that the world had a beginning, and that the author of it was God ? If you deem this a flory, I am not difputing with a Geiftical philofopher, but with an atkeiftic mad- man. Is it a ftory, that our firfl parents fell from a paradifiacal ftate — that this earth wasdeflroyed by a deluge— that Noah and his family were pre- ferved in the ark, and that the world has been re- peopled by his defcendants ?— Look into a book fo common that almoft every body has it, and fo excellent that no perfon ought to.be without it — Grotius on the truth of thechviftian religion — and you will there meet with abundant teitimony to the truth of all the principal fa6ls recorded in Ge- nefis. The teftimoiiy is not that of jews, chrlf-

tians,

( 39 5 dans, and priefts ; it is the teftimony of the philo- fopliers, hiftorians, and poets of antiqiiity.^ The okleft book in the world isGenefis; and it is re- markable, that thole books which come neareft to it in age, are thofe which make either the mofb diltindl mention, or the moft evident allufion to the fads related in Genefis concerning the forma- tion of the world from a chaotic ma.fs, the prime- val innocence and fubfequent fall of man, the longevity of mankind in the tirfl ages of the world, the depravity of the antediluvians, and the deftruc- tion of the world. — Read the tenth chapter of Ge- nefis. It may appear to you to contain nothing but an uninterefting narration of the defcendants- of Shem^ Ham^ and Japheth ; a mere fable, an invented abfurdity, a downright lie. No, fir, it is one of the mofl: valuable, and the mofi: vene- rable records of antiquity. It explains what all profane hiftorians were ignorant of — the origin of nations. Had it told us, as other books do, that one nation had fprung out of the earth they in- habited ; another from a cricket or a grafshopper; another from an oak ; another from a mufhroom ; another from a dragon's tooth; then indeed it would have merited the appellation you, with fo much temerity, beftow upon it. Inftead of thefe abfurdities, it gives fuch an account of the peo^ pling the earth after the deluge, as no other book in the world ever did give ; and the truth of w^hich- all other books in the world, which contain any thing on the fubject, confirm. The laft verfe or the chapter fays — " Thefe are the families of the fcns of Noah, after their generations, in their na.-.

tionsr

( 40 )

tioQS : and by thefe were the nations divided in the earth, after the flood." It would require great learning to trace out, precifely, either the actual Ctuation of all the countries in which thefe found- ers of empires fettled, or to afcertain the extent of their dominions. This, however, has been done by various authors, to th^ fatisfacSlion of all competent judges; fo much at leafl; to my fatis- fadlion, that had I no other proof of die authen- ticity of Genefis, 1 fhould confider this as fuf- iicient. But without the aid of learning, any man who can barely read his Bible, and has but heard of fuch people as the y^ffyrians, the E/a- mites, the Lydians^ the Afedes, the lontans, the Thracians, will readily acknowledge that they had AJfur^ and Elani^ and Lud, and Adadai, and Java?iy and Tiras, grandions of Noah^ for their refpective founders ; and knowing this, he will not, I hope, part with his Bible, as a fyftem of fables. I am no enemy to phllofophy ; but whea philofophy would rob me of my Bible, I muft- iay of it, as Cicero faid of the twelve tables — ^ This little book alone exceeds the libraries of all. the philofophers in the weight of its authority, and in the extent of its utility.

From the abufe of the Bible, you proceed to. that of Mofes, and again bring forward the fub- jc61: of his wars in the land of Canaan. There are many m.en who look upon all war (would to God that all men faw it in the fame light!) with extreme abhorrence, as afSicling mankind with calamities not neceflary, fhocking to humanity, and repugnant to reafon. But is it repugnant to.

reafoa

( 41 ) rcafon that God fliould, by an exprcfs a6l of his ^ providence, deftroy a wicked nation ? lam fond of confiderlng the goodnefs of God as the leading principle of his condu6l towards mankind, of con- lidering his juftice as fubfervient to his mercy. He punilhes individuals and nations with the rod of his wrath ; but I am perfuaded that all his pu- nifliments originate in his abhorrence of fin; are. calculated to leflen its influence, and are proofs of. his goodnefs ; inafmuch as it may not be poffible for Omnipotence itfelf to communicate fupreme happinefs to the human race, whilft they continue fervants of fin. ThedeftrucStion of the Canaanites exhibits to all nations, in all ages, a fignnl proof of God's difpleafure againfl fin ; it has been to others, and it is to ourfelves, a benevolent warn- ing, Mofes would have been the wretch you reprefent him, had he a6led by his own authority: alone: but you may as reafonably attribute cru- elty and murder to the judge of the land in con- demning criminals to death, as butchery and maf-' facre to Mofes in executing the command of God. The Midianite,s, through the counfel of Ba- laam, and by the vicious inftrumentality of their women, had feduced a part of the Ifraelit£s to idolatry ; to the impure worfhip of their infamous god Eaal-peor: — for this offence, twenty-four thoufand Ifraelites had perifhed in a plague from heaven; and Mofes received a command frcm God, " to fmite the Midianites, who had beguiled the people. An army was equipped, and fent againfl Midian. When the army returned vic- torious, Mofes and the princes of the congregation D z went-

( 42 )

v^ent to meet it; " and Mofes was wroth witfi? tfe officers." He obferved the women captives, and he alked wich aftoniHiment, " Have you' faved all the women alive ? Behold, thefe cauied the children of Ilrael, through the counfel of Ba- laam, to commit trefpafs againft the Lord in the matter of Peor, and there was a plague am^ong the congregation." He then gave an order that the boys and the women Ihould be put to death, but that the young maidens ftiould be kept alive for themfelves. I fee nothing in this proceeding, but good policyy combined v/ith mercy. The young men might have become dangerous aven- gers of, what they would eileem, their country's wrongs ; the mothers might have again allured the; Ifraelites to the love of licentious pleafures and the pra6lice of idolatry, and brought another plague Upon the congregation ; but the young maidens, iiot being polluted by the flagitious habits of their mothers, nor likely to create diflurbance by re-, bellion, were kept alive. You give a different turn to the matter; ycu fay — '' that thirty-two thoufand women-childfen were configned to de- bauchery by the order of Mofes/' — Prove this, and I will allow that Mofes was the horrid mon- ger you make him — prove this, and I will allow that the Bible is what you call it — " a book of lies, wickednefs, aad blafphemy" — prove this, or excufe my warmth if 1 fay to you, as Paul faid to Elymas the forcerer, who fought to turn away Sergius Paulus from the faith, " O full of all fubr. iilty, and all mifchief, thou child of the devil, thou enemy of all righteoufnefs, wilt thou not

cec^fe

( 43 ) ceafe to pervert the right ways of the Lord ?" — I did not, when I began ihele letters, think that 1 fhoiild have been moved to this feverity of re- buke, by any thing you could have written ; but when fo grofs a mifrcprefentation is made of God's proceedings, coolnefs would be a crime. The women-children were not referved for the purpofes of debauchery, but of flavery ; — a cuf- tom abhorrent from our manners, but every where pracftifed in former times, and ftill pra6lifed in countries where the benignity of the chriftian re- ligion has not foftened the ferocity of human na- ture. You here admit a part of the account given in the Bible refpedting the expe^-lition againft Mi- dian to be a true account: it is not unreafonablc to defire that you will admit the whole, or ihew fujGFicient reafon why you admit one part, and re— je6t the other. I will mention the part to which you have paid no attention. 'I he Iiraelitifh army confifted but of twelve thoufand men, a mere handful when oppofed to the people of Midian ; yet, when the officers made a mufl:er of their troops after their return from the war, thev found that they had not loft a fmgle man ! This cir- cumftance ftruck them as fo decifive an evidence of God's interpofition, that out of the fjooils they had taken tliey offered " an oblation to the Lord, an atonement for their fouls.'' Do but believe what the captains of thouiands, and [he captains of hundreds, believed at the time when t'tiefe things happened, and we flial' never more hear of your objevSlions to the Bible, from its account of the- wars of Moieso

You

( , 44 )

"You produce two or three other obje6lIons re-

fpedling the genuinenefs of the firft five books

of the Bible. I . cannot flop to notice them :

every commentator anfwers them in a manner

• fuited to the apprehenfion of even a mere Englifh reader. You calculate, to the thoufanddi part of an inch, the length of the iron bed of*0^ the king of Bafan ; but you do not prove that the bed was too big for the body, or that a Patagoiiiaix would have been lofl in it. You make no allow- ance for the fize of a royal bed ; nor ever fufpe6t that kind Og might have been poflefTed with the fame kind of vanity, which occupied the mind of king Alexander, when he ordered his foldiers to enlarge the fize of their bed^, that they. might give to the Indians, in fucceeding ages, a great idea of the prodigious ftature of a Macedonian. In niany parts of your work you fpeak inucli in commen-. dation of fcience. I join with you in every com- mendation you can give it: but you fpeak of it in fucha manner as gives room to believe, that you are a great proiicient in it; if this be the cafe, I would re-commend a problem to. your atten- tion, the folution of which you will readily allow to be far above the powers of a man converfant

• only, as you reprefent priells and bifliops to be, in /2/r, /i/^c, hoc. The problem is this — To de- termine the height to which a human body, pre- ferving its nmilarity of figure, may be augment- ed, before it will perifh by its own weight. — When you have folved this problem, we fhall know whether the bed of the king of Baian was too big for any giant j, whether the exiftence of a

man

( 45 )

man twelve or fifteen feet high is in the nature cf things impoffible. My philofophy teaches me to doubt of many things ; but it does not teach me to ieje6t every teftimony which is oppofite to my experience : had I been born in Shetland, I could, on proper teflimony, have believed in the exig- ence of the LincolnOiire ox, or of the largeft dray- Iiorfc in London ; though the oxen and horfes in Shetland had not been bigger than niaftilFs.

LETTER IV

HAVING finifhed your obje6lions to the genuinenefs of the books of Mofes, you proceed to your remarks on the book of Jofhua ; and from its internal evidence you endeavour to prove, that this book was not written by Joihua. - — What then ? what is your conclufion ? — *' that it is anonymous, and without authority." — Stop a little ; your conclufion is not conne6led with your premifes; your friend Euclid would have been afliamed of it. " Anonymous, and there- fore without authority!" I have noticed this folecifm before ; but as you frequently bring it forward, and, indeed, your book flands much in need of it, I will lubmit to your confideration another obfervation on the fubje6i:. — 1 he book called Eleta is anonymous; but it is not on that account withoyt authority. — Domefday-book ia

anonymous.

f 46 )

anonymous, and was written above feven bundled* years ago; yet our courts of law do not hold it to be without authority, as to the matters of fa£^ related in it. Yes, you will fay, but this book has been preferved with lingular care amongft the records of the nation. And who told you that the jews had no records, or that they did not pre- ferve them with fmgular care ? Jofephus fays the contrary : and, in the Bible itfelf, an appeal is madg to many books, which have perifhed; fuch as the book of Jaflier, the book of Nathan, of Abijah, of Iddo, of Jehu, of natural hiftory by Solomon, of the acts of ManaiTch, aad others which might be mentioned. If any one, having accefs to the journals of the lords and commons, to the books of the treafury, war-ofnce, privy council, and other public documents, fhould at this day write an hiftory of the reigns of George the firft and fecond, and fliouid publifh it without his name, would any man, three or four hundreds or thou- fands of years hence, queftion the authority of that book, when he knew that the whole Britifh. nation had received it as an authentic book, from the time of its firft publication to the age in which he lived ? This fuppofition is in point. The books of the Old Teftament xvere compofedfrom the re- cords of the jewifh nation, and they have been received as true by that nation, from the time in which they were written to the prefent day. Dodfley's Annual Regifter is an anonymous book ; we only know the name of its editor : the New Annual Regifter is an anonymous book ; tile Reviews are anonymous books; but do we,

or.

( 47 ) ■'C>r will our pofterlty, efteem thefe books aiTof no authority ? On the contrary, they are admitted at present, and will be received in after ages, as authoritative records of the civil, military, and literary hiftory of England and of Europe. So little foundation is there for our being flartled by your affertion, "It is anonymous and without authority.'*

If I am right in this reafoning, (and I proteft to you that 1 do not fee any error in it,) all the argu- ments you adduce in proof that the bOokof Jofhua was- not written by Jofhua, nor that of Samuel by Samuel,- arc nothing to the purpofe for which you liave brought them forward : thefe books may be books of authority, though all you advance againll the genuinenefs of them fhould be granted. No article of faith is injured by allowing that there is no fuch pofitive proof, when or by whom thefe, and fome other books of holy fcripture, were Xvritten, as to exclude all poffibility of doubt and cavil. There is no neceffity, indeed, to allow this. The chronological and hiftorical difficulties which others before you have produced, have been anfwered, and as to greateft part of them, fo well anfwered, that I will not wafle the reader's time by entering into a particular examination of them.

You make yourfelf merry with what you call the tale of the fun ftanding flill upon mount Gi- beon, and the moon in the valley of Ajalon; and you fay that *' the flory dete6ls itfelf, becaufe there is not a nation in the world that knows any thing about it." How can you expe6i; that there fhould, %vhen there is not a nation in the world whofe

annals

( 48 )

annals reach this aera by many hundred years ? It happens, however, that you are probably raifta- ken as to the fa6t : a confufed tradition concern- ing this miracle, and a fniiilar one in the time of Ahaz, when the fun went back ten degrees, has been preferved amongft one of the mofb ancient nations, as we are informed by one of the mofb ancient hiffcorians. Herodotus, in his Euterpe, fpeaking of the Egyptian priefcs, fays — " They told me that the fun had four times deviated from his courfe, having twice rifen where he uniformly goes down, and twice gone down where he uni- formly rifes. This, however, had produced no alteration in the climate of Egypt ; the fruits of the earth and the phenomena of the Nile had always been the fame." (Beloe^s Tranfl.) The laft part of this obfervation confirms the conjec- ture, that this account of the Egyptian priefts had a reference to the two miracles refpefting the fun iTjentioned in fcripture ; for they were not of that kind whicli could introduce any change in climates or leafons. You would have been contented to admit the account of this miracle as a fine piece of poetical imagery ; — you may have feen fome jewilh do6lors, and fome chriftian commentators, who confider it as fuch ; but improperly, in my opinion. I think it idle at leaft, if not impious, to undertake to explain how the miracle was per- formed ; but one who is not able to explain the mode of doing a thing, argues ill if he thence in- fers that the thing was not done. We are per- ie€t\y ignorant how the fun was formed, how the planets were projected at the creation, how they

are

( 49 ) -are llill retained in their orbits by the power of gravity ; but we admit, notwithftanding, that the i'un was formed, that tlie planets were then pro- jeiSted, and thattliey are ftill retained in their or- bits. The machine of the univerfe is in the hand of God ; he can itop the motion of any part, or of the whole of it, with lefs trouble and Icfs dan- ger of injuring it, than you can ftop your watch. In teftimony of the reality of die miracle, the author of the book fays — '* Is not this written in the book of Jafher?" — No author in his fenfes would have appealed, in proof of his veracity, to a book which did not exift, or in atteftation of a facTt which, though it did exift, was not recorded in it; wemayfafely, therefore, conclude, that, at the time the book of Jofhua was written, there was fuch a book as the book of Jafher, and that the miracle of the fun's (landing ftill was recorded in that book. But this obfervation, you will fay, does not prove the fa6l of the fun's having ftood ftill ; 1 have not produced it as a proof of that fa6l : but it proves that the author of the book of Jolhua believed the fa6l, and that the people of Ifrael admitted the authority of the book of Jailier. An appeal to a fabulous book would have been as fenfelefs an infult upon their under- ftanding, as it would have been upon our's, had Rapin appealed to the Ai abian Night's Entertain- ment, as a proof of the battle of Hafrings,

I cannot attribute much weight to your argu- ment againft the genuinenefs of the book of Jolhua, from its being faid that — '' Jofliua burn- ed Ai, and made it an heap for ever, even a defo- E lation

( 50 I

lation unto t/iis day^ Joiliua llvecl t.wenty-fotJir years after the burning of Ai ; and if he wrote iiis hillory in tlie latter part of his life, what ab- iurdity is there in faying, Ai is ftill in ruins, or Ai is in ruins to this very day ? A young man, who bad feen the heads of the rebels, in forty-five, when they were ni it ftuck upon poles at Temple-Bar, might, twenty years afterwards, in atteflation of his veracity in fpeaking of the fa61:, have juftly iaid-^And they are there to this very day. Who- ever wrote the gofpel of St. Matthew, it was writ^ ten not many centuries, probably (I had almoU: faid certainly) not a quarter of one century after the deadi of Jefus ; yet the author, fpeaking of the potter's field which had been purchafed by the chief priefts with the mioney they had given Judas to betray his mafter, fays, that it was therefore called the field of blood unt^ this day\ and in another place he fays, that the ftory of the body of Jefus being ftolen out of the fepulchre was commonly reported among the jews until this day. Mofes, in his old age, had made ufe of a fimilar expieiTion, when he put the Ifiaelites in mind of what the Lord had done to the Egyptians in the red fea : " The Lord hath deftroyed them tinto this day." (Deut. xi. 4.)

Li the laft chapter of the book of Jofhua it is related, that Jofhua afTembled all the tribes of Ifrael to Shechem ; and there, in the prefence of the elders and principal men of Ifrael, he recapitu- lated, in a Ihort fpeech, all that God had done for their nation, from the calling of Abraham to that time, when they were fettled in the land which

God

( 5' 5

God hivl promifc 1 to their forcfathei-s. In finifli- ing his fpeech, he faid to rhcm— " Chnofe you this (hy whom yoii will ICiVe,. whether the gods which yonrfafh'ers fer vcd, that were on the other lide of the flood, or d^ gods of the Amoritcs, in •wiK)fe land ye dwell : but as for me and my hoiife, we will ferve the Lard. And the people anfwered and faid, God forbid that we iliould forfake the Lord, to ferve other gods." Jolhua urged far- ther, thac God would not fufFer them to worfhip o:her gods inteliowihip with him : they anfwered, that " they wonld ferve the Lord." Jofhua then faid -to them, " Ye arc witneiTes againft your- felves that ye have rhofen you the Lord to ferve him. And they faid, We are witneiTes." Here was a foiernn covenant between Jolliua, on the part of the Lord, and all the men of Ifrael, on their own part. — The text then fays — " So Jolliua made a covenant with the people that day, and fet them a ftatute and an ordinance in Shechem, and JoJJiua vjrote thefe words In the book of the Law of God.'''' Here is a proof of two things — iirfl:, that there was then, a few years after the death of Mofes, exifting a book called The Book of the Law of God ; the fame, without doubt, which Mofes had wTitten, and committed to the cuftody of the Levites, that it might be kept in the ark of the covenant of the Lord, that it might be a witnefs againft them — fecondly, that Joihua wrote a part at leaft of his own tranfa<rtions iu tbat very book, as an addition to it. It is horu proof that he wrote all his own tranfa£tions in any book; but I fubmit entirely to the judgment of

every

( 52 ) every candid man^ whether this proof of his hav- ing recorded a very material tranfa£lion, does not make it probable that he recorded other material tranfa6rions ; that he wrote the chief part of the book of Jofbua ; and that fuch things as happened after his death, have been inferted in it by others, in order to render the hiftory more coinplete.

The book of Jofhua, chap. vi. ver. 26, is quoted in the firft book of Kings, chap. xvi. ven 44. '• In his.<Ahab\s) days did Hiel the Bethelite imild Jericho : he laid the foundation thereof in Abiram his firfl-born, and fet up the gates thereof jn his vouogefi- fon Segub, according to the word of the Lord, whicli he fpake by Jofhua the fon of Nun/' Here is a proof that the book of Joihua is older tlian tlie hift book of Kings: but diat is not all which may reafooably be inferred, I da not fay proved, from this quotation. — It may be infeired froiii the j/hrafe — according to the word of the Lord wIiTch.lie fpake by Jofhua the fon of Nun — tljat Jofhua vjrete do%vn the wcrd which the Lord had fpoken. In Baruch (which, though an apochryphal book, is authority for this purpofe) there is a fimilar phrafe — as thou fpakeft by thy fervant Mofes in the day when diou didfl: com- rna*id him to vjr'u.e thy. law.

i think it unneceffary to make any obfei vation on what you fay relative to the book of Jugdes ; but I cannot pais unnoticed your cenfure ot the book of Pvuth, which you call " an idle bungling ftory, fooliflily told, no body knows by whom, about a flrolling country girl creeping flily to bed to her couhn Boazj pretty ftuff, indeed," you

exclaim^

( 53 ) exclaim, '' to be called the Word of God!'' — It feeins to me that you do not perfe6lly compre- hend what is meant by the expreflion — the Word of God — or the divine authority of the fcriptures : — I will explain it to you in the words of Dn Law, late bidiop of Carlille, and in thofe of St. Auftin. My firfl: quotation is from bifliop Law's Theory of Religion, a book not mukferving your notice. — " The true fenfe, then, of the divine au^ t/iority o{ ihe books of the Old Teftament, and which perhaps is enough to denominate them in general divinely infpired. feems to be this ; that as in thofe times God has all along, beiide tfie in- fpe6i:ion, or fupei'in tendency of Kis general provi- dence, interfered upon particular occafionf;, by giving exprefs commiilions to fome perfons (thence called prophets) to declare his will in various manners, and degrees cf evidence, as beft fuited ^-\t occafion, time, and nature of the fubje6l ; and in all other cafes left them wholly to themfelves: in like manner, he has interpofed his more imme- diate affiftance, and notified it to them, as they did -to the world, in the recording of thefe reve- lations; fo far as that v/as neceifary, amldil: th^ common. (but from hence termed /^rr^^^ hi ilory of thofe times; and mixed with various other oc- currences; in which the hiitorian's own natorai: qualifications were fufficient to enable him to re- late things with all the accuracy they required." The paiTage from St. Auftin is this — " i am of opinion, that thofe men to whoTi the,Holy Ghofl revealed what ought to be received as authoritative in.religion, might write fome tilings as men with-

E 2 hiflorical

( 54 ;)

hiflorical diligence, and odier things as prophets by divine infpiration ^ and that thefe things are fo diftindt, that the former may be attributed to them- felves as contributing to the increafe of know- ledge, and the latter to God fpeaking by them things appertaining to the authority of religion." ■ — Whether this opinion be right or wrong, I do not here inquire ; it is the opinion of many learned men and good chriftians : and, if you will adopt it as your opinion, you will fee caufe, perhaps, to become a chriftian yourfelf ; you will fee caufe to confider chronological, geographical, or ge- nealogical errors — apparent miftakes, or real con- tradiflions as to hiflorical fa6ls — neediefs repe- titions and trifling interpolations — indeed, you will fee caufe to confider all the principal objecSlions of your book to be abfolutely without foundationo Receive but the Bible as compofed by upright and well informed, though, in fome points, fallible men, (for 1 exclude all fallibility when they profefs to deliver the Word of God,) and you muft re- ceive it as a book revealing to you, in many parts, the cxpiefs will of God ; and in other parts, re- lating to you the ordinary hiflory of the times. Give but the authors of the Bible that credit which you give to other hiftoriaiis; believe them to de- liver the Word of God, when they tell you that they do fo ; believe, when they relate other things as of tbemfelves and not of the Lord, that they wrote to the befl: of their knowledge and capacity, raid you will be in your belief fomething very dif- ferent from a deift : you may not be allowed to jifpire to the character of an ordiodox believer,,

but

( 55 )

but you will not he an unbeliever In the divine autliority of the Bible; though you flioukl admit human ml flakes and human opinions to exift in fo:ne parts of it. This I take to be the fnft flep towards the removal of the doubts of many fcep- tical men; and when they are advanced thus far, the grace of God, aflifting a teachable difpofjtion, and a pious intention, may carry them on to per- fevStlon.

As to Ruth, you do an injury to her chara6l:er. She was not a ftrolling councry girl. She had been married ten years; and being left a widow without children, ihe accompanied her mother- in-law, returning into her native country, out of which, with herhufband and her t'wo fons, fhehad been driven by a famine. The difturbances in France have driven many men with their families to America: if, ten years hence, a woman, nav- Uig lofl: her hufband and her children, fhould re- turn to France with a daughter-in-law, would you be juftified in calling the daughter-in-law a flrol- ling country girl? — But fhe " crept fliiy to bed to her couun Boaz."— I do not find it fo in the hiftory — as a perfon imploring protection, fhe laid herfelf down at the foot of an aged kinfman's bed, and {he rofe up with as much innocence as file had laid herfelf down. She was afterwards married to Boaz, and reputed by all her neighbours a virtuous woman ; and they were more likely to know her charaCter than you are. Whoever reads the book of Ruth, bearing in mind the lim- pliclty of ancient manners, will find it an intereft- . ing flory of a poor young woman, following in

a ilrange

( 56 )

a flrange land the advice, and affe6Honately at- taching berfelf to the fortunes of the mother of her deceafed hufband.

The two books of Samuel come next under your review. You proceed to fliew that thefe books were not written by Samuel, that tliey are anonymous, and thence you conclude without authority. I need not here repeat what I have faid upon the fallacy of your conclufion; and as to your proving that the books were not written by Samueij you might have fpared yourfelf fom.e trouble if you had recolledied, that it is generally admitted, that Samuel did not write any part of the fecond book which bears his name, and only a: part of the firfl:. It would, indeed, have been an inquiry not undefervingyour notice, in many parts of your work, to have examined what was the opinion of learned men refpeiting the authors of the feveral books of the Bible ; you would have found, that you were in many places fighting a phantom of your own raifmg; and proving what, was generally admitted. Very little certainty, I think, can at this time be obtained on this fr.bje61: ; but that you may have fome knowledge of what: lias been conjedlured by men of judgment, I will quote to you a paiFage from Dr. Hartley's obfer- vations on man. The author himfslf does not vouch for the truth of his obfervation, for he begins it with a fuppohtion. — " I fuppofe then, that the. Pentateuch conhils of the writings oi Mofes^ put together by Samuel, widi a very few additions; that the books of Jojliiia and Judges were, in like fanner, coiieded by him j and the book of Ruth,

with

( 5-7 ) with the firft part of the tiril: book of Samuel, written by him; that the latter part of the firll: book of Samuel, and thefecond book, were writ- ten by the prophets who fucceeded Samuel, fup- pofe Nathan and Gad\ that the books of Kings and Chronicles are extradls from tlie records of the fuccecding prophets, concerning their own times, and from the public genealogical tables, made by Ezra \ that the books of Ezra and Ne- liemiah are collections of like records, fome writ- ten by Ezra and Neheniiah^ and fom.e by their predeceffors ; that the book of Efther w^as written by fome eminent jew, in or near the times of the tranfadf ion there recorded, perhaps Mordeca'i \ the book of Job by a jew, of an uncertain time ; the Pfalms by David, and other pious perfons; the books of Proverbs and Canticles by Solomon ; the book of Ecclefiaftes by Solomon, or perhaps by a jew of later times, fpeaking in his perfon, but not with an intention to make him pafs for the author ; the prophecies by the prophets whofe names they bear ; and the books of the New Teftament by the perfons to whom they are ufually afcribed." — I have produced diis paffage to you not merely to fliew you that, in a great part of your work, you are attacking what no perfon is interefted in de- fending ; but to convince you, that a wife and good man, and a firm believer in revealed religion, for fuch was Dr. Hartley, and noprieft, did not reje6l the anonymous books of the Old Teflament as books without authority. I fhall not trouble either you or myfelf with any more obfervations on that head ; you may afcribe the two books of Kings^

and

( S8 )

and the two books of Chronicles, to what authors you pleafe ; 1 am i'atisfied with knowing that the annals of the jevviih nation were written in tiie time of Samuel, and, probably, in ali fucceeding times, by mcii of ability, who lived in or near the times of which they write. Of the truth of this obfervation we have abundant proof, not only from the reftimony of Jofephus, and of the writers of the Tcilmuds, but from the OldTeftament itfelf, I will content myfelf with citing a few places — " Now the a6ls of David the king, iirfi: and lafb, behold they are written in the book of Samuel the feer, and in the book of Nathan the prophet, and in the book of Gad the feer." i Chron* xxix. 29. " Now the reft of the a6ls of Solomon, firft and laft, are they not written in the book of Nathan the prophet, and in the prophecy of Ahijah the Shilonite, and in the viiions of Iddo the feer?** 2 Chron. ix. 29. — " Now the a6ts of Rehoboara, fin1: and hi\, ^re they not written in the book of Shemaiah the prophet, and of Iddo the feer, con- cerning genealogies r" 2 Chron. xii. 15. — " Now the reft of the a£is of Jehofhaphat, firft and laft, behold they are written in the book of Jehu the fon of Hanani." 2 Chron. xx. 34. Isitpoftlble tor writers to give a ftronger evidence of their ve- racity, than by referring their readers to the books from wTJch they had extradled the materials of their hiftory ?

" The two books of Kings," you fay, '' are little more than an hiftory of aftailinatlons, treach- ery, and war." That the kings of Ifraei and Judah were many of them very wicked perfons,;

is-^

( 59 5

3S evident from the hiflory wblcli Is given of them in the Bible; but it ought to be remeiiiberecl, that their wickednefs is not to be attributed to their religion ; nor were the people of Ifrael chofen t©^ be the people of God, on a»t:count of their wick- ednefs ; nor was their being chofen, a caufe of it. One may wonder, indeed, that, having experi- =€nced fo many nngU'lar marks of God's goodnefs towards their nation, they did not at once become, and continue to be, (v^hat, however, they have long been,) ftrenuous advocates for the worfhip of one only God, the maker of heaven and earth. This was the purpofe for which they were chofen, and this purpofe has been accompli flied. For above three and twenty hundred years the jews have uniformly wituelTed to all the nations of the earth the unity of God, and his abomination of idolatry. But as you look upon " the appellation of the jews being God's chofen people as a lie yvhich the priefts and leaders of the jews had in- vented to cover the bafenefs of their own charac- ters, and which chriflian priefts, fometimes as cor- rupt, and often as cruel, have profefTed to believe," I will plainly ftate to you the reafons which in- duce me to believe that it is no lie^ and I hope they will be fuch reafons as you will not attribute either to cruelty or coiTuption.

'To any one contemplating the univerfality of •things, and the fabric of nature, this globe of earth, with the men dwelling on its furface, will not ap- pear (exclufive of the divinity of their fouls) of more importance than an hillock of ants ; all of which, fome with corn, fome with eggs, fome

without

( 6o )

-^without any thing, run hither and thither, buftling about a little heap of duft. — This is a thought of the immortal Bacon ; and it is admirably fitted to humble the pride of philofophy, attempting to pre- fcribe forms to the proceedings, and bounds to the attributes of God. We may as eafily circumfcribe infinity, .as penetrate the fecret purpofes of the Almighty. There are but two ways by which I can acquire any knowledge of the nature of the Supreme Being, — by reafon, and by revelation ; to you, who reje6l revelation, there is but one. Now, my reafon informs me, that God has made a great difference between the kinds of animals, with refpecSl to their capacity of enjoying happi- nefs. Every kind is perfect in its order ; but if we compare different kinds together, one will ap- pear to be greatly fuperior to another. An ani- mal, which has but one fenfe, has but one fource of happinefs; but if it be fupplied with what is fuited to that fenfe, it enjoys all the happinefs of which it is capable, and is in its nature perfe6l. Other forts of animals, which have two or three fenfes, and which have alfo abandant means of gratifying them, enjoy twice or thrice as much happinefs as thofe do which have but one. In 'the fame fort of animals there is a great difference amongft individuals, one having the fenfes more perfecS, and the body lefs fubjecf^ to difeafe, than another. Hence, if I were to form a judgment of the divine goodnefs by this ufe of my reafon, I -could not but fay that it was partial and unequal, . — " What ihall we fay then? is God unjuft? God forbid!" His goodnefs may be unequal,

without

( 6i )

iVith6iit being impcrfe6i: ; it mufl be eftlmated from the whole, and not from a part. Every order of beings is fo fufficient for its own happinefs, and fo conducive, at the feime time, to the happinefs of every orher, that in one view it feems to be made for itfelf alone, and in another not for itfelf, but for every other. Could we comprehend the whole of die immenfe fabric which God hath formed, I am perfuaded that we fhould fee nothing but per- fection, harmony, and beauty, in every part of it ; but whilft we difpute about parts, we neglect the whole, and difcern nothing but fuppofed ano- malies and defeils. The maker of a watch, or the builder of a fhip, is not to be blamed becaufe a fpe(3:ator cannot difcover either the beauty or •the ufe of disjointed parts. And fliall \vedare to accufe God of injuflice, for not having diftributed the gifts of nature in the fa'^ae degree to all kinds of animals, when it is probable that this very in- tiqualicy of diiliribution may be the mean of pro- ducing the greateft lum total of happinefs to the whole fyftem. ? In exactly the fame manner may we reafon concerning the a6ls of God's efpecial providence, if we confider any one a6l, fuch as that of appointing the jews to be his peculiar peo- ple, as unconnected with every other, it may ap- pear to be a partial difpiay of his goodnefs; it may excite doubts concerning the wifdom or the be- nignity of his divine nature. But if we conned the hiftory of the jews with that of other nations, from the moil: i emote antiquity to the prefent time, we fhall difcover diat they were not chofen fo much for their own benefit, "or on account of their F own

( 62 )

©wn merit, as for the general benefit of mankind. To the Egyptians, Chaldeans, Grecians, Ro- mans, to all the people of the earth, they were formerly, and they are ftill to all civilized nations, a beacon fet upon an hill, to warn them from ido- latry, to light them to the fanduary of a God, holy, juft, and good. Why ihould we fufpea fuch a difpenfation of being a lie P when even from the little which we can underftand of It, we fee that it is founded in wifdom, carried on for the general good, and analogous to all that reafoii teaches ws concerning the nature of God.

Several things, you obferve, are mentioned in the book of the Kings, fuch as the drying up of Jeroboam's hand,theafcent of Elijah into heaven, the deilrndion of the children who mocked Elifha, and the refurretSlion of a dead man : — thefeclrcum- ftances being mentioned In the book of Kings, and not mentioned In that of Chronicles, Is a proof to you that they are lies. I efteem It a very errone- ous mode of reafoning, which, from the lUence of one author concerning a particular circumftance, infers the want of veracity in another who men- tions it. And this obfervatlon Is ftlll more cogent, when applied to a book which is only a fupple- ment to, or an abridgment of, other books : and under this defcriptlon the book of Chronicles has been confidered by all writers. But though you will not believe the miracle of the drying up of Jeroboam's hand, what can you fay to the pro- phecy which was then delivered concerning the future deftruaion of the Idolatrous alter of Jero- boam? The prophecy is thus written, i Kings

xiii.

( 63 )

;^j|;^ 2. — " Btholtl, a cliild (hall be born unto the houfe of David, Joliah by name, an:] upon thee {ihe altar) ihall he offer the priefts of the high places." — Here is a clear prophecy; the name, family, and office of a particular perfon are de- Ccribed in the year 975 (according to the Bible chronology) before Chrift. Above 350 years after die delivery of the prophecy, you will find, by confulting the fecond book of Kings, (chap, xxiii. 15, 16?) this prophecy fulfilled in all its parts.

You make a calculation that Genefis was not written till 800 years after Mofes, and that it is of the famx age, and you may probably think of the fame authority, as ^fop's Fables. You give, what you call the evidence of this, the air of a demonftration — " It has but two ilages: — iirfl, the account of the kings of Edom, mentioned in Genefis, is taken from Chronicles, and therefore the book of Genefis was written after the book of Chronicles : — fecondiy, the book of Chroni- cles was not begun to be written till after Zede- kiah, in whofe time Nebuchadnezzar conquered' Jerufalem, 588 years before Chrift, and more than 860 after Mofes." — Having anfwercd this objedtion before, I might be excufed taking any more notice of it; but as you build much, in this place, upon the ftrength of your argument, I will fhew you Its weaknefs, when it is properly ftated. — A jfeui^ verfes In the book of Genelis could not be written by Mofes ; therefore no part of' Genefis could be written by Mofes: — a child would deny your therefore, — Again, a few vcrfes

( 64 )

in the book of Genefis could not be written b^ by Mofes^ becaufe they fpeak of kings of Ifrael,. there having been no kings of Ifrael in the time of Mofes ; arici therefore they could not be written by Samuely or by Solomcn^ or by any other per- fon who lived after there were kings in Krael,^ except by the author of the book of Chronicles : — this is alfo an illegitimate inference from your poiition. — Again, a few verfes in the book of Geaeiis are, word for word, the fame as a few verfes in the book of Chronicles ; therefore the author of the book of Genefis mufl: have taken them from Chronicles: — another lame conclu- fionl Why might not the author of the book of Chronicles have taken them from Gcnefis, as he has taken many o;her genealogies, fuppofmg them to have been inferted in Genefis by Samuel f But where, you m.ay afk, could Samuel, or any other perfon, have found the account of the kings ©f Edom? Probably, in the public records of the nation, which were certainly as open for infpec^ tion to Samuel, and the other pr(^phets, as they were to the author of Ciironicles. I hold it ri lefs to employ more time on the fubjed.

■icecU

LETTER

( 65 )

LETTER V.

AT length you come to two books, Ezra- and Nehemiah, which you allow to be ge- nuine books, giving an account of the return of the jews from the Babylonian captivity, about 536 years before Chrift;. but then you fay, " Thofe accounts are nothing to us, nor to any other per- fons, unlefs it be to the jews, as a part of the hiflory of their nation; andtliere isjuft as much of the Word of God in thofe books, as there is in any of the hiftories of France, or in Rapin's Hiflory of England." Here let us ftop a m.oment to try if, from your own conceffion-s^ it be not poffibie to confute your argunnent. Ezra and Nehemiah, you grant, are genuine books — " but they are nothing to us!" The very. firfi; verfe of Ezra fays the prophecy of Jeremiah -was- fulfilled: — is it nothing to us to know^ that Jeremkh was a true prophet ? - Do but grant that the SupreiPie Being communicated to any of the fons of men a know- ledge of future events, fo that their pr-edi(fl:ions were plainly verified, and you will find little dif- ficulty in admitting the truth of revealed religion. Is it nothing to us to know that, five hundred and tiiirty-fix years befoi'e Chrift, the books of Chro« HJcles, Kin:!;s, Judj;es, Joshua, Deuteronomy, Numbers, Leviticus, Exodus, Genefis, every book the authority of whica you have attackedy F. 2 . are-.

I 66 y

are all referred to by Ezra and Nehemiah, as au- thentic books, containing thehiftory of the Ifrael- itiOi nation from Abraham to that very time? — ■ Is it nothing to us to know that" the hiftory of the }ews is true? — It is every thing to us ; for if that hiftory be not true, chriftianity muil: be falfe. The jews are the root, we are branches *' grafted in amongftthem ;" to them pertain ''the adoption, and the glory, and the covenants, and the giving of the law, and the fervice of God, and the pro- mifes ; Vvdiofe are the fathers, and of whom, as concerning the RePa, Chrift came, who is over ail, God bleffed for ever. Am.en."

The hiflrory of the Old Teflament has, without doubr, fome difficulties in it; but a minute philo- fopher, whobufics himfelf infearchingthem out, whilil; he negledis to contemplate the harmony of all its parts, uhe wifdom and goodnefs of Goddif- played throughout the v/hole, appears to me to be-, like a purblind man, Vv-ho, in Purveying a picture, objects to the (implicity of the defign, and the beau- ty of the execution, from the afperities he has dif- covered in the canvafs and the colouring. The; Tiitlory of the Old Teflament, notwithftanding the real difficulties which occur in it, notwith- {landing the fcoiFs and cavils of unbelievers, ap- pears to me to have fuch internal evidences of its^ truth, to be fo corroborated by the moft ancient profane hi ft cries, fo confirmed by the prefent cir- cumftances of the world, that if I were not a chrif- tian, I would become a jew. You think this hif- tory to be a collection of lies, contradiilions, biafpheiiiies : I look upon it to be the oldeft, tho'

trudl:,

( 67 )

trueft, the mofl comprehenfive, and the mofl: Im- portant hlltory in the world. I (ionfider it ag giving more iatisfa6lory proofs of the being and attributes of God, of the origin and end of human kind, than ever were attained by the deepelt re- fearches of the moil: enlightened "^hiloioplierso The exercife of our reafon, in theinvefcigation of truths refpe(5ting the nature of God, and the future. expe6tations of human kind, is highly ufeful; but I hope I (hall be pardoned by the metaphyficians, in faying, that the chief utility of fuch difquifitions confifls in this — that they bring us acquainted with the weaknefs of our intel]e6lual faculties. I do not piefurae to meafure other men by my ftandard ; you may have clearer notions than I am able to form of the infinity of fpace; of the eter- nity of duration; of neceffary cxiftence; of the conne6lion between neceflary exigence and intel- ligence, between intelligence and benevolence:; you may fee nothing in the uniyerfe but organized matter ; or, rejedting a material, you may fee no- thing but an ideal world. "With a mind weary of conje6^ure, fatigued by doubt, fick of difputa- tion, eager for knowledge, anxious for certain- ty, and unable to attain it by the beft ufe of my reafon in matters of the utmoA importance, I have long ago turned my thoughts to an im.partial ex- amination of the proofs on which revealed religiotir 15 grounded, and 1 am convinced of its truth. |This exam nation is a fubjecf: w^ithin the reach of human capacity; you have come to one conclu- lion relpedting it, I have comiC to another; both, of us cannot be right; may God forgive him that- is in an error i

Yob

( 68 )

. You ridicule, in a note, the ftory of an angel appearing to Jofhua. Your mirth you will per- ceive to 136 milplaced, when you confitler the de- fjgn of this appearance; it was to alTure Joihua, that the fame God who had appeared to Mofes, o.rdejing him to pull off his fhoes, hccaufe he flood; on holy ground, had now appeared to :hi.Enfelf. Was this no encouragement to. a man who was. about to engage in war with many nations r Had, it no tendency to confirm his faith? Was it no l^flTon to him to obey, in all thincrs, the commands, of Godj and, to give the ejory ot his conquefts to, the author of them, the God of Abraham, Ifaac,- and Jacob? As to your wit about pulling off the ilioe, it originates, I, think, in your ignorance ; you ought to have -known, that tliis rite was an indi- cation of reyer-ence for the divine prefence ; and that the cuilom of entering barefoot into their, temples fubfi its, in fome countries, to tins day.

You allow, the book of Ezra to be a genuine, b.ook: but that ths author of it may not efcape^ vyithout a blo-i-v, you fay,. that in matters of record it is not to be depended on ; and as a proof of your affertion, you tell us that the total amount of the numbers. who returned from Babylon does not, correfpond with the particulars ; and that every, Ciiild may have an argument for its infidelity, you djfplay the particulars, and ihew your own. fkill in arithmetic, by fumming them up. And can yjou fuppofe that Ezra, a man of great learning, a knew ib little of fcience, fo little of tlie lowelt- branch of fcience, tint he could not give his readers,; tl^e fqm total of llxty particular Cums? You,

know, ,

( h )

know, undoubtedly, that the Hebrew letters de- noted alio numbers; and that there was fuch a c;reat fuBilaricy between fome of thefe letters, that It was extremely eaiy for a tranfcriber of a manu-' feript to midake a n for a :d (or 2 for 20), a 1 for a i- (or 3 ibr 50), a 1 for a ") (or 4 for 200). Now what have we to do with numerical con- tradi6iions in the Bible, but to atrrihute tliem, wherever they occur, to this obvious fourcc of error-— the inattention of the tranfcriber in writing one letter for another that was like it?

I ihould e3<tend thefe letters to a length tiou- blefome to the reader, to you, and to rnyfeU, if I anfwered minutely every objedtion you have mad-i, and rectified every error into which yon have fallen ;- it may be fufficient 'briefly to notice fome o.f the chief. The chara6ier reprefented in Job under the name of Satan is, you fay, " the iirfl; and the only time this name is mentioned in the Bible." Now I find this name, as denoting an enemy, frequently occurring in the Old Tef- tament;- thus 2 Sam. xix, 22. " V/hat have I. to do with you, ye fons of Zeruiah, that ye fhould this day be.adverfaries unto me?" In the origi- nal it is fatans unto me. Again, i Kings v. 4. " I'he Lord my God hath given me reft on every fide, fo that diere is neither adverfary, nor evil oc- current" — in the original, neither fatan nor evil. I need not mention other places ; thefe are fuf- licient to fhew, that the word fatan, denoting aa adverfary, does occur in various places of the 014 leftament; and it is extremely probable to me, Uiat the root fatan was introduced into the He-

brevY

( 7° )

brew and other eafleni languages, to denote an adverfary, from its having been the proper name- of the great enemy of mankind. I know it is an- opinion of Voltaire, that the word fatan is not older than the Babylonian captivity : this is a miOake, for it is met with in the hundred and ninth pfalmj which all allow to have been Vv-ritten by David, long before the captivity. Now we are-upon this fabjedl, permit me to recommend to your confi- deracion the univerfality of the doclrine concern- ing an evil being, wlio, in the beginning of time, had oppofed hinifelf, who ftill continues to oppofc hirafelf, ta the fupreme fource of all good. Amongfl: all nations, in all ages, this opinion pre- vailed, that human affairs were fubje6t to the wilt of the gods, and regulated by their interpofjtion. Hence has been derived whatever we have read- of the wandering ftars of the Chaldeans, two of them beneficient, and two malignant — hence the Egptian Typho and Ofirh — the Perfian Arima- n'lus a.'>\<\ Oromafdes — the Grecian ccleftial and- Infernal Jove — the Brama and the Zupay- of the Indians, Peruvians, Mexicans — the good ana evil principle, by whatever names they may be called, of ail other barbarous nations — and hence the flrudture of the whole book of Job, in whatever light, of hiftory or drama, it be confi- dered. Now, does it not appear reafonable to fup«- pofe, that an opinion fo ancient and fo univerlal has arifen from tradition concerning the fail of our firfl: parents ; disfigured indeed, and obfcured, as all traditions muft be, by many fabulous addi- tions*

The

( 7' )

Tfie jews, you tell us, " never prayed but when •tliey were in trouble." 1 do not believe this of the jews; but that they prayed more fervently when they were in trouble than at other times, may be true of the jews, and 1 apprehend is true of all nations and all individuals. — But " the jews never prayed for any thing but victory, vengeance, and riches." — Read Solomon's prayer at che dedi- cation of the temple, and bluili for your aflertion, — illiberal and uncharitable in the extreme !

It appears, you obferve, "to have been the cuftom of the heathens to perfonify both virtue and vice, by fratues and images, as is done now-a-days both by ftatuary and by painting ; but it does not follow from this, that they worfhipped them any more than we do." Not worfhipped them! What think you of the golden image which Ne- buchadnezzar fct up? Was it not wor/hipped by the princes, the rulers, the judges, the people, the nations, and the languages of the Babylonian empire? Not worihipped them ! What think you of the decree of the Roman fonate for fetch- ing the ilatue of the mother of the gods fromPef- iinum ? Was it only that they might admire it as a piece of workmanihip ? Not wor (hipped them ! •'■' What man is there that knoweth not; how that the city of the Ephefians was a woriliipper of .the great goddefs Diana, and of the image which fell down from Jupiter ?^' Not worfhipped them I — The wonliip was univerfal. " Every nation made gods of their own, and put them in the houfes of the high places, which the Samaritans had made — the men of Babylon made Succoth-benoth,

and

( 1^ )

an^ the ''^r^ c'' Gutlii-nadeNergal, and the men of HaiTii. 1 . , r Auiima, and the Avites made Nib- haz ?'':\ :. .. :?.k, and the Sepharvites burned their children in lire to Adrammelech, and Anamme- iech, the gods ot Sepharvaim." (2 Kings, chap, xvii.) The heath-ens are much indebted to you for this your c:urious apology for their idolatry ; for a m.ode of woriliip the mo ft cruel, fenfelefs, impure, abominable, that can polliblydifgrace the facu :ties of the human mind. Had this your con* ceil occured in ancient times, it might have faved ATica}i\ teraphims^ the golden calves of Jero- boam^ and of Aaron^ and quite fuperieded the lieceffitv of the fecond commandment ! ! ! ' Hea- then morality has had its advocates before you ; the facetious gentleman who pulled off his hat to the ftatue of Jupiter, that he might have a friend when heathen idolatry fliould again be in repute, feemis to have had feme foundation for his impro- per humour, fome knowledge that certain men, efleeming themielves great philofophers, had en- tered into a confpiracy to aboliih chriflianity, fome forefight of the confequences which will certainly attend their iuccefs.

It is an error, you fay, to call the Pfalms^ — the Pfaims of David. — 'This error was obferved by St. Jerome, many hundred years before you w^ere born: his words are — ^' We know that they are in an error wdio attribute all die Pfahns to David." You, I fuppofe, will not deny, that David wrote fome of them. Songs are of various forts ; we have hunting fongvS, drinking fongs, fighting fongs, iove foiigs, fooiifh, wanton, wicked fongs :— if

you

( 73 ) you will have the '* Pfalms of David to be nothing hut a colle6lion from difFerent fong- writers," you muft allow that the writers of them were infpired by no ordinary fpirlt; that it is a colle6tion, in- capable of being degraded by the name you give it ; that it greatly excels every other colle6lion in matter and in manner. Compare the book of Pfalms with the odes of Horace or Anacreon, with the hymns of Callimachus, the golden verfes of Pythagoras, the chorulTes of the Greek tragedi- ans, (no contemptible compofitions any of thefe,) and you will quickly fee how greatly it furpafTes them all, in piety of fentiment, in fublimity of expreflion, in purity of morality, and in rational theology.

As you efteem the Pfalms of David a fong book, it is conl-lftent enough in vou to efteem the Proverbs of Solomon a jell: book ; there have not come down to us above eight hundred of his jefts; if we had the whole three thoufand, which; he wrote, our mirth would be extreme* Let us' open the book, and fee what kind of jelts it cf6nt&^- take the very firft as a fpecim.en — " The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge ; but fools defpife wifdom and infl:ru6lion." — Do you per- ceive any jell: in this? The fear of the Lord! What Lord does Solomon mean ? He means that Lord who took the pofterity of Abraham to he his peculiar people — Vv'ho redeerti^d -thaf people from Egyptian bondage by a miraculous interpo- fition of his power— who gave the law to Mofes-— who commanded the Ifraelites to exterminate tl;ie nations of Canaan.— Now this Loid you will G not

( 74 )

iiot fear ; tlie jeft fays, you dcfpife wifdom and infi:ru£lion. — Let us try again — *' My foil, hear the inftruftion of thy father, and forfake not the law of thy mother," — If your heart has been ever touched by parental feelings, you will fee no jell: in this. — Once more — '* My fon, if fnmers en- tice thee, confent thou not."- — Thefe are the three £rft proverbs in Solomon's "jeft book;" if you read it through, it may not make you merry ; I hope it will make you wife ; that it will teach you, at leaft, the beginning of wifdom — the fear of that Lord whom Solomon feared. Solomon^ you tell us, was witty ; jefters are fometimes wit- ty; but though all the world, from the time of the queen of Sheba, has heard of the wifdom of Solomon, his wit was never heard of before. There is a great difference, Mr. Locke teaches us, between wit and judgment, and there is a greater between Vv'it and wifdom. .Solomon *' was wifer than Ethan the Ezahite, and Heman, and Chalcol, and Darda, the fons of Mahol."-— Thefe men you may think w^ere jefters ; and fo may you call the feven wife men of Greece : but you will never convince the world that Solomon, who was wifer than them all, .was nothing but a witty jefter. As to the fins and debaucheries of Solomon, we have nothing to dp .with them but to avoid them ; and to give full credit to his ex- perience, when he preaches to us his admirable iermon on the vanity of every thing but piety and virtue.

Ifaiah has a greater fliare of your abufe than ^ny other writer in the Old Teftament, and the

reafon

( 75 ) feafoii of it is obvious — the prophecies of Ifaiah have received fuch a fuil and circumilantial com- pletion, that, urdefs you can peifuade yourfelf to confider the whole book (a few hiftoricai fketches excepted) > " as one continued bombailical rant, full of extriivagant metaphor, without applica- tion; and deilitute of meaning," you muft of ne- ceflity allow its divine authority. You compare the burden of Babylon, the burden of Moab, the burden of Damafcus, and the other denunciations of the prophet againft cities and kingdoms, to " the flory of the knight of the burning moun- tain, the ftory of Cinderella, &c." 1 may have read thefe ftories, but I remember nothing of the fubje6ls of them ; I have read alfo Ifaiah's burden of Babylon, and I have compared it with the pafl: andprefent ftate of Babylon, and thecomparifou has made fuch an impreffion on my mind, that it will never be effaced from my memory. 1 Ihali never ceafe to believe that the Eternal alone, by whom things future are more diftindly known than pad or prefent things are by man, that the eter- nal God alone could have didfated to the prophet Ifaiah the fubje6l of the burden of Babylon.

The latter part of the forty- fourth, and the be- ginning of the forty-fifth chapter of Ifaiah, are, in your opinion, fo far from being written by Ifaiah, that they could only have been written by fome perfon who lived atleaft an hundred andfiiiy years after Ifaiah was dead : — thefe chapters, yoa go on, " are a compliment to Cyrus, who per- mitted the jews to return to Jerufalem from the Babylonian captivity above one hundred ar^d fifty

years

( 76 ^

years after the death of Ifaiah:" — -and is it for this, fir, that you accufe the church of audacity and tlie priefts of ignorance, in impofing, as you call it, this book upon the world as the writing of Ifaiaii? What iliali be faid of you, who, either defigDcdly or ignorantly, reprefent one of the msfl: clear and important prophecies in the Bible, as an. hiilorical coiriplimenr, written above an hundred and fifty years after the death of the prophet ? — We contend, fir, that this is a prophecy, and not an hiftory ; that God called Cyrus by his name ; 'a red that he fhould coiKiijer Babylon ; and

ciec

defcribed the m.eans by which he fhould do it, a- bove an hundred years before Cyrus w^as born, and when there was no probability of fuch an event* Pcrphyry could not refift the evidence of DanieTs prophecies, but by faying, that they were forged after the events predided had taken place ; Fol^ taife could not refift the evidence of the predi6lioa of Jcfus, concerning the deftru6lion of Jerufa- lem, but by fayuig, that the account was written after JeFufalem had been deftroyed; and you, at length J (though, for aught I know, you may have liad piedeceifors in this prefumption,) unable to refiiL the evidence of Ifaiah's prophecies, contend that they are bornbafticai rant, without applica- tion, though the application is circumftantial; and deftitute of meaning, though the meaning is fo. obvious that it cannot be miftaken ; and tliat one of the mod: remarkable of them is not a prophecy, but an hiftorJcal compliment written after the event. We will not, fir, give up Daniel and St. Matthe.vv to the impudent alTeitions of Porphyr)?

and

( 77 ) and Voltaire, nor will we give up Kaiah to your afFertion. Proof, proof is what we require, and not aflertion : we will not relinquifh our religion, in obedience to your abufive affertion refpedting the propliets of God. That the wonderful ab- furdity of this hypothecs may be more obvious to you, I beg you to confider that Cyrus was a Perlian, had been brought up in the religion of his country, and was probably addi6ted to the magian fuperftition of two independent Beings, equal in power but different in principle, one the author of light and of all good, the other the au- thor of darknefs and all eviL Now, is it probable that a captive jew, meaning to compliment the greateft prince in the world, fhould be fo ilupid as to tell the prince that his religion was a lie? *' I am the Lord, and there is none elfe, I form the light and create darknefs, I make peace and: create evil, Ithe Lord do all thefe things."

But if you will perfevere in believing that the prophecy xoncerning Cyrus v/as written after the event, perufe . the burden of' Babylon \ was that alfo written . after the event ? Were the Medes then ftirred up againft Babylon ? Was Babylon, the glory of the kingdoms, the beauty of the Chal- dees,, ^/^^» overthrown, and become as Sodom 3;nd Gomorrah? Was it ///^w uninhabited? Was it^then neither ht for the Arabian's tent nor the fhepherd's fold ? Did the wild beafcs of the defert then lie there ? . Did the wild beafts of the iflands then cry in their defolate houfes, and dragons in their pleafant palaces ? Were Nebuchadnezzar- ?md Belihazzar, the fon and the. graiidfon, then G 2. cut

{ 78 r

cut off? Was Babylon then become a poflefTioa of the bittern, and pools of* water ? Was it then fwept with the befom of deftrudlion, fo fwept that the world knows not now where to find it?

I am unwilling to attribute bad defigns, delibe- rate wickednefs, to you, or to any man ; I cannot avoid believing, that you think you have truth on your fide, and that you are doing fervice to man- kind in endeavouring to root out what you efleem fuperftition. What I blame you for is this — that you have attempted to lefTen the authority of the Bible by ridicule, more than by reafon ; that you have brought forward every petty objection which your ingenuity couid difcover, or your in- duflry pick up, from the writings of others ; and without taking any notice of the anfwers which have been repeatedly given to thefe obje6lions, you urge and enforce them as if they were new. There is certainly fome novelty, at leafl, in youp manner, for you go beyond all others in boldnefs of aflertion, and in profanenefs of argumentation j Bolingbroke and Voltaire mufl; yield the'palm of fcurrility to. Thomas Paine.

Permit me to ftate to you, what would, in my opinion, have been a better mode of proceeding ; better fuited to the chara6ter of an honeft man, fmcere in his endeavours to fearch out truth. Such a man, in reading the Bible, would, in the firft place, examine whether the Bible attributed to the Supreme Being any attributes repugnant to holinefs, truth, juftice, goodnefs ; whether it re- prefented him as fubjedt to human infirmities ; whether it excluded him from the government of

the

( 79 ) the world, or affigned the origin of it to chance^ and an eternal confli6l of atoms. Fin^ling no- thing of this kind in the Bible, (for the deffcrudion of the Canaanites by his exprefs command, T have ihewn not to be repugnant to his moral juftice,) he would, in the fecond place, confider that the Bible being, as to many of its parts, a very old book, and written by various authors, and at dif- ferent and diftant periods, there might, probably, occur fome dijSiculties and apparent contradictions in the hiftorical part of it; he would endeavour to remove thefe difficulties, to reconcile thefe ap- parent contradictions, by the rules of fuch found criticifm, as he would ufe in examining the contents of any other book ; and if he found that moft of tliem were of a trifling nature, ariiing from fhort additions inferted into the text as explanatory and fupplemental, or from miftakes and omiflions of tranfcribers, he would infer that all the reft were capable of being accounted for, though he was not able to do it ; and he would be the more willing to make this conceffion, from obferving, that there ran through the whole book an harmony and connection, utterly inconfiftent with every idea of forgery and deceit. He would then, in the third place, obferve, that the miraculous and hif- torical. parts of this book were fo intermixed, that they could not be fepa rated; that they muft either both be true, or both falfe ; and from find-^ ing the hiftorical part was as well or better au- thenticated than that of any other hiftory, he would admit the miraculous part ; and to confirm himfelf in this belief, he would advert to the pro-

pheciesa

( 8o )

phecies; well knowing that the predidion of things to come, was as certain a proof of the di- vine interpofition, as the performance of a miracle could be. If be Ihould find, as he certainly would, diat many ancient prophecies had been, fulfilled in all their circumftances, and ihat foiue were lultilling at this very day, he would not fufter a few feeming or real difficulties to over« balance ihe weight of diis accumulated evidence for the truth of the Bible. Such,, I prefumc to think, w^ould be a proper condu6^ in all thofe who are defirous of forming a rational and impartial judgment on the fubjeCt of revealed religion.—* Xo return. —

As to your obfervation, that the book of Ifaiah < is (at leaft in tranflation) that kind of compofition • ^nd falfe taffce, which is properly called profe run . mad— Ihave only to remark, that yourtafte for^ Hebrew poetry, even jVKlging of it from tranflation, would be more correct if you would fulfer youifelfi. fO be informed on the fubjedt by Bilhop Lowth, . who tells you in his Prelections—'' that a poem^ tranflated literally from the Hebrew into any-other language, whil ft the; fame forms of the fentences- remain, will dill retain, even as far as relates to verlification, much of its native dignity, and a faint appearance of verlifieation." (Gregory's v Tranll.) If this is what you mean by profe run. mad, your obfervation may be admitted.

You explain, at lome length, your notion of thc^r

wiifapplication made by St. Matthew of the pro-

.prhecy in Ifaiah — " Behold a virgin fhall conceive.

sm^ hmr ^ fb.a." That p9,0age bis beea handled

. . * largely

( 8i )

largely and mlnutelv by almoft every commenta- tor, and it is too important to be handled fuper- ficially by any one : 1 am not, on the prefent oc- cafion, concerned to explain it. It is quoted by you to prove, and it is the only inftance you pro- duce— that ICaiah was *' a lying prophet and an impoftor." Now I maintain, that this very in- ftance proves, that he was a true prophet, and no impoftor. The hiftory of the prophecy, as de- livered in the feventh chapter, is this— Rezin, king of Syria, and Pekah, king of ifrael, made war upon Ahaz, king of judah; not merely, or, per- haps, not at all, for the fake of plunder or the conqueft of territory, but with a declared pur- pofe of making an entire revolution in the govern- ment of Judah, of deftroying the royal houfe of David, and of placing another family on the throne. Their purpofe is thus exprelTed — '^ Letus go up againft Judah, and vex it, and let us make a breach therein for us, and fet a king in the midft of ir, even the fon of Tabeal." — Now, what did the Lord commiffion Ifaiah to fay to Ahaz ? Did he commiffion him to fay, the kings fhall not vex thee ? No. — The kings fhall not conquer thee? No. — The kings fhali not fucceed againft thee? No : — he commiffioned him to fay, " It (the pur- pofe of the two kings) {hall not ftand, neither Ihall it come to pafs." I demand — Did it ftand^ did it come to pafs? Was any revolution ef- fected ? Was the royal houfe of David dethroned and deftroyed ? Was Tabeal ever made king of Judah ? No. The prophecy was perfectly ac- jpompliflied. You fay, " Inftead of thefe two

kings

( Si I

kings falling in their attempt againll Ahaz, thv/- fucceeded; Ahaz was defeated and deftroyed." — - 1 deny the fa 61; i^haz v/as defeated, but not de- fl-royed; and even the " two hundred thoufand women, and fons, and. daughters," whom you reprefent as carried into captivity, were not- carried into captivity; they were made captives^ but they were not carried into captivity; for the- chief men of Samaria, being admonidied by a pro- phet, would not fuffer Fekah to bring the captives into the land — " They rofe up, and took the cap- tives, and v/ith the fpoil clothed all that were naked among them, and arrayed them^ and iliod them, and gave them to eat and to drink, and anointed them, and carried ail the feeble of them upon afles, (fome humanity, you fee, among thofe Ifraelites, whom you every Vv^here reprefent as barbarous brutes) and brouglit them to Jericho, the city of palm-trees, to their brethren." 2 Chron. xxviii. 15. — The kings did fail in their attempt; their attempt was to deftroy the houfe of David, and to make a revolution ; but they made no revolu« tion, they did not deftroy the houfe of David, for Ahaz flept with his faihers; and Hezekiah, hh. {qo, oi' the houfe of David, reigned in his ftead..

LETTER

( 83 )

LETTER VI.

AFTER what I conceive to be a great mif- reprefentatioH of the chara^er and condu(5i: of Jeremiah, you bring forward an obje6;iou which Spinoza, and others before you, had much infifted upon, though it is an objed^ion which nei- ther afFefts the genuinenefs, nor the authenticity of the book of Jeremiah, any more than the blun- der of a bookbinder, in miiplacing the iheets of your performance, would leiTen its authority. The objection is, that. the book of Jeremiah has been put together in a difordered ftate. It is acknowledged, that the order of tim* is not every Tvhere obferved; but tliQ caufe ot the confufion is not known. Some attribute it to Baruch coj- ledting into one volume ail the feveral prophecies which Jeremiah had written, and negleci^ing to put them in their proper places : — others think that the feveral parts of the work v/ere at iirft pro- perly arranged, but that, through accident, or the carelefTnefs of tranfcribers, they were deranged : - — ethers contend, that there is no confufion ; that prophecy differs from hiflory, in not being fubjed: to an accurate obfervance of time and order. But leaving this matter to be fettled by critical difcut- fion, let us come to a matter of greater import- ance— to your charge againft Jeremiah for his duplicity, and for his falfe prediction. Firfl, as to his duplicity :

Jeremiah^

( 84 )

Jeremiah, on account of his having boldly pre- ^i&ed the deftru6lion of Jerufalem, had been \:hruft into a miry dungeon by the princes of Ju- dah, v,7ho fought his life : there he would have pe- rifhed, had not one of the eunuchs taken com- panion on him, and petitioned king Zedekiah in his favour, faying, " Thefe men (the princes) have done evil in all that they have done to Jere- miah the prophet, (no fmall teftimony this, of the probity of the prophet's character) whom they have caft into the dungeon, and he is like to die for hunger."— On this reprefentation Jeremiah was taken out of the dungeon by an order from the king, who foon afterwards fent privately for him, and defired him to conceal nothing tiom him, binding himfelf, by an oath, that, whatever might be the nature of his prophecy, he would not put him to death, or deliver him into the hands of the princes who fought his life. Jeremiah deli- vered to him the purpofe of God refpe<£i:ing the fate of Jerufalem. The conference being ended, the king, anxious to perform his oath, toprcferve the life of the prophet, difmiffed him, faying^ " Let no man know of thefe words, and thou iliak not die. But if the princes hear that I have talked with thee, and they come unto thee, and fay unto thee, Declare unto us now what thou haft faid unto the king, hide it not from us, and we will not put thee to death ; alfo what the king faid unto thee : then thou fhalt fay unto them, I prefented my fupplication before the king, that he would not canfe me to return to Jonathan's houfe to die there. I'hen came all the princes unto Je- remiah,

( 8s )

leitiiah, and afked him, and he told theiH accord* ing to all thefe words that the king had command- ed."— Thus, you remark, " this man of God, as he is called, could tell a lie, or very ftrongly pre- varicate; for certainly he did not go to Zedekiah to make his fupplication, neither did he make it." — It is not faid that he told the princes he went to make his fupplication, but \h2it.\\Qprefented'\t', now it faid in the preceding chapter, that he did make the fupplication, and it is probable that in this conference he renewed it; but be that as it may, I contend that Jeremiah was not guilty of duplicity, or in more intelligible terms, that he did not violate any law of nature, or of civil fociety, in what he did on this occafion. He told the truth, in part, to fave his life ; and he was under no obligation to tell the whole to men who were certainly his enemies, and no good fubjects to his king. " In a m.atter (fays Puffendorf) which i am not obliged to declare to another, if I cannot, with faety, conceal the whole, I may fairly dif- cover no more than a part." Was Jeremiah under any obligation to declare to the princes what had paiTed in his conference with the king ? You may as well fay, that tlie houfe of lords has a right to compel privy counfellors to reveal the king's fecrets. The king cannot juftly require a privy counfelior to tell a lie for him; but he may require him not to divulge his counfeh t» thofe who have no right to know them. — Now for the falfe predidion— I will give the defcriptioa of it in your own words.

"In the 34th chapter is a prophecy of Jeremiah H to

( §6 )

to Zedeklah, in thefe words, ver. 2. — * Thus faiCk the Lord, Behold, I will give this city into the hands of tlie king of Babylon, and will burn it with fire ; and thou flialt not efcape out of his hand, but thou iLalt furely be taken, and delivered into his hand ; and thine eyes fhall behold the eyes of the king of Babylon, and he fhall fpeak with thee mouth to mouth, and thou fhalt go to Babylon. Yet hear the word of the Lord, O Zedekiah^ king o/yudah", thus faith the Lord, Thoufialt Tiot die by the fword, but thoufialt die in peaces and^vjith the burnings of thy fathers, the former kings thai were before thee, fo fhall they burn odours for thee, and will lament thee, faying^ j^h, lord! for I have pronounced the word, faith the Lord?

*' Now, inftead of Zedekiah beholding the eyes of the king of Babylon, and fpeaking with him mouth to mouth, and dying in peace, and with the burnings of odours, as at the funeral of his fathers, (as Jeremiah had declared the Lord him- felf had pronounced,) the reverfe, according \.q the 5 2d chapter, was the cafe ; it is there ftated, verfe lo, ' That the king of Babylon flew the fons of Zedekiah before his eyes ; then he put out the eyes of Zedekiah, and bound him in chains, and carried him to Babylon, and put him in prifon till the day of his death.' What can we fay of thefe prophets, but that they are impoftors and liars?" 1 can fay this — that the prophecy you have pro- duced, was fulfilled in all its parts : and what then fhall be faid of thofe who call Jeremiah a liar and an impoflor ? Here then we are fairly at

ifluc

( 87 ;

iHue — you affirm that the prophecy was not ful- filled, and 1 affirm that it was fulfilled in all its parts. " I will give this city into the hands of the king of Babylon, and he iliall burn it with fire :" fo fays the prophet ; what fays the hillory ? " They (the forces of the king of Babylon) burnt the houfe of God, and brake down the walls of Jerufalem, and burnt all the palaces thereof with fire." (2 Chron. xxxvi. 19.) — '' Thou fhalt not efcape out of his hand, but fhalt furely be taken, and delivered into his hand :" fo fays the prophet; what fays the hiftory? " The men of war fled by night, and the king went the way to- wards the plain, and the army ot the Chaldees purfued after the king, and overtook him in the plains of Jericho : and all his army were fcattered from him; fo^they took the king, and brought him up to the king of Babylon, to Riblah." (2 Kings XXV. 5.) — The prophet goes on, " Thine eyes fliall behold the eyes of the king of Babylon, and he fliall fpeak with thee mouth to mouth." No pleafant circumftance this to Zedekiah, who had provoked the king of Babylon by revolting from him ! The hiftory fays, '* The king of Ba- bylon gave judgment upon Zedekiah," or, as it is more literally rendered from the Hebrew, ^' /pake judgments with him at Riblah." — The prophet concludes this part with, " And thou (lialt go to Babylon :" The hiftory fays, " The king of Ba- bylon bound him in chains, and carried him to Babylon, and put him in^ prifon till the day of his death." (Jer. lii. 11.) — ^" Thou ftialt not die by die fword." He did not die by the fword, he

did

( 88 )

did not fall in battle. — " But thou fhalt die in peace." He did die in peace, he neither expired on the rack, or on the fcaffold ; was neither ftrangled nor poifoned ; no unufual fate of captive kings t he died peaceably inhisbed, though that bed was in a prifon.—- *' And with the burnings of thy fathers fhall they burn odours for thee.'^ T cannot prove from the hiftory that this part of the prophecy was accomplifhed, nor can you prove that it was not. The probability is, that it was accomplifli- ed ; and I have two reafons on whieh I ground this probability. — Daniel, Shadrach, Melchach, and Abednego, to fay nothing of other jews, were men of great authority in the court of the king of Babylon, before and after the commencement of the imprifonment of Zedekiah ; and Daniel con- tinued in power till the fubverfion of the kingdom of Babylon by Cyrus. — Now it feems to me to be very pi^obable, that Daniel, and the other great men of the jews, would both have inclination ta requeft^ and influence enough with the king of Babylon to obtain, permiffion to bury dieir de- ceafed prince Zedekiah, after the manner of his fathers. — But if there had been no jews at Baby- lon of confeqiience enough to make fuch a re- quefl, ftill it is probable that the king of Babylon would have ordered the jews to bury and lament their departed prince, after the manner of their country. Monarchs, like other men, are con- fcious of the inftability of human condition ; and when the pomp of war has ceafed, when the in- folence of conqueft is abated, and the fury of re- fentmeut fubfided, they feldom fail to revere roy-^

alty

( 89 )

ally even in Its ruins, and grant without relucJ^ance proper obfequles to the remains of captive kings.

You proiefs to have been particular in treating of the books afcribed to Ifaiah and Jeremirth. — • Particular! in what? You have particularized two or tliree palTages, which you have endea- voured to reprefent as obje6lionable, and Vv'hich I hope, have been fhewn, to the reader's fatisfac- tion^ to.be not juftly liable to your cenfure ; and you have paffed over all the other parts of thefe books without notice. Had you been particular in your examination, you would have found caufe to admire the probity and the intrepidity of the chara6lers of the authors of them ; you would have met with many inftances of fubiime compo- fition; and, what is of more confequence, wlth = many inflances of prophetical veracity : — parti- cularities of thefe kinds you have wholly over- looked. I cannot account for this;.! have no right, no inclination,, to call you a dilhoiieft man : am I juftiiied in coufidering you as a man not altogether deflicute of ingenuity, but fo entirely under the dominion of prejudice in every thing re^ fpecting the Bible, that, like a corrupted judge previouliy determined to give fentence on one fidej you are negligent in the examination of truth?

You proceed to the reft of the prophets, and .you take them collectively, carefully however felcd^ing for your obfervations fuch particularities as are beft calculated to render, if po/iible, the prophets odious or ridiculous in the eyes of your readers. You confound prophets with poets and ' rxrjficians: I would diftinguifli them thus; raaay H 21 prophets :

( 90 )

prophets were poets and muficlans, but airpoets^ and muficians were not prophets. Prophecies were often delivered in poetic language and mea-- fure; but flights and metaphors of the jewifb poets have not, as you afFirm, been foolifhly ere£bed into what are now called prophecies — they are now called, and have always been called prophecies, — becaufe they were real predidlions^ fome of which have received, fome are now re- ceiving, and all will receive, their full accom-^ plifhment.

That there were.falfe prophet-s, witches, ne« cromancers, conjurers, fortune-tellers, among the jews, no perfon will attempt to deny ; no nation, barbarous or civilized, has been without them : but v/hen you would degrade the prophets of the Old Teftament to a level with thefe conjuring^, dreaming, ftroiling gentry — when you would re- prefent them as fpending their lives in fortune- telling, cafting nativities, predi(3:ing riches, fortu- nate or unfortunate marriages, conjuring for lofl goods, &;c. I muft be allowed to fay, that you wholly miftake their office, and mifreprefent their charad:er: their office was to-convey to the chil- dren of Ifrael the commands, the promifes, the threatenings of Almighty God ; and their charac- ter was that of men fuflaining, with fortitude, perfecution in the difcharge of their duty. There- were falfe prophets hi abundance amongfl: the jews; and if you oppofe thefe to the true pro- phets, and call them both party prophets, you have the liberty of doing fo, but you will not thereby confound the diftin^^ion between truth

. ^ and

( 91 )

and falfehood. Falfe prophets are fpoken of with deteftation in many parts of fcripture, particu- larly by Jeremiah, who accufes them of prophe- cying lies in the name of the Loid, faying, " I have dreamed, T have dreamed : — Behold, I am againfl: the prophets, faith tlie Lord, that ufe their tongues, and fay, He faith ; that prophecy falfe dreams, and caufe my people to err by their lies and by their lightnefs." Jeremiah cautions his, countrymen againft giving credit to their prophets, . to their diviners, to their dreamers, to their en- chanters, to their forcerers, " Vv^hich fpcak unto you, faying, Ye fhall not ferve the king of Ba- bylon.'* You cannot think more contemptibly of thefe gentry, than they were thought of by the true prophets at the time they lived; but, as Jere- miah fays on this fubje6l, *' what is the chaiF to the wheat ? what are the falfe prophets to the true ones? Every good thing is liable to. abufe; but who argues againft the ufe, of a thing from the abufe of it? againft phyficiaris, becaufe there are pretenders to phyftc? Was Ifaiah a fortune-teller, predi6ling riches, when he faid to king Hez:l?iah, " Behold, the days come, that all that is in thine houfe, and that which thy fathers have laid up in ftore until this day, fhall be carried to Babylon: nothing fhall be left, fai.'li the Lord. And of thy Tons that ihall iiTue from . thee which thou fhait bei;et, (hall they take away, and. they fhall be eunuchs in the palace of the king of Babylon.'* Fortune-eelSers generally predict good luck to their iimple cuftomers, that they may make fomething by their trade; butv

Ifaiah .«

( 9^ )

ITalah preclitls to a monarch defolation of his country, and ruui of his family. This prophecy was fpoken in the year before Chrifl 713; and, above an hundred years afterwards, it was ac- compliilied ; when Nebuchadnezzar took Jerufa- lem, and carried out thence all the treafures of the houfe of the Lord, and the treafures of the king's houfe, (2 Kings xxiv. 13.) and when he com- manded the mafter of his eunuchs, (Dan. i. 3.) that he fhould take certain of the children of If- rael, and of the king's feed, and of the princes, and educate them for three years, till they were- able to ft and before the king. ,

Jehoram, king of Ifrael, Jehoffiaphat, king of Judah, and the king of Edom, going with their armies to make war on the king of Moab, came into a place where there was no water either for their men or cattle. In this diftrefs they waited upon Eliiha, (an high honour for one of your conjurors,) by the advice of Jehotliaphat, who . knew that the word of the Lord was with him. The prophet, on feeing Jehoram, an idolatrous prince, vi^ho had revolted from the worfhip of the - true God, come to confult him, faid to him — ^ Get thee to the prophets of thy father and the - prophets of thy mother"' — This you think fhews . Elifha to have been a party prophet, full of venom and vulgarity — it fhews him to have been a man . of great courage, who refpecled the dignity of his own character, the facrednefs of his office as a prophet of God, whofe duty it was to reprove the wickednefs of kings, as of other men. He ordered them to make the valley where they were

fuH.

( 93 ) full of ditches: — this, you fay, " every country- man could have told, that the way to get water was to dig for it:" — hut this is not a true repre- fentation of the cafe ; the ditciies were not dug that water might he gotten by digging for it, but that they might hold the water when it fhoukl miraculoufiy come, " without wind or rain," from another country ; and it did come " fioin 'the way of Edom, and the country was riiled with water." — As to Elilha's curfmg the little children who had mocked him, and their deftruc- tion in confequer-ce of hii> imprecation, the whole ftory muft be taken together. The provocation he received is, by fome, confidered as an infult ofrered to him, not as a rnan but as a prophet, and that the perfons who offered it were not what we underftand by little children, but grown-up youths ; the term child being applied, in the He- brew language, to grown-up perfons. Be this as it may, the curfing was the aCl of the prophet; had it been a fio, it would not have been followed by a miraculous deftrudtion of the oiFenders; for this was ihe a61: of God, v/ho befl know«s who deferve punifhment. What effect fuch a fignai judgment had on the idolatrous inhabitants of the land, is no where laid ; but it is probable it was not without a good efFe£l.

Ezekiel and Daniel lived during the Babylo- nian captivity; you allow their writings to be genuine. In this you differ from fome of the greateft adverfaries of chrijftianity ; and in my opinion cut up, by this conceffion, the very root ©f your whole performance. It is next to an im-

poffibility

■ ( 94 ) ,

poffibility for any man, who admits the book of Daniel to be a genuine book, and who examioes- that book with Iijtelligence and impartiality, to refufe his aiient to the truth of chriftianity. As to your faying, that the interpretations which commentators and prlefts have made of thefe books, only fliew the fraud, or the extreme folly,, to which credulity and prieflcraft can go^ I con-- lider it as nothing but a proof of the extreme folly- or fraud to which prejudice and infidelity can. carry a minute philofopher. You profefs a fond- nefs for fcience ; I will refer you to a fcientific man, who was neither a commentator nor a priefl,. — to Fergufon. — In a tra6l, entitled — ^^The Year of our Saviour's Crucifixion afcertained ; and the darknefs, at the time of his crucifixion, proved to be fupernatural— this- real philofopher inter- prets the remarkable prophecy in the 9th- chapter of Daniel, and concludes his differtation in the following v/ords— -" Thus we have an a(lrono-i mical demonftration of the truth of this ancient prophecy, feeing that the prophetic year of the MeHiah's being cut off, was the very fame with, the; aiVono mical." I have fomewhere read an account of a folemn difputation which v/as held art; Venice, in, the lafl century, between a jew and a chriflian: — the chriftian ilrongly argued, from Daniel's prophecy of the feventy weeks, that Jefus.was die Meffiah whom the. jews had long expe6led, from the predi6lions of their prophets: — the learned Rabbi, who prefided at this difpu-? tation, was lb forcibly (iruck by the argument, that he put an end to the buhnefs, by faying—

" Let,

( 95 )

**' Let us fliut up our Bibles; for if we proceed in the examination of this prophecy, it will make us all become chriftians." — Was it a fmiilar ap- prehenfion which deterred you from fo much as opening the book of Daniel ! You have not pro- duced from it one exceptionable paiTage. I hope you will read that book with attention, with in- telligence, and with an unbiafTed mind follow the advice of our Saviour when he quoted this very- prophecy — " Let him that readeth underftand" — and I fhall not defpair of your converfion from deifm to chriftianity.

In order to difcredit the authority of the books ■which you allow to be genuine, you form a ftrange and prodigious hypothesis concerning Ezekiel and Daniel, for which there is no m.an- ner of foundation either in hiftory or probability. You fuppofe thefe two men to have had no dreams, no vifions, no revelation from God Al- mighty; but to have pretended to thefe things ; and, under that difguiie, to have carried on an enigmatical correfpondence relative to the reco- very of their country from the Babyloniajstyoke, That any man in his fenfes ihould frame or adopt fuch an hypothecs, fhould have fo little regard to his own reputation as an impariial inquirer after truth, fo little refpedl for the underftanding of his readers, as to obtrude it on the world, would have appeared an incredible circumftance, had not you made it a fa6l.

You quote a pafTage from Ezekiel ; in the 29th chapter, ver. 11, fpeaking of Egypt, it is faid — " No foot of man fhall pafs through it, nor foot

of

( 9* )

of beaft fKall pafs through it, neither fliall it be inhabited forty years:" — this, you fay, " never came to pafs, and confequently it is falfe, as all the books I have akeady reviewed are." Now, that this did come to pafs, we have, as Bifhop Newton obferves, " the teftimonies of Megaf- thenes and Berofus, two heathen hiflorians, who lived about 300 years before Chrlft ; one of whom affirms, expreffly, that Nebuchadnezzar conquered the greater part of Africa ; and the other affirms n, in effe6t, in faying, that when Nebuchadnezzar heard of the death of his father, having fettled his affairs in Egypt, and committed the captives whom he took in Egypt to the care of fome of his friends to briiig them after him, he hafted di- Te6tly to Babylon." And if we had been pof- feifed of no teftimony in fupport of the prophecy, it would have been an hafty conclufion, that the prophecy never came to pafs; the hiftory of Egypt, at io remote a period, being no where ac- curately and circumflantlaily related. I admit that no period can he pointed out, from the age of EzekieJ,,to the prefent, in which there was no foot of man or beaft to be feen for forty years in all Egypt ; but fome think that only a part of Egypt is hearfpoken of; and furely you do not expert a literal accomplifhm.ent of an hyperbolical exprefr lion, denoting great dcfolation ; importing that the trade of Egypt, which was carried on dien, as at prefent, by caravans, by the foot of man and beaft, fhould be annihilated. Had you taken the trouble to have looked a little farther into the book from which you have made your quotation,

vou

( 97 )

you would have there feen a prophecy, delivered ahove two thoufand years ago, and which has been fulfilling from that time to this — " Egypt {hall, be the bafefl of the kingdoms, neither (hall it exalt itfelf any more above the nations — there iliall be no more a prince of the land of Egypt." — This you may call a dream, a vifion, a lie : I efteem it a wonderful prophecy; for " as is tlie prophe- cy, fo has been the event. Egypt was conquered by the Babylonians ; and after the Babylonians, by the Perfians ; and after the Perfians it became fubjed^ to the Macedonians ; and after the Mace- donians, to the Romans ; and after the Romans, to the Saracens ; and then to the Mamalucs ; and is now a province of the Turkilli empire."

Suffer me to produce to you, from this author, not an enigmatical letter to Daniel refpe6l:ing the recovery of Jerufalem from the hands of the king of Babylon, but an enigmatical prophecy concern- ing Zedekiah the king of Jerufalem, before it was taken by the Chaldeans. — " I will bring him, (Zedekiah) to Babylon, to the land of the Chal- deans ; yet {hall he noifee it, though he {hall die thercu" — How ! not fee Bab^/lon, when he should die there ! How, moreover, is this confiflent, you may aik, with v/hat Jeremiah had foretold — that Zedekiah fliould fee the -eyes of the king of Babylon? — This darknefs of exprefuon, and ap- parent coritradi£lion between the two prophets,, induced Zedekiah (as Jofephus informs us) to give no credit co either of them ; yet he unhappily experienced, and the facl is worthy your obfer- vation, the truth of them both. He faw the eyes I of

i 9S )

of the king of Babylon, net at Babylon, but at Riblah; his eyes were then put out, and he was carried to Babylon, yet he faw it not ; and thus were the predictions of both the prophets verified, and the enigma of Ezekiel explained.

As to your wonderful difcovery that the pro- phecy of Jonah is a book of fome gentile, " and that it has been written as a fable, to expofe the iionfenfe, and to fatirize the vicious and malig- nant character of a Bible prophet, or a predicting prieil," I iliall put it, covered with hellebore^ for rhe fervice of its author, on the fame fhelf with your hypothecs concerning the confpiracy of Daniel and Ezekiel, and ihall not fay another word about it.

You conclude your objecShions to the Old Tef* tament in a triumphant ftyle ; an angry opponent would fay, in a ftyle of extreme ariogance, and fottifh felf-fufficiency. — " I have gone," you fay, *' through the Bible (miftaking here, as in other places, the Old Teftament for the Bible) as a man would go through a wood, with an axe on his fhoulders, and fell trees; here they lie; and the priefls,* if they can, ma5r replant them. They may, perhaps, ftick them in the ground, but tliey will never grow.^' — And is it poffible that you Ihould think fo highly of your performance, as to believe, that you have thereby demoli {lied the authority of a book, which Newton himfelf ef- teemed the mod: authentic of all hiflories ; which, by its celeftial light, illumines the darkcfl ages of antiquity ; which is the touch ftone whereby we are enabled to diflinguiili between true and

fabulous

( 99 )

fatmlous theology, between the God of Ifrael, holy, juft, and good, and the Impure rabble of hea- then Baalim ; which has been diought, by com- pete4U judges, to have afForded ciatter for the laws of Solon, and a foundation for the philofophy of Plato ; wiiich has been illuftrated by the labour of learning, in all ages and counQ'ies ; and beea admired and venerated for its piety, its lublijnity, its veracity, by all who are able to read and un- derftand it? No, fir; you have gone indeed dirough the wood, with ihe beft intention in the world to cut it down ; but yon have merely bufied yourfelf in expofmg to vulgar contempt a few unfightly fhrubs, which good men have wifily concealed from public view ; you have entangled yourfelf in thickets of thorns and briars ; you have loft your way on the mountains of Lebanon; the goodly cedar trees whereof, lamenting the madnefs, and pitying the blindnefs of your rage againft them, have fcorned the blunt edge and the bafe temper of your axe, and laughed unhurt at the feeblenefs oi your ftroke.

In plain language, you have gone through the Old Teftament hunting after difficulties ; and you have found fome real ones ; thefe you have en- deavoured to magnify into infurmountable objec- tions to the authority of die whole book. When it is conhdered that the Old Teftament is com- pofed of feveral books, written by different au- thors, and at difi^erent periods, from Mcfes to Malachi, compriftng an abftracled hiftory of a particular nation for above a thoufand years, I think the real difficukies which occur in it are

muck

( 100 )

much fewer, and of much lefs importanee, tfiaii eould reafonably have been expe6led. Apparent diiEcukies you have reprefented as real ones, with- out hlntuig at the manner in which they have been explained. You have ridiculed things held moft facred, and calumniated chara£lers efteemcd moil venerable; you have excited the feoffs of the profane ; increafed the fcepticlfm of the doubt- ful; Ihaken the faith of the unlearned; fuggefted cavils to the " difputers of this world ;'^ and per- plexed the minds of honeft men who wifh to woriliip the God of their fathers in fmcerity and truth. — -This, and more you have done in going through the Old Teflament; but you have not io much as glanced at the great delign of the w hole, at die harmony and mutual dependence of the feveral parts. You have faid nothing of the wifdom of God in feledting a particular people from the red of mankind, not for their own fakes, but diat they might witnefs to the whole world, in fuccefnve ages, his exiftence and attributes ; that they might be an inftrument of fubverdng idolatry, of declaring the name of the God of Ifrael throughout the whole earth, it was through this nation that the Egyptians faw the wonders of God; that the Canaanites (whom wickednefs had made a reproach to human nature) ielt his judgments ; that the Babylonians iiTued their de- crees— " That none fiiould dare to fpeak amifs of the Qod of Ifrael — that all (liould fear and tremble before him : " — and it is through them that you and 1, and all the world, are not at this day worlhippers of idols. You have faid nothing of

the

( lOI )

the gooJnefs of Gud in promifing, that, through the feed of Abiaham, all the nations of the earth were to be blefled ; that the defire of all nations, the blelling of Abraham to the gentiles, (liould come. You have paifed by all the prophecies refpe6ling the coming of die Meffiah; though they abfolutely fixed die time of his coiTiing, and of his being cut off; defcribed his oilice, charac- ter, condition, futterings, and death, in fo cir- eumftantlal a manner, that we cannot but be af- tonlilied at the accuracy of their completion in the perfon of Jefus of Nazareth. You have negle6ted noticing the teilimony of the whoje jevvhli nation, to the truth both of the natural and; miraculous facts recorded in die Old Teftament. That we may better judge of the weight of this tertimony, let us fuppofe that God fliould now manifeft himfelf to us, as we contend he did to the Ifraelites in Egypt, in the defert, and in the land of Canaan;, and that he fhould continue thefe manifeftations of himfelf to our poileriiy- for a thoufand years or more, puniihing or re- warding them according as they difobeycd or obeyed his commands ; what w^ould you expedt ftiould.be the iXue ? You v/ould expedt diat our poflerity would, in the lemoteft period of time, adhere to their God, and maintain, againft all opponents, the truth of the books in v/hich the difpcnfations of God. to us and to our fucceiTors had been recorded. They would not yield to the obje6lions of men, who, not having experienced the fame divine government, fnould, for want of fuch experience, refufe alTenC to their tedimony.. L^ • N.05.;

C 102 )

No ; they would be to the tlieri furrounding na- tions, what the jews are to us, witnefTes of the exiftence and of the moral government of God.

LETTER Vir.

** ^TF^HE New Teftment, they tell us, is found- Jl ed upon the proj)hecies of the Old ; if foj. itmuil follow the fate of its foundation/' — Thus you open your attack upon the New Teftament ;; and I agree with you, that the New Teftament muft follow the fate of the Old ; and that fate is to remain unimpaired by fuch efforts as you have made againft it. The New Teftament, how- ever, is not founded folely on the prophecies of the Old. If an heathen from Athens or Ronie^' who had never heard of the prophecies of die Old Teftament, had been an eye-wirnefs of the mira- eles of Jefus, he would have made the fame con- clufion that the jew Nicodemus did — '' Rabbi, we know that tliou art a teacher c » ne from God ;. for no man can do thefe miracles that thou doeft, except God be with him.*' — Our Saviour tells the jews — " Had ye believed Mofes, ye would have believed me; for he wrote of me:" — and he bids them fearch the feriptures, for they teftilied of him: — but, notvvithftanding this appeal to the prophecies of the Old Teftament, Jefus faid to the jews, *' Though ye believe not me, believe the \vorks"*— ^' believe me for. the very works'

faks'^

( 103 ) fake'* — *' if I had not done among them the works which none other mm did, they had not had lin.'* — Thefe are fufficicnt proofs that the truth of Chrift's mifHon was not even to the jews, much lefs to the gentiles, founded folely on tlie truth of the prophecies of the Old Teftament. So that if you could prove fome of thefe prophecies to have been mifapplied, and not completed in the perfon of Jefus, the truth of the chriftian religion would not thereby be overturned. — That Jefus of Nazereth was the perfon, in whom all the prophecies, dire6t and typical, in the Old Tefta- ment, refpe6ling the Meffiah, were fultilled, is a propofition founded on thofe prophecies, and to be proved by comparing them with the hiftory of his lifci That Jefus was a prophet fent from God, is one proportion — that Jefus was the pro- phet, the IVIeffiah, is another : and tiiough he cer- tainly was both a prophet and the prophet, yet the foundations of the proof of thefe propofitions are feparate and diftlndi.

The mere exiftence *' of fucli a woman as Mary, and of fuch a man as Jofeph, and Jefus,'* is, you fay, a matter of indifference, about which there is no ground either to believe or to difbe-^ Ijeve. — Belief is diiFerent from knowledire, with which you here feem to confound it. We know that the whole is greater than its part — and we know that all the angles in the fame fegment of a circle are equal to each other — -we have intuition and demonftiation as grounds of this knowledge ; but is there no ground for belief of paft or future exiftence \ Is there no ground for believing that:

the-

( 104 )

the fun will exifl: to-morrow, and that your father exifted before you? You condefcend, however, to think it probable, that there were fuch perfons as Mary Jofeph, and Jefus ; and, without troubling yourfelf about their exiftence or non-exiftence, aiTuming, as it were, for the fake of argument, but without' pofitively granting, their exiftence, you proceed to inform us, " that it is the fable of Jefus Chrift, as told in die New Teftament, and the wild and vifionary do6lrine raifed thereon,*' againft which you contend. You will not repute it a fable, that there was fuch a man as Jefus Chrift ; that he lived, in Judea near eighteen hun- dred years ago ; that he went about doing good, and preaching, not only in the villages of Galilee, but in the city of Jerufalem ; that he had fcveral followers who conftantly attended him; that he was put to death by Pontius Pilate; that the dif- cipleswere numerous a few years after his death, not only in Judea, but. in Rome, the capital of the world, and in every province of the Roman em- pire ; that a. particular day has been obferved in a. religious manner, by all his followers, in comme- moration of a real or fuppoied refurre6i:ion ; and that the canftant celebration of baptifm, and af the Lord's fupper, may be traced back from the prefent time to him, as the author of thofe inflitu- tions. Thefe things conilitute, I fuppofe, no part , of your fable ; and if thefe things be fads, they will, when maturely confidered, draw after them fo many other things related in the New Tefta- ment concerning Jefus, that there will be left for your fable but very fcanty materials, which wiU

re(]|ijir(i

( 105 )

require great fertility of invention before you will drefs them up into any form wliich will not dif- gufi: even a fuperticial obferver.

The miraculous conception you efteem a fable, and in your mind it is anobfcene fable. — Impure indeed mufl: that man's imagination be, who can difcover any obfcenity in the angel's declaration to Mary — The Holy Ghoft fnall come upon thee, and the power of the Higheft ihall over- lliadow thee: therefore that Holy thing which iliall be born of thee, fhall be called the Son of God. — I wonder you do not find obfceniiy in Genefis, where it is faid, " The Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters," and brought order out of confufion, a world out of a chaos, by his foftering Influence. As to the cl:H-irtian faith being built upon the heathen mythology, there is no ground whatever for the afTertioui there would have been fome for faying, that much of the heathen mythology was built upon the events recorded in the Old Teilament.

You com.e now to a demonflration, or, whidi amounts to the fame thing, to a propofition which cannot, you fay, be controverted i—tirft, " That the agreement of all the parts of a flory does not prove that ftory to be true, becauie the parts may- agree and the whole may be faife; — fecondly, That the d'lfagreement of the parts of a ftory proves that the whole cannot he true. The agree- ment does not prove truth, but the difagreement proves faifehood pofitively.*' Great ufe, I per- ceive, is to be made of this propofition. You will pardon my unlkilfulnefs in dialedlicsy if I

prefurae

( io6 )

prefume to controvert the truth of this abftract propofltion, as applied to any purpofe in life. The agreement of the parts of a itory implies that the ftory has been told by, at leaf!:, two perfons (the life of Do6i:or Johnlon, for inflancC) by FAr John Hawkins and Mr. Bofwell.) Now, I think it fcarcely poflible for even two perfons, and the difficulty is increafed if there are more than two,, to write the hiftory of the life of any one of their acquaintance, without there being a confiderable difference between them, with refpe6l to the num- ber and order of the incidents of his life. Some things will be omitted by one, and mentioned by the other ; fome things will be briefly touched by one, and the fame things will be circumfbantially detailed by the other j the fame things, which arc mentioned in the fame way by them both, may not be mentioned as having happened exactly at the fame point of timiC, with other poffible and probable difFerenees. But thefe real or apparent difficulties, in minute circumftances, will not in- validate their teftimony as to the material tranfac- tions of his life, much I'efs will they render the whole of it a fable. If feveral independent wit- neffes-, of fair chara(9:er, fhould agree in all the parts of a ftory, (in teftifying, for inftance, that a murder or a robbery was committed at a. parti- cular time, in a particular place, and by a certain individual,) every court of juftice in the world would admit the fa6l, notwithftanding the ab- ftra6i poffibility of the whole being fal(e: — again, if feveral honeft men fliould agree in faying, that they- faw the king of France beheaded^ though

they

( 107 )

they {hould difagree about the figure of the guil- lotine, or the fize of his executioner, as to the king's hands being hound or loofe, as to his being compofed or agitated in afcending the fcaffold, yet every court of juftice in the world would think, that fuch difference, refpe^Sling the circurnflances of the fa6l, did not invalidate the evidence xefpedl- ing the fa6l itfelf. When you fpeak of the whole of a ftory, you cannot mean every particular cir- cumflance conne6led with the flory, but not ef- fenti.il to it ; you muft mean the pith and marrow of the ftory; for it would be impoffible to efta- blifh the truth of any fa6l:, (of admirals Byng or Keppel, for example, having negle6led or not negledled their duty) if a difagreement in the evi- dence of witneiTes, in minute points, {hould be confidered as annihilating the weight of their evi- dence in points of importance. In a word, the relation of a fa6l differs eflentially from the de- monftration of a theorem. If one ftep is left out, one Hnk in the cha^in of ideas conftituting a de- mbnftration is omitted, the conclulion will be deftroyed,; but a fa^l may be eftabliihed, not- withftanding a difagreement of the witneiTes in certain trifling particulars of their evidence re- ipev3:ing it.

You apply your incontrovertible proposition to the genealogies of Chrift given by Matthew snd Luke — there is a difagreement between liiem; therefore, you fay, *' If Matthew fpeak truth, Luke fpeaks falfehood ; and if Luke (peak truth, Matthew fpeaks falfehood ; and thence there Is no authority for believing either ; and if they cannot be

believed

{ io8 )

believed even in the very firfi; thing they fay and fetout to prove, they are not entitled to be believed in any thing they fay afterwards." I cannot ad- mit either your preiTiifes or your conclufion — not your conclufion, becaufe two authors, who differ in tracing back the pedigree of an individual for above a thoufand years, cannot, on that account, be efleemed incompetent to bear teftimony to the tranfaclions of his life, unlefs an intention to falfily could be proved againft them. If two Welih hidorians fhould, at ihis time, write the life of any remarkable man of their country, who had been dead twenty or thirty years, and fhould, through different branches of their genealogical tree, carry up the pedigree to Cadivallon, would they, on account of that difference, be difcredited in every thing they faid ? Might it not be believed that they gave the pedigree as they had found it recorded in different inftruments, but without 'he leafl; intention to write a falfehood ? — I cannot ad- mit your premifes ; becaufe Matthew fpeaks truth, and Luke fpeaks iruth, though they do not fpeak the fame truth ; Matthew giving the genealogy of Jofeph the reputed father of Jefus-, and Luke giv- ing the genealogy of Mary the mother of Jefus'. If you will not admit this, other explanations of the difficulty might be given; but I hold it fuffi- cient to fay, that the authors had no defign to deceive the reader ; that they took their accounts from the public regifters, which were carefully kept ; and that had they been fabricators of thefe genealogies, they would have been expofed at the time to inftant detection, and the certainty of that

dete6lion

( 109 )

^tecSlion would have prevented them from mak* Tng the attempt to impofe a falfe genealogy on the jewKh nation.

But that yOii inay e^ffec^ually overthrow the credit of thefe genealogies, you make the following calculation: — " From the hirth of David to the birth of Chrift is upwards of 1080 years ; and as there were but 2 7 full generations, to find the aver- age age of each perfon mentioned in St. Matthew^s lift at the tinte his ftrft fon was born, it is only neceflary to divide 1080 by 27, which gives 4a years for each perfon. As the life-time of maa was then but of the fame extent it is -now, it is aa abfurdity to fuppofe, that 27 generations ihould all be old bachelors, before they married. So far from this genealogy being afolemn truth, it is not even a reafonable lie." — This argument aflumesr the appearance of arithmetical accuracy, and the conclufion is in a ftylc which even its truth would not excufe:— yet the argument is good tor no- thing, and the concluiion is not true. You have read the Bible with fome attention ; and you are Extremely liberal in imputing to it lies and abfur- <3ities; read it over again, efpecially the books of the Chronicles, and you will there find, that; ia the genealogical lift of St. Matthew, three gene- rations are omitted between Joram and Ozias; Joram was the father of Azariah, Azariah of Joafh, Joafhof Amaziah, and Amaziah of Ozias. i inquire not, in this place, whence this omiffioii proceeded ; whether it is to be attributed to aa -€rror in the genealogical tables from whence Mat- -thew took his account, or to a corruption of the K text

( no )

text of the evangelifl; ftill it is an omlfiion. Now if you will add thefe three generations to the 27 you mention, and divide 1080 by 30, you will £nd the average age when theiejews had each of them their firft fon born was 36. They married Iboner than they ought to have done, according to Ariflotle, who fixes thirty-feven as the mo ft proper age when a ixian fhould marry. Nor was it neceflary that they fhouid have been old bache* lors, though each of them had not a fon to fuc- ceed him till he was thirty-fix^ they might have been married at twenty, without having a fon till they were forty. You aflume, in your argument, that the firft born fon fucceeded the father in the lift — this is not true. Solomon fucceeded David ; vet David had at leaft fix fons, who were grown to manhood before Solomon was born; and Re- hoboam had at leaft three fons before he had Abia (Abijah) who fucceeded him.- — It is needlefs to cite more inftances to this purpofe ; but from thefe, and other circumftances which might be infifted tipon, I can fee no ground for believing, that the genealogy of Jefus Chrift, mentioned by St. Mat- thew, is not a folemn truth.

You infift much upon fome things being men- tioned bv one evangelift, which are not mention- ed by all or by any of the others ; and you take this to be a reafon why we fliould confider the

fofpels, not as the works of Matthew, Mark, .uke and John, but as the produdlions of fome tinconne^ed individuals, each of whom made his own legend. I do not admit the truth of this fup- jpofition ; but I may be allowed to ufe it as an ar- gument

( in )

gum€flt againft yourfcif — it removes every pof- fible fufplcron of fraud and inipofture, and con- firms the gofnel hiftory in the ftrongeft manner- Four unconyiedcd individuals have each written memoirs of the hfe of Jeuis ; from whatever fourco they derived their materials, it is evident that they agree in a great many particulars of the laft im- portance ; fuch as the purity of his manners ; the fnnctity of his docStrines; the multitude and puh- licity of his miracles; the perfecuLmg fpirit of his enemies ; the manner of his death ; and the cer- tainty of his refurre61:ion ; and vvhilfl they agree ill thefe great points, their difagreement in points of little confequence, is rather a confirmation of the truth, than an indication of the falfhood, of tlierr feveral accounts. — Had they agreed in no- tiiing, their teftimony ought to have been rejedfed. as a legendary tale; had they agreed in every thing, it might have been fufpe6i:ed that, inftead of unconne£led individuals, they were a fet of impoffors. The manner in which the evangelifls have recorded the particulars of the life of Jefus, is whblly conformable to what we experience ia other biographers, and claims our highell: alTent to its truth ; notwithftanding the force of your incontrovertible propoiition.

As an inftance of contradi6lion between the evangelifts, you tell us, that Matthew fays, the angel, announcing the immaculate conception, appeared unto Jofeph ; but Luke fays, he appeared unto Mary. — The angel. Sir, appeared to thetn both ; to Mary, when he informed her that fhe fftould, by the power of God, conceive a fon ;■

tp,

( n* )

~io Jofeph, fome months afterwards, when Mary's- pregnancy was vifible ; in the interim fhe had paid a viiit of three months to her confin Elizabeth. It might have been expe6led, that, from the ac- curacy with which you have read your Bible, you couid not have confounded thefeobvio\i£ly-diflin6t appearances ; but men, even of candour, are Hable to miflakes. Who, you afk^ would now believe a girl, who (hould fay {he was gotten with child' by a ghofl? — Who, but yourfeif, would ever have afked a queftion fo abominably indecent and profane ? I cannot argue widi you on this fub- }t(St. — You will never perfuade the world, that the Holy Spirit of God has any refemblance ta the ftage ghofts in Hamlet or Macbeth, from which you feem to have derived your idea of it.

The'llory of the maffacre of the young chil- dren by the order of Herod, is mentioned only by Matthew ; and therefore you think it is a lie. We muil give up all hiftory if we refufe to admit fa6ls recorded by only one hiflorian. Matthew ad-; dreffedhis gofpel'to the jews, and put tliem in mliid of a circumftance, of which tliey muft have had a melancholy remembrance ; but gentile converts were lefs interefled in that event. The evangelifts were not writing the life of Herod, but of Jefus j it is no wonder that they omitted, above half a cerir tury after the death of Herod, an indance of his cruelty, which was not eflentially conneaed with their fubjed. The maffacre, however, was pro- bably known even at Rome ; and it was certainly correfpondent to the charader of Herod. John, you fav, at the time of the maiTacre, *' w^s uuder

two

( "3 )

two years of age, and yet lie efcaped ; fo that the- ftory circbmftantlally belies itlelf." — John was fix months older than Jefus ; and you cannot proye diat he was not beyond die age to wliicli the order of Herod extended ; It probably reached no farther than to thofe who had completed their firft- year, without including thofe who had enter- ed upon their fecond: but without infifting upon this, flrill I contend that you cannot prove John to have been under two years of age at the time cf the maflacre; and I could give many probable reafons to the contrary... Nor is it certain that John was, at that time, in that part of the coun- try to which the edi^l of Herod' extended. But there would be no end of anfwering, at lengthy, all your little objections.

No.two of the evangelifts, you obferve, agree- in recitrng^ exd'^Iy 171 the fame words, the written infcription wliich was put over Chrift when he was crucified. — I admit that there is an uneiTen- tifil verbal difference; and' are you certain that there was not a verbal diiFerence in the infcrip- rions themfelves ?- — One was written in Hebrew, anodier in ; Greek, another, in Latin ; and, though they had' all the fame meaning, yet it is probable, that if two men had'tranflated'the Hebrew and the Latin into Greek, there would have been a verbal drfFerence.between their tranflktions. You, have rendered^ yourfelf famous by writing a book called — The Rights' of Man': — had you been guillotined by Robefpierre, with this title, written in French, Englifli, and German, and affixed to. tii^.guillotine^-ThDrnas Paine, of America, au-.

{ "4 )

thor of The Rights of Mdii — and ha4 four per-, fons, foine of whom had ieen the execqtipi), and the reft had heard of it from eye-wknefTes, written iliort accounts of your life twenty years or ijiQre,- after your death, and one had fald the infenptlon was— This is Thomas Paine, the author of The Rights of Man— another, The author of The Rights of Man — a third, This is the author of The Rights of Man — and a fourth, Thomas Paine, of America, the author of the Rights of Man — would any man of common fenfe have doubted, on account of this dlfagreemenjt, the ve- racity of the authors in writing your life ?— *' The only one," you tell us, " of the men called apof- ties, who appears to have been near the fpot where Jefus was Grucitied, was Peter." — ^This, your aifertion, is not true — we do not know? that teter w^as prefent at the crucifixion; but. we da know that John, the difciple whom, Jefus loved^ was prefent; for Jefus fpoke to him from the crofs. — You go on, "But why fhould we believe Peter,convi6ted,by their own account, of perjury, in fwearing thai he knew not Jefus ?" I will tell^ you why — becaufe Peter hncerely repeirted of the wickednefs into which he had been betrayed, through fear for his life, and fuffered martyrdom in atteftation of the truth of the chriftlan religion. B'dt the evangelifts diiagree, you fay, not only as to th€ fuperfcription on the crofs, but as to the time of the crucifixion, " Mark.faying it was at the third hour (nine in the morning,) aqd John at the fixtli hour (twelve, as you fuppofe at noon.]'*^ Various folutions have been givea of thi?, diffi-

, cutty,

( "5 ) ciuft-y, none of which fatisfied Do(^oy MMktQnf ijnuch lefs can it he expe6ted that any of tb^m; fhould fatisfy you ; but there is a fclution not no-. ticed by him, in which many judicious men have acquiefced^That John, writing his* gofpel in-. Aha, ufcd the Roman method of computing timej which was the fame as our own ; fo that by the fixch hour, when Jefus was condemned^ we are to underfland fix o'clock in the morning; the in- t(^rmediate time from fix to nine, when he was crucified, being employed in preparing for the cru- cifixion. But if this difficulty fiiould be Ml ef- teemed infuperable, it does not follow that it will- always remain fo ; and if it fiiould, the main point, the crucifixion of Jefus, will not be afFecled there-

I cannot, in this place,, omit remarking fome circumftances attending the crucifixion, which,: are fo natural, that we might have wondered i£; jthey had not occurred. Of all the difciples of Jefus, John was beloved by him with a peculiar degree of affection; and, as kindnefs producee^., kii-idnefs, there can be iiitle doubt that the regard was reciprocal. Now, whom ihould we expedt to. be the attendants of Jefus in his iaft fufFering ? Whom but John, the friend of his heart? — Whom but his mother, whofe- foul was now: pierced through by the fword of forrow, which Simeon had foretold? — Whom but thofe, who had been attached to him through life ; ,who, hav- ing been liealed by him of their infirmities, were impelled by gratitude to minifter to him of their fubftance, to be attentive to all his wants ? — Thefe

were

( ii6 )

were the perfons whom we (lioiild have expected to attend his execution ; and thefe were there. To whom would an expiring fon, of the beft affec- tions, recommend a poor, and, probably, a -vidow-' ed mother, but to his warmeft friend?^ — And this did Jefus. — Unmindful of the extremity of his own torture, and anxious to alleviate the, burden of her forrow^s, and to prote6l her old age from future: want and mifery, he faid to his beloved difciple; — "Behold thy mother ! and from that hour that- difciple took her to his own home." I own to you, that fucliinftances as thefe, of the conformity of events to our probable expe6iation, are to me genuine marks of the limplicity. and truth of the- gofpels; and far outweigh a thou fand little objec- tions, arifing from our, ignorance of manners, times, and circumftances, or from our incapacity, to comprehend the means ufed by the Supreme Being in the moral government of his creatures.

St. Matthew mentions feveral miracles which, attended our Saviour's crucifixion^ — ^the darkncfs, which overfpread the land-^the rending of the veil of the temple — an earthquake which rent the rocks — and the refurredlion of many faints,, and i their going into the holy city. — '' Such,** you fay, " is the account which this dafhing writer of the book of Matthew gives, but in which he is not fupported by the writers of the other books." This is not accurately exprefTed; Matthew is fup-, ported by Mark and Luke, witli refpe6t to two of the miracles — the darknefs — and the rending of the veil : — and their omiffion of the others does . DGt prove, that they were cither ignorant of them,

( "7 ) or difbelleved thqim. I think it idle to pretend w fay politively what influenced them to mention only two miracles ; they probably thought them fuifieient to convince any perfon, as they con- vinced the centurion, that Jefus " was a righteous man" — " the Son of God." And tliefe two mi- rides were better calculated to produce general convi<£lion amongfl: the pei fons for whofe benefit Mark and Luke wrote their gofpels, than either the earthquake or the refurre6lion of the faints. The earthquake was, probably, confined to a particular fpot, and might, by an objedfor, have been called a natural phenomenon ; and thofe to whom the faints appeared might, at the time of writing the gofpels of Mark and Luke, have bee^ dead: but the darknefs muft have been generally knowiii.and remembered ; and the veil of the tem-^ pie might ftill be preferved at the time thefe au- thors wrote. — As to John not mentioning any of tliefe miracles^ — it is well known that his gofpel was written as a kind of fupplement to the other gofpels ; he has therefore omitted many , things which the other three evangelifts had related, and he has added feveral things which they had not nientioned ; in particular, he has added a ciicum- ftaoce of great importance; he telis us that he faw one of the foldiers pierce the fide of Jefus with a fpear, and that blood and water flowed through the wound ; and lefl; any one fhould doubj* of the fadf, from its not being mentioned by thf» other evangeliffs, he afferts it with peculiar ear- neftnefs — " And he th?.t faw it, bare record, and Ills regord is true : and he knoweth that he faith

tiue.

( ii8 )

true, that ye might believe.^ '—^ John fawblood arK? water flowing from the wound ; the blood is eafily accounted for ; but whence came the water? The anacomifts teil us — that it came from th&pericar- dium .--T— fo confident is evangeHcal teftimony with the moft curious refearches into natural fcience ! — You amufe yourfelf with the account of what the fcripture calls many faints, and you call, an army of faints, and are angry with Matthew for not having told you a great many things about them. — It is very poflible that Matthew might have known the fact of their refurredlion, with- out knowing every thing about them ; but if he had gratified your curiofity in every particular, I am of opinion that you would not have believed a word of what he had told you. I have hq curioftty on the fubie£l ; it is enough for me t6 know that " Chriftw^as the firR fruits of them thai flept," and *' that all that are in the graves ihall hear his voice and {hall come forth," as thofe holy men did, who heard the voice of the Son of God at his refurredfton, and paiTed from death to life. If I durif indulge mylelf in being wife above what is written, I might be able to ahfwer many of your inquiries relative Jto thefe faints : but I dare not touch the ark of the Lord, I dare not fupport the authority of fcripture by the boldnefs of con- je<£ture. Whatever difficulty there may be in accounting for the filence of the other evangelifts, and of Sc. Paul alfo, on this fuhjecSt, yet there is a greater difficulty in fuppoling that Macthew did not give a true narration of what had happened at the crucifixion. If there had been no fupernatural

darknefs

(' "9 )

•flarknefs, no earthquake, nor ending of the veil of the temple, no graves opened, no refurre^llon of holy men, no appearance ot them unto many — - if none of thefe things had been true, or rather, if any one of them had been falfe, what motive could Matthew, writing to the jews, have had for trumping up fuch wonderful ftories? He wrote, as every man does, with an intention to be believed ; and yet every jew he met would have ftared him in the face, and told him that he was a liar and an impoftor. What author, who, twenty years hence, ihiould addrefs to theTrench nation an hiftory of Louis XVI. would venture to af- firm, that when he was beheaded there was dark- nefs for three hours over all trance? that there was an earthquake ? that rocks were°fplit? graves opened? and dead men brought to life, who ap- peared to many perfons in Paris? — It is quite im- poffible to fuppofe, that any one would dare to publifh fuch obvious lies ; and I think it equally iinpoffible to fuppofe, that Matthew would have dared to publiili his account of what happened at the death of Jefus, had not that account bee^a generally known to be true.

LETTER

f tiid y

LETTER ¥Itr.

THE '• tale of the vd^uvreStvon-y^^' yota' fay-, *' follows that of the crucifixion.**— ^ You have accufto«-ted me fo much to this ki'i-td' of lan- guage, that when I find you fpeaking of a' tale, t have no doubt of meeting with a truth. From the apparent difagreemend in tlie accounts which the evangelifts have given of foine circumftances refpe^ing therefurredtieri, you remark— *' If the^ writers of thefe books ha'd gone into any court of juftice to provo an alibi, ffor it i« of the nature of an alibi that is here attempted to be proved, namely, the abfence of a dead body by fupernatu- ral means,) and had given tlieir evidetice in the fame contradi6lory manner as it is here given, they would have been in- danger of having their ears cropt for perjury, and would have juftly de- f^rved it"*'* — "hard words, or hanging," it feems, if you had been their judge. Now, t maintain, that it is the brevity with which the account of the refurre6tion is given by all the evangelifts, which has occaiioned the feeming confulion ; and that this confufion would have been cleared up at once, if the witnefTes of the refurre61:ion had been exa- mined before any judicature. As we cannot have this viva voce examination of all the witnefles, let us call up and queftion the evangelifts as wit- nefles to a fiipernatural alibi. — Did you find the

fepulchre

t 121 )

-ifepulchre of Jefus empty ? One of us a<^ualty faw it empty, and the reft heard, from eyc-wit- nefles, that it was empty. — Did you, or any of the followers of Jefus, take away the dead body from the fepulchre? All anfwer, No. — Did the foldiers, or the jews, take away the body ? No.— How are you certain of that ? Becaufe we faw the body when it was dead, and we faw it afterwards when it was alive.— How do you know that what you faw was the body of Jefus ? We had been long and intimately acquainted with Jefus, and ^knew his perfon perfc6lly.^-Were you not af- frighted, and miftook a fpirit for a body? Np; the body had fleih and bones ; we are fure that it was the very body which hung upon the crofs for we faw the wound in the fide, and the print of the nails in the hands and feet. — And all this you are ready to fwear ? We are ; and we are ready to die alfo, fooner than we will deny any .part of it. — This is the teftimony which all tli€ evangelifts would give, in whatever court of juf- tke they were examined ; and this, I apprehend, ■would fufficiently eftablifh the alibi of the dead body from the fepulchre by fupernatural means.

But as the refurredlion of Jefus is a point which you attack with all your force, I will examine minutely the principal of your objedions ; I do not think them deferving of this notice, but they iliall have it. The book of Matthew, you fay, *' ftates that when Chrift was put in the fepu-1* chre, the jews applied to Pilate for a watch or a ^uard to be placed over the fepulchre, to prevem *he body being flolen by the difciples." — I admit L this

tills account, but it is not the whole of the ac- count: you have omitted the reafon for the re- ^ueil: which the chief priefts made to Pilate — *' Sir, we remember that that deceiver faid, while he was yet alive, after three days I will rife^gain.'* - — It is material to lemark this; for at the very time that Jefus predl6ted his reiiirre^lion, he pre- didled alfo his crucifixion, and all that he fhould ■fuffer from the malice of thofe very men who now applied to Pilate for a guard. — *'• He fhewed to his difclples, how that he mufl: go unto Jerufalem^ and fuffer many things of the elders, and chief 'priefts, and fcribes, and be killed, and be raifed again the third day." (Matt. xvi. 21.) Thefe men knew full well that the firfl: part of this pre- <]i6tion had been accurately fultiiled through their malignity ; and, inflead of repenting of what they had done, they were (o infatuated as to fuppofe, that by a guard of foldiers they could prevent the completion of the fecond. — The other books, you obferve, *' fay nothing about this application, nor about the fealing of the ftone, nor the guard, nor the watch, and according to thefe accounts there ^vere none." — This, fir, I deny. The other books do not fay that there were none of thefe things ; how often muft I repeat, that omiffions -are not contradi6tions, nor filence concerning a fa 61 a denial of it?

You go on — " The book of Matdiew conu- nues its account, that at the end of the fabbath, as it began to dawn, towards the firfl: day of the iweck, came Mary Magdalene and the other Mary to fee the Jepulchre. Mark fays it was

fun-

( ^23 ) ^un-rifing, and John fays it was dark. Luke fayS it was IVIary Magdalene, and Joanna, TindMary the mother of James^ and other women, that eame to the iepulchre. And John fays that Mary Magdalene came alone. So well do they agree ahout their tird evidence ! they all appear, how^ ever, to have known moil about Mary Magdalene ,; ihe was a woman of a large acquaintance, and it was not an ill conje^iure that ihc might be upon pile iiroll." — This is a long paragraph ; I will anfwer it diiiincily : — iirfl:, there is no difagree- ;iient of evidence with refpecf to the tibue when the women wen: to the fepulchre ; all the evange-- lifis agree as to the day on which they went; and, as to the time of the day, it was early in the morning ; what court of juftice in the world would {et afide this evidence, as infufficient to fubftan- tiate the fa£t of the women's having gone to the fepulchre, becaufe the witnefles differed as to the degree of twilight which lighted them on their way ? Secondly, there is no difagreement of evi- dence with refpect to the perfons who w^ent to th^^ fepulchre. John ftates that Mary Magdalene went to the fepulchre ; but he does not ftate, as you make him ftatCy that Mary Magdalene went alone ; ihe might, for any thing you have proved, or can prove, to the contrary, have been accom- panied by all the womenir.entioned by Luke : — is it an unufual thing to diffinguifh byname a principal peri'on going on a viiit, or an embaffy, without mentioning his fubordinate attendants? Thirdly, in oppofrdon to your infihuation that Mary Mag- dalene was a common wornan, I wifh it to be

conlider^d

ccnfidered ^^hether there is any fcripturai auth®^ rity for that imputation ; and whether there be or not, I muft contend, that a repentant and reformed woman ought not to be efteemed an improper wit- nefs of a fa(£t. The conje6ture, which you adopt concerning her, is nothing lefs than an illiberal^ indecent, unfounded calumny, not excufabie iix the mouth of a libertine, and intolerable in your's.: The book of Matthew, you obferve, goes on to fay — '* And behold, there was an earthquake, for the angel of the Lord defcended fr.era heaven^ and came and rolled back the flone from the door, SLudfat upon it. :— but the other books fay nothing about any earthquake,"— what then? does their filen^e prove that there was none? — -" nor about the angel rolling back the flone and fitting upon it ;" — what then? does their fiknee prove that the. flone was not rolled back by an angel ; and that he did not fit upon it? — *' and according to their accounts there was no angel fitting there."— This conclufion I muft deny ; their accounts do not fay there was no angel littlog there, at the tim€ that Matthew fays he fat upon the fion€. They do not deny the fa£l, they fimply omit the mention of it ; and they all take notice that the women, when they arrived at the fepulchre, found ihe ftone rolled away : hence it is evident that the ftone was rolled away before the women ar- rived at the fepulchre ; and the other evangelifts, giving an account of what happened to the wo- men wJicn they reached the fepulchre, hav€ mere- ly omitted giving an account of a tranfaclion pre- vious to their arrival. Where is the contradic- tion?

( 125 )

tlon? What fpace of time intervened between the rolling away the ftone, and the arrival of the women at the fepulchre, Is no wliere mentioned ; but it certainly was long enough for the angel to have changed his poiition; from iltting on the outhde he might have entered Into the fepulchre; and' another angel might have made his appear- ance; or, from the tirft, there might have been two, one on the outfide rolling away the ftone, and the odier within. Luke, you lell us, " fays there were two, and they were both {landing; and John fays there were two, and both fitting." — It is impoffible, I grant, even for an angel to be fitting and (landing at the fame inftant of time,; but Luke and John do not fpeak of the fame In- flant, nor of th.e fame, appearance — Luke fpeaks of die appearance to all the women; and John of the appearance to IMai y Magdalene alone, who tarried weeping at the fepulchre after Peter and John had left it. But I forbear miaking any more minute rem.arks on (lill minuter objeilions, all of which are grounded on this mi (lake — that the angels were feen at one panic idar time, in one particular-pkce, and by the fame individuals.

As tayour inference, from Matrhew's uling the expreffion unto this day ^ " that the book muffc have been manufadlured after a lapfe of fome generations at leafl," it cannoc be admitted againflthe pontive teflimony of all antiquitv. That the ftory about flealing away the body was a bungling flory, I readily admiit; but the chief priells are anfvverable for It; it is not worthy eidier your notice or m.ine, except as it is a L % ' flio-iig^

C 126 )

{Irong inftance to you, to me, ami to every body, how far prejudice may iTiiflead the under- ftanding.

You come to that part of the evidence in thofe books that rcfjie^t, you fay, " the pretended ap- pearances of Chrift after his pretended refurrec- tion; the writer of the book of Matthew relates, that the angel that was fitting on the ftone at the mouth of the fepulchre, faid to the two Marys, (chap, xxviii. 7.) Behold, Chrift is gone before you iiiito Galilee, there fhall you fee him." The gofpel, frr, was prea,ched to poor and illiterate men : and it is the duty of priefts to preach it to them in all its purity ; to guard them againft the errors of miftaken, or the de- figns of wicked men. You then, who can read your Bible, turn to this paiTage, and you will £nd that the angel did not fay, '' Behold, Chrift is gone before you into Galilee,"- — but, " Be- hold, /ie goeth before you into Galilee." T ■know not what Bible you made ufe of in this- quotation; none that 1 have feen render the ori- ginal word by — he is gone : — it might be proper- ly rendered, he will go ; and it is literally ren- dered, he is going. This phrafe does not imply ^n immediate fetting out for Galilee: when a man has fixed upon a long journey to London or Bath, it is common enough to fay, he is going to London or Bath, though the time of his going may be at foaie diftance. Even your dabbing Matthew could not be guilty of fuch a blunder as to make the angel fay he is gone ; for he tells \J5 immediately afterwards, drat, as the woii^n

were

•C 127 )

were departing from the fepulchre to tell his dif- ciples what the angels had faid to them, Jefus himfelf met them. Now how Jefus could be gone into Galilee, and yet meet the women at Jerufalem, 1 leave you to explain, for the blun- der is not chargeable upon Matthew. I excuib your introducing the expreflion — " then the ele- ven dlfciples went away into Galilee," for the quotation is rightly inade; but had you turned to the Greek Teftament, you would not have found in this place any word anfwering to then ; ih^ paffage is better translated — and the eleven. Chrift had faid to his difciples, (Matt. xxvi. 32.) *' After I am rifen again, I will go before you into Galilee:" — and the angel put the women

in mind of the very expreHion and prediction

he is r'lfen^ as he faid\ and behold^ he goeth' before you into Galilee-, Matthew, intent upon the appearance in Galilecj of which there were, probably, at the time he wrote, many living wit- - neffes in Judea, omits tl"ie mention of many ap- pearances taken notice of by John ; and, by this omifEon, feems to connect the day of the refur- re6lion of Jefus with that of the departure of the difciples for Galilee. You feem to think this a great difficulty, and incapable of folution ; for you fay — '' It is not poffible, unlefs we ad- mit thefe difciples the right of wilful lying, that the writers of iat^Q books could be any of the eleven perfons called difciples; for if, according to Matrhew, the eleven went into Galilee to . meet Jefus in a mountain, by his own appoint- ment, on the fame day that he is faid to have

rife%

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rllen, Luke and John muft have been two of that eleven ; yet the writer of Luke fays expreiHy, and John implies as much, that the meeting was ithat fame day in a houfe at Jerufalera: and oil the other hand, if, according to Luke and John, the eleven were afTembled in a houfe at Jerufa-- "lem, Matthew muft have been one of that eleven ; yet Matthew fays, the meeting was in a moun- tain in Galilee, and confequently the evidence given, in. thofe books deflroys each other.'' When J was a. young man in the univerfity, \ ' was pretty. much accuftomed to drawing of con-- fequences; but my Alma Afater did iiot fufFer me to draw confequences after your manner; ilie taught me — that a falfe poikion muft end in an abfurd conclufion, I have ihewn your po- {ition — 'that the. elevea went into Galilee on the day of the refurrec^ion— to be falfe, and hence your confequence — that the evidence given in thefe two books dellroys each other — 'is not to be adr- mitted. You ought, moreover, to have confi- dered, that the feaft of unleavened bread, which, immediately followed the day on which the paiTover was. eaten, lafted feven days ; and that .ftrict obfervers of the law did not think them- f elves at liberty to leave Jerufalem till that feaft was ended ; and this is a collateral proof that the difciples did not go to Galilee on the day of; the refurre6lion. .

You certainly have read the New Teftament, . but not, I think, with great attention, or you would have known who the apoflies were. In this place you reckon Luke as one of the eleven,

and .

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and in other places you fpeak of him as an eye- witnefs of the things he relates; you ought to have known that Luke was no apoftle ; and he tells you himfelf, in the preface to his gofpel, that he wrote from the teftimony of others. If this miftake proceeds from your ignorance, you are not a fit perfon to write comments on the Bible; if from