proper object of adoration. With what reason can we expect, that what was done to one nation, not out of any partiality to them, but for the general good, should be done to all? That the mode of instruction, which was suited to the infancy of the world, should be extended to the maturity of its manhood, or to the imbecility of its old age? I own to you, that when I consider how nearly man, in a savage state, approaches to the brute creation, as to intellectual excellence, and when I contemplate his miserable attainments, as to the knowledge of God, in a civilized state, when he has had no divine instruction on the subject, or when that instruction has been forgotten, (for all men have known something of God from tradition) I cannot but admire the wisdom and goodness of the Supreme Being, in having let himself down to our apprehensions: in having given to mankind, in the earliest ages, sensible and extraordinary proofs of his existence and attributes; in having made the Jewish and Christian dispensations mediums to convey to all men, through all ages, that knowledge concerning himself, which he has vouchsafed to give immediately to the first. I own it is strange, very strange, that he should have made an immediate manifestation of himself in the first ages of the world; but what is there that is not strange? It is strange that you and I are here -that there is water, and earth, and air, and fire-that there is a sun, and moon, and stars-that there is generation, corruption, reproduction. I can account ultimately for none of these things, without recurring to him who made every thing. I also am his workmanship, and look up to him with hope of preservation through all eternity; I adore him for his word as well as for his work: his work I cannot comprehend, but his word hath assured me of all that I am concerned to know-that he hath prepared everlasting happiness for those who love and obey him. This you will call preachment-I will have done with it; but the subject is so vast, and the plan of providence, in my opinion, so obviously wise and good, that I can never think of it without having my mind filled with piety, admiration, and gratitude.

In addition to the moral evidence (as you are pleased to think it) against the Bible, you threaten in the progress of your work, to produce such other evidence as even a priest cannot deny. A philosopher in search of truth, forfeits with me all claim to candour and impartiality, when he introduces railing for reasoning, vulgar and illiberal sarcasm in the room of argument. I will not imitate the example you set me: but examine what you shall produce, with as much coolness and respect, as if you had given the priests no provocation; as if you were a man of the most unblemished character, subject to no prejudices, actuated by no bad designs, nor liable to have abuse retorted upon you with

success.

LETTER II.

BEFORE you commence your grand attack upon the Bible, you wish to establish a difference between the evidence necessary to prove the authenticity of the Bible, and that of any other ancient book. I am

not surprised at your anxiety on this head; for all writers on the subject have agreed in thinking that St. Austin reasoned well, when, in vindicating the genuineness of the Bible, he asked-"What proofs have we that the works of Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, Varro, and other profane authors, were written by those whose name they bear; unless it be that this has been an opinion generally received at all times, and by all those who have lived since the authors?" This writer was convinced, that the evidence which established the genuineness of any profane book, would establish that of the sacred book; and I profess myself to be of the same opinion, notwithstanding what you have advanced to the contrary.

In this part your ideas seem to me to be confused; I do not say that you, designedly, jumble together mathematical science and historical evidence; the knowledge acquired by demonstration, and the probability derived from testimony. You know but one ancient book, that authoritatively challenges universal consent and belief, and that is Euclid's Elements. If I were disposed to make frivolous objections, I should say that even Euclid's Elements had not met with universal consent; that there had been men, both in ancient and modern times, who had questioned the intuitive evidence of some of his axioms, and denied the justness of some of his demonstrations: but, admitting the truth, I do not see the pertinency of your observation. You are attempting to subvert the authenticity of the Bible, and you tell us that Euclid's Elements are certainly true. What then? Does it follow that the Bible is certainly false? The most illiterate scrivener in the kingdom does not want to be informed, that the examples in his Wingate's Arithmetic, are proved by a different kind of reasoning from that by which he persuades himself to believe, that there was such a person as Henry VIII. or that there is such a city as Paris.

It may be of use to remove this confusion in your argument, to state, distinctly, the difference between the genuineness, and the authenticity of a book. A genuine book, is that which was written by the person whose name it bears, as the author of it. An authentic book, is that which relates to matters of fact, as they really happened. A book may be genuine without being authentic; and a book may be authentic, without being genuine. The books written by Richardson and Fielding, are genuine books, though the histories of Clarissa and Tom Jones are fables. The history of the Island of Formosa is a genuine book; it was written by Psalmanazar; but it is not an authentic book (though it was long esteemed as such, and translated into different languages) for the author, in the latter part of his life, took shame to himself for having imposed on the world, and confessed that it was a mere romance. Anson's Voyage may be considered as an authentic book, it, probably, containing a true narration of the principle events recorded in it: but it is not a genuine book having not been written by Walters, to whom it is ascribed, but by Robins.

This distinction between the genuineness and authenticity of a book, will assist us in detecting the fallacy of an argument, which you state with great confidence in the part of your work now under consideration, and which you frequently allude to, in other parts, as conclusive evidence against the truth of the Bible. Your arguments stand thus if it be found that the books ascribed to Moses, Joshua, and Samuel,

were not written by Moses, Joshua, and Samuel, every part of the au thority and authenticity of these books is gone at once. I presume to think otherwise. The genuineness of those books (in the judgment of those who say that they were written by these authors) will certainly be gone; but their authenticity may remain; they may still contain a true account of real transactions, though the names of the writers of them should be found to be different from what they are generally esteemed to be.

Had, indeed, Moses said that he wrote the first five books of the Bible; and had Joshua and Samuel said that they wrote the books which are respectively attributed to them; and had it been found, that Moses, Joshua, and Samuel, did not write these books; then, I grant, the authority of the whole would have been gone at once; these men would have been found liars, as to the genuineness of the books; and this proof of their want of veracity, in one point, would have invalidated their testimony in every other; these books would have been justly stigmatized, as neither genuine nor authentic.

A history may be true, though it should not only be ascribed to a wrong author, but though the author of it should not be known; anonymous testimony does not destroy the reality of facts, whether natural or miraculous. Had lord Clarendon published his History of the Rebellion, without prefixing his name to it; or had the History of Titus Livius come down to us, under the name of Valerius Flaccus, or Valerius Maximus; the facts mentioned in these histories would have been equally certain.

As to your assertion, that the miracles recorded in Tacitus, and in other profane historians, are quite as well authenticated as those of the Bible-it, being a mere assertion, destitute of proof, may be properly answered by a contrary assertion. I take the liberty then to say, that the evidence for the miracles recorded in the Bible is, both in kind and degree, so greatly superior to that for the prodigies mentioned by Livy, or the miracles related by Tacitus, as to justify us in giving credit to the one as the work of God, and in withholding it from the other as the effect of superstition and imposture. This method of derogating from the credibility of Christianity, by opposing to the miracles of our Saviour, the tricks of ancient impostors, seems to have originated with Hierocles in the fourth century; and it has been adopted by unbelievers from that time to this; with this difference, indeed, that the heathens of the third and fourth century admitted that Jesus wrought miracles; but lest that admission should have compelled them to abandon their gods and become Christians, they said, that their Apolonius, their Apuleius, their Aristeas, did as great: whilst modern deists deny the fact of Jesus having ever wrought a miracle. And they have some reason for this proceeding; they are sensible that the gospel miracles are so different, in all their circumstances, from these related in pagan story, that, if they admit them to have been performed, they must admit Christianity to be true; hence they have fabricated a kind of deistical axiom that no human testimony can establish the credibility of a miracle.-This, though it has been an hundred times refuted, is still insisted upon, as if its truth had never been questioned, and could not be disproved.

You "proceed to examine the authenticity of the Bible; and you begin, you say, with what are called the five books of Moses, Genesis,

Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. Your intention, you profess, is to show that these books are spurious, and that Moses is not the author of them; and still farther, that they were not written in the time of Moses, nor till several hundred years afterwards; that they are no other than an attempted history of the life of Moses, and of the times in which he is said to have lived, and also of times prior thereto, written by some very ignorant and stupid pretender to authorship, several hundred years after the death of Moses."-In this passage the utmost force of your attack on the authority of the five books of Moses is clearly stated. You are not the first who has started this difficulty; it is a difficulty, indeed, of modern date; having not been heard of, either in synagogue, or out of it, till the twelfth century. About that time Aben Ezra, a Jew of great erudition, noticed some passages (the same that you have brought forward) in the five first books of the Bible, which he thought had not been written by Moses, but inserted by some person after the death of Moses. But he was far from maintaining, as you do, that these books were written by some ignorant and stupid pretender to authorship, many hundred years after the death of Moses. Hobbes contends that the Books of Moses are so called, not from their having been written by Moses, but from their containing an account of Moses. Spinoza supported the same opinion; and Le Clerc, a very able theological critic of the last and present century, once entertained the same notion. You see that this fancy has had some patrons before you; the merit or the demerit, the sagacity or the temerity of having asserted that Moses is not the author of the Pentateuch, is not entirely yours. Le Clerc, indeed, you must not boast of. When his judgment was matured by age, he was ashamed of what he had written on the subject in his younger years; he made a public recantation of his error, by annexing to his commentary on Genesis, a Latin dissertation-concerning Moses, the author of the Pentateuch, and his design in composing it. If in your future life you should chance to change your opinion on the subject, it will be an honor to your character to emulate the integrity, and to imitate the example of Le Clerc. The Bible is not the only book which has undergone the fate of being reprobated as spurious, after it had been received as genuine and authentic for many ages. It has been maintained that the history of Herodotus was written in the time of Constantine; and that the Classics are forgeries of the thirteenth or fourteenth century. These extravagant reveries amused the world at the time of their publication, and have long since sunk into oblivion. You esteem all prophets to be such lying rascals, that I dare not predict the fate of your book.

Before you produce your main objections to the genuineness of the books of Moses, you assert-"That there is no affirmative evidence that Moses is the author of them."-What? no affirmative evidence? In the eleventh century Maimonides drew up a confession of faith for the Jews, which all of them at this day admit; it consists only of thirteen articles; and two of them have respect to Moses; one affirming the authenticity, the other the genuineness of his books.-The doctrine and prophecy of Moses is true.-The law that we have was given by Moses. -This is the faith of the Jews at present, and has been their faith ever since the destruction of their city and temple; it was their faith in the time when the authors of the New Testament wrote; it was their faith

during their captivity in Babylon; in the time of their kings and judges, and no period can be shewn, from the age of Moses to the present hour, in which it was not their faith.—Is this no affirmative evidence? I cannot desire a stronger. Josephus, in his book against Appion, writes thus-"We have only two and twenty books which are to be believed as of divine authority, and which comprehend the history of all ages; five belong to Moses, which contain the original of man and the tradition of the succession of generations, down to his death, which takes in a compass of about three thousand years.' Do you consider this as no affirmative evidence? Why should I mention Juvenal speaking of the volume which Moses had written? Why enumerate a long list of profane authors, all bearing testimony to the fact of Moses being the leader and the law-giver of the Jewish nation? And if a law-giver, surely, a writer of the laws. But what says the Bible? In Exodus it says "Moses wrote all the words of the Lord, and took the book of the covenant, and read in the audience of the people."-In Deuteronomy it says-" And it came to pass, when Moses had made an end of writing the words of this law in a book, until they were finished (this surely imports the finishing of a laborious work) that Moses commanded the Levites, which bear the ark of the covenant of the Lord, saying, Take this book of the law and put it in the side of the ark of the covenant of the Lord your God, that it may be there for witness against thee." This is said in Deuteronomy, which is a kind of repetition or abridgment of the four preceding books; and it is well known that the Jews gave the name of the Law to the first five books of the Old Testament. What possible doubt can there be that Moses wrote the books in question? I could accumulate many other passages from the scriptures to this purpose; but if what I have advanced will not convince you that there is affirmative evidence, and of the strongest kind, for Moses' being the author of these books, nothing that I can advance will convince you.

What if I should grant all you undertake to prove (the stupidity and ignorance of the writer excepted)? What if I should admit that Samuel or Ezra, or some other learned Jew, composed those books from public records, many years after the death of Moses? Will it follow that there was no truth in them? According to my logic, it will only follow, that they are not genuine books; every fact recorded in them may be true, whenever, or by whomsoever, they were written. It cannot be said that the Jews had no public records; the Bible furnishes abundance of proof to the contrary. I by no means admit, that these books, as to the main part of them, were not written by Moses; but I do contend, that a book may contain a true history, though we knew not the author of it or though we may be mistaken in ascribing it to a wrong author.

The first argument you produce against Moses being the author of these books is so old, that I do not know its original author; and it is so miserable a one, that I wonder you should adopt it." These books cannot be written by Moses, because they are wrote in the third person -it is always, the Lord said unto Moses, or Moses said unto the Lord. This, you say, is the style and manner that historians use in speaking of the person whose lives and actions they are writing." This observation is true, but it does not extend far enough; for this is the style and manner not only of historians writing of other persons, but of eminent men, such as Xenophon and Josephus, writing of themselves. If General