part of this very work, you boast, and I hope truly, "that the man does not exist that can say I have persecuted him, or any man, or any set of men, in the American revolution, or in the French revolution; or that I have in any case returned evil for evil." I know not what kings and priests may say to this; you may not have returned to them evil for evil, because they never, I believe, did you any harm; but you have done them all the harm you could, and that without provocation.

I think it needless to notice your observation upon what you call the dramatic style of Deuteronomy; it is an ill-founded hypothesis. You might as well ask where the author of Cæsar's Commentaries got the speeches of Cæsar, as where the author of Deuteronomy got the speeches of Moses. But your argument, that Moses was not the author of Deuteronomy, because the reason given in that book for the observation of the Sabbath 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 doctors have called it by a word of the same meaning. In the fifth verse of the first chapter it is said in our Bibles, "Moses began to declare this law;" but the Hebrew words, more properly translated, import that Moses "began, or determined, to explain the law." This is no shift of mine to get over a difficulty; the words are so rendered in most of the ancient versions, and by Fagius, Vetablus, and Le Clerc, men eminently skilled in the Hebrew language. This repetition and explanation of the law, was a wise and benevolent proceeding in Moses; that those who were either not born, or were mere infants, when it was first (forty years before) delivered in Horeb, might have an opportunity of knowing it; especially as Moses their leader was soon to be taken from them, and they were about to be settled in the midst of nations given to idolatry, and sunk in vice. Now, where is the wonder, that some variations, and some additions, should be made to a law, when a legislator thinks fit to republish it many years after its first promulgation?

With respect to the Sabbath, the learned are divided in opinion concerning its origin; some contending that it was sanctified from the creation of the world; that it was observed by the patriarchs before the Flood; that it was neglected by the Israelites during their bondage in Egypt, revived on the falling of manna in the wilderness, and enjoined, as a positive law, at Mount Sinai. Others esteem its institution to have been no older than the age of Moses; and argue, that what is said of the sanctification of the Sabbath in the book of Genesis, is said by way of anticipation.

There may be truth in both these accounts. To me it is probable, that the memory of the Creation was handed down from Adam to all his posterity; and that the seventh day was, for a long time, held sacred by all nations, in commemoration of that event; but that the peculiar rigidness of its observance was enjoined by Moses to the Israelites alone. As to there being two reasons given for its being kept holy,-one, that on that day God rested from the work of creation-the other, that on that day God had given them rest from the servitude of Egypt,-I see no contradiction in the accounts. If a man, in writing the history of England, should inform his readers, that the parliament had ordered the fifth of November to be kept holy, because on that day God had delivered the nation from a bloody intended massacre by gunpowder; and if, in another part of his history, he should assign the deliverance of our Church and nation from popery and arbitrary power, by the arrival of King William, as a reason for its being kept holy; would any one contend, that he was not justified in both these ways of expression, or that we ought from thence to conclude, that he was not the author of them both?

You think "that law in Deuteronomy inhuman and brutal, which authorizes parents, the father and the mother, to bring their own children to have them stoned to death for what it is pleased to call stubbornness." You are aware, I suppose, that paternal power, amongst the Romans, the Gauls, the Persians, and other nations, was of the most arbitrary kind; that it extended to the taking away the life of the child. I do not know whether the Israelites in the time of Moses exercised this paternal power; it was not a custom adopted by all nations, but it was by many; and in the infancy of society, before individual families had coalesced into communities, it was probably very general. Now Moses, by this law, which you esteem brutal and inhuman, hindered such an extravagant power from being either introduced or exercised amongst the Israelites. This law is so far from countenancing the arbitrary power of a father over the life of his child, that it takes from him the power of accusing the child before a magistrate-the father and the mother of the child must agree in bringing the child to judgment; and it is not by their united will that the child was to be condemned to death-the elders of the city were to judge whether the accusation was true; and the accusation was to be not merely, as you insinuate, that the child was stubborn but that he was "stubborn and rebellious, a glutton and a drunkard." Considered in this light, you must allow the law to have been a humane restriction of a power improper to be lodged with any parent.

That you may abuse the priests, you abandon your subject-"Priests, you say, preach up Deuteronomy, for Deuteronomy preaches up tithes." I do not know that priests preach up Deuteronomy, more than they preach up other books of Scripture; but I do know that tithes are not preached up in Deuteronomy more than in Leviticus, in Numbers, in Chronicles, in Malachi, in the law, the history, and the prophets of the Jewish nation. You go on: "It is from this book, (xxv. 4.) they have taken the phrase, and applied it to tithing, Thou shalt not muzzle the ox when he treadeth out the corn;' and that this might not escape observation, they have noted it in the table of contents at the head of the chapter, though it is only a single verse of less than two lines. priests! priests! ye are willing to be compared to an ox for the sake of tithes!" I cannot call this, reasoning-and I will not pollute my page by giving it a proper appellation. Had the table of contents, instead of simply saying, the ox is not to be muzzled-said, tithes enjoined, or priests to be maintainedthere would have been a little ground for your censure. Whoever noted this phrase at the head of the chapter had better reason for doing it than you have attributed to them. They did it because St Paul had quoted it, when he was proving to the Corinthians, that they who preached the gospel had a right to live by the gospel; it was Paul, and not the priests, who first applied this phrase to tithing. St Paul, indeed, did not avail himself of the right he contended for; he was not, therefore, interested in what he said. The reason on which he grounds the right, is not merely this quotation, which you ridicule; nor the appointment of the law of Moses, which you think fabulous; nor the injunction of Jesus, which you despise; no, it is a reason founded in the nature of things, and which no philosopher, no unbeliever, no man of common sense, can deny to be a solid reason; it amounts to this-that "the labourer is worthy of his hire." Nothing is so much a man's own as his labour and ingenuity; and it is entirely consonant to the law of nature, that by the innocent use of these he should provide for his subsistence. Husbandmen, artists, soldiers, physicians, lawyers, all let out their labour and talents for a stipulated reward: why may not a priest do the same? Some accounts of you have been published in England; but conceiving them to have proceeded from a design to injure your character, I never read them. I know nothing of your parentage, your education, or condition in life. You may have been elevated, by your birth, above the necessity of acquiring the means of sustaining life by the labour either of hand or head: if this be the case, you ought not to despise those who have come into the

lf

world in less favourable circumstances. your origin has been less fortunate, you must have supported yourself, either by manual labour, or the exercise of your genius. Why should you think that conduct disreputable in priests, which you probably consider as laudable in yourself? I know not whether you have as great a dislike of kings as of priests; but that you may be induced to think more favourably of men of my profession, I will just mention to you that the payment of tithes is no new institution, but that they were paid in the most ancient times, not to priests only, but to kings. I could give you an hundred instances of this; two may be sufficient: Abraham paid tithes to the king of Salem, four hundred years before the law of Moses was given. The king of Salem was priest also of the Most High God. Priests, you see, existed in the world, and were held in high estimation, for kings were priests, long before the impostures, as you esteem them, of the Jewish and Christian dispensations were heard of. But as this instance 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 Pisistratus to that lawgiver, in which he says "I Pisistratus, the tyrant, am contented with the stipends which were paid to those who reigned before me; the people of Athens set apart a tenth of the fruits of their land, not for my private use, but to be expended in the public sacrifices, and for the general good."

LETTER III.

HAVING done with what you call the grammatical evidence that Moses was not the author of the books attributed to him, you come to your historical and chronological evidence; and you begin with Genesis. Your first argument is taken from the single word

Dan-being found in Genesis, when it appears from the book of Judges, that the town of Laish was not called Dan, till above three hundred and thirty years after the death of Moses: therefore the writer of Genesis, you conclude, must have lived after the town of Laish had the name of Dan given to it. Lest this objection should not be obvious enough to a common capacity, you illustrate it in the following manner: "Havre-de-Grace was called Havre-Marat in 1793; should then any dateless writing be found, in after times, with the name of Havre-Marat, it would be certain evidence that such a writing could not have been written till after the year 1793." This is a wrong conclusion. Suppose some hot

republican should at this day publish a new edition of any old history of France, and instead of Havre-de-Grace should write Havre-Marat; and that, two or three thousand years hence, a man, like yourself, should on that account, reject the whole history as spurious, would he be justified in so doing? Would it not be reasonable to tell him-that the name Havre-Marat had been inserted, not by the original author of the history, but by a subsequent editor of it; and to refer him, for a proof of the genuineness of the book, to the testimony of the whole French nation? This supposition so obviously applies to your difficulty, that I cannot but recommend it to your impartial attention. But if this solution does not please you, I desire it may be proved, that the Dan, mentioned in Genesis, was the same town as the Dan mentioned in Judges. I desire, farther, to have it proved, that the Dan mentioned in Genesis was the name of a town and not of a river. It is merely said- Abraham pursued them, the enemies of Lot, to Dan. Now a river was full as likely as a town to stop a pursuit. Lot, we know was settled in the plain of Jordan; and Jordan, we know, was composed of the united streams of two rivers, called Jor and Dan,

Your next difficulty respects its being said in Genesis, "These are the kings that reigned in Edom before there reigned any king over the children of Israel:'- this passage could only have been written (you say, and I think you say rightly) after the first king began to reign over Israel; so far from being written by Moses, it could not have been written till the time of Saul at the least." I admit this inference, but I deny its application. A small addition to a book does not destroy either the genuineness or the authenticity of the whole book. I am not ignorant of the manner in which commentators have answered this objection of Spinoza, without making the concession which I have made; but I have no scruple in admitting that the passage in question, consisting of nine verses containing the genealogy of some kings of Edom, might have been inserted in the book of Genesis, after the book of Chronicles (which was called in Greek by a name importing that it contained things left out in other books) was written. The learned have shewn, that interpolations have happened to other books; but these insertions by other hands have never been considered as invalidating the authority of those books.

author of it was God? If you deem this a story, I am not disputing with a deistical philosopher, but with an atheistic madman. Is it a story, that our first parents fell from a paradisaical state-that this earth was destroyed by a deluge-that Noah and his family were preserved in the ark-and that the world has been repeopled by his descendants?

It may

Look into a book so common that almost every body has it, and so excellent that no person ought to be without it-Grotius on the Truth of the Christian Religion-and you will there meet with abundant testimony to the truth of all the principal facts recorded in Genesis. The testimony is not that of Jews, Christians, and priests; it is the testimony of the philosophers, historians, and poets of antiquity. The oldest book in the world is Genesis; and it is remarkable, that those books which come nearest to it in age, are those which make, either the most distinct mention of, or the most evident allusion to, the facts related in Genesis concerning the formation of the world from a chaotic mass, the primeval innocence and subsequent fall of man, the longevity of mankind in the first ages of the world, the depravity of the antediluvians, and the destruction of the world.Read the tenth chapter of Genesis. appear to you to contain nothing but an uninteresting narration of the descendants of Shem, Ham, and Japheth; a mere fable, an invented absurdity, a downright lie. No, Sir, it is one of the most valuable, and the most venerable records of antiquity. It explains what all profane historians were ignorant of -the origin of nations. Had it told us, as other books do, that one nation had sprung out of the earth they inhabited; another from a cricket or a grasshopper; another from an oak; another from a mushroom; another from a dragon's tooth: then indeed it would have merited the appellation you, with so much temerity, bestow upon it. Instead of these absurdities, it gives such an account of the peopling the earth after the deluge, as no other book in the world ever did give; and the truth of which all other books in the world, which contain any thing on the subject, confirm. The last verse of the chapter says-" These are the families of the sons of Noah, after their generations, in their nations: and by these were the nations divided in the earth, after the flood." It would require great learning to trace out, precisely, either the actual situation of all the countries in which these founders of empires settled, or to ascertain the extent of their dominions. This, however, has been done by various authors, to the satisfaction of all competent judges; so much at least to my satisfaction, that had I no other proof of the authenticity of Genesis, I should consider this as sufficient. But, without the aid of learning, any man who can barely read his Bible,

and has but heard of such people as the Assyrians, the Elamites, the Lydians, the Medes, the Ionians, the Thracians, will readily acknowledge that they had Assur, and Elam, and Lud, and Madai, and Javan, and Tiras, grandsons of Noah, for their respective founders; and knowing this, he will not, I hope, part with his Bible as a system of fables. I am no enemy to philosophy; but when philosophy would rob me of my Bible, I must say of it, as Cicero said of the twelve tables,This little book alone exceeds the libraries of all the philosophers, in the weight of its authority, and in the extent of its utility.

From the abuse of the Bible you proceed to that of Moses, and again bring forward the subject of his wars in the land of Canaan. There are many men who look upon all war (would to God that all men saw it in the same light!) with extreme abhorrence, as afflicting mankind with calamities not necessary, shocking to humanity, and repugnant to reason. But is it repugnant to reason that God should, by an express act of his providence, destroy a wicked nation? I am fond of considering the goodness of God as the leading principle of his conduct towards mankind, of considering his justice as subservient to his mercy. He punishes individuals and nations with the rod of his wrath; but I am persuaded that all his punishments originate in his abhorrence of sin, are calculated to lessen its influence, and are proofs of his goodness; inasmuch as it may not be possible for Omnipotence itself to communicate supreme happiness to the human race, whilst they continue servants of sin. The destruction of the Canaanites exhibits to all nations, in all ages, a signal proof of God's displeasure against sin; it has been to others, and it is to ourselves, a benevolent warning. Moses would have been the wretch you represent him, had he acted by his own authority alone; but you may as reasonably attribute cruelty and murder to the judges of the land, in condemning criminals to death, as butchery and massacre to Moses in executing the command of God.

The Midianites, through the counsel of Balaam, and by the vicious instrumentality of their women, had seduced a part of the Israelites to idolatry-to the impure worship of their infamous god Baal-peor: for this offence, twenty-four thousand Israelites had perished in a plague from heaven, and Moses received a command from God " to smite the Midianites who had beguiled the people." An army was equipped, and sent against Midian. When the army returned victorious, Moses and the princes of the congregation went to meet it; " and Moses was wroth with the officers." He observed the women captives, and he asked with astonishment, "Have ye saved all the women alive? Behold, these caused the children of Israel, through the

counsel of Balaam, to commit trespass against the Lord in the matter of Peor, and there was a plague among the congregation." He then gave an order that the boys and the women should be put to death, but that the young maidens should be kept alive for themselves. I see nothing in this proceeding, but good policy combined with mercy. The young men might have become dangerous avengers of what they would esteem their country's wrongs; the mothers might have again allured the Israelites to the love of licentious pleasures and the practice of idolatry, and brought another plague upon the congregation; but the young maidens, not being polluted by the flagitious habits of their mothers, nor likely to create disturbance by rebellion, were kept alive. You give a different turn to the matter; you say, "that thirty-two thousand women-children were consigned to debauchery by the order of Moses." Prove this, and I will allow that Moses was the horrid monster you make him. Prove this, and I will allow that the Bible is what you call it—“ a book of lies, wickedness, and blasphemy." Prove this, or excuse my warmth if I say to you, as Paul said to Elymas the sorcerer, who sought to turn away Sergius Paulus from the faith, "O full of all subtilty, and all mischief, thou child of the devil, thou enemy of all righteousness, wilt thou not cease to pervert the right ways of the Lord?"- I did not, when I began these letters, think that I should have been moved to this severity of rebuke by any thing you could have written; but when so gross a misrepresentation is made of God's proceedings, coolness would be a crime. The women-children were not reserved for the purposes of debauchery, but of slavery; a custom abhorrent from our manners, but every where practised in former times, and still practised in countries where the benignity of the Christian religion has not softened the ferocity of human nature. You here admit a part of the account given in the Bible respecting the expedition against Midian to be a true account; it is not unreasonable to desire that you will admit the whole, or shew sufficient reason why you admit one part and reject the other. I will mention the part to which you have paid no attention. The Israelitish army consisted but of twelve thousand men, a mere handful when opposed to the people of Midian; yet when the officers made a muster of their troops after their return from the war, they found that they had not lost a single man! This circumstance struck them as so decisive an evidence of God's interposition, that out of the spoils they had taken they offered " an oblation to the Lord, an atonement for their souls." Do but believe what the captains of thousands, and the captains of hundreds, believed at the time when these things happened, and we shall never

more hear of your objection to the Bible, from its account of the wars of Moses.

You produce two or three other objections respecting the genuineness of the first five books of the Bible. I cannot stop to notice them every commentator answers them in a manner suited to the apprehension of even a mere English reader. You calculate, to the thousandth part of an inch, the length of the iron bed of Ôg the king of Basan ; but you do not prove that the bed was too big for the body, or that a Patagonian would have been lost in it. You make no allowance for the size of a royal bed; nor ever suspect that king Og might have been possessed with the same kind of vanity which occupied the mind of King Alexander, when he ordered his soldiers to enlarge the size of their beds, that they might give to the Indians, in succeeding ages, a great idea of the prodigious stature of a Macedonian. In many parts of your work you speak much in commendation of science. I join with you in every commendation you can give it; but you speak of it in such a manner as gives room to believe, that you are a great proficient in it. If this be the case, I would recommend a problem to your attention, the solution of which you will readily allow to be far above the powers of a man conversant only, as you represent priests and bishops to be, in hic, hæc, hoc. The problem is this,-To determine the height to which a human body, preserving its similarity of figure, may be augmented, before it will perish by its own weight. When you have solved this problem, we shall know whether the bed of the king of Basan was too big for any giant; whether the existence of a man twelve or fifteen feet high is in the nature of things impossible. My philosophy teaches me to doubt of many things; but it does not teach me to reject every testimony which is opposite to my experience. Had I been born in Shetland, I could, on proper testimony, have believed in the existence of the Lincolnshire ox, or of the largest dray-horse in London; though the oxen and horses in Shetland had not been bigger than mastiffs.

LETTER IV.

HAVING finished your objections to the genuineness of the books of Moses, you proceed to your remarks on the book of Joshua ; and from its internal evidence you endeavour to prove, that this book was not written by Joshua. What then? what is your conclusion?" That it is anonymous, and without authority." Stop a little; your conclusion is not connected with your premises; your friend Euclid would have been ashamed of it. "Anonymous, and therefore without authority!" I have noticed this solecism before;

but as you frequently bring it forward, and, indeed, your book stands much in need of it, I will submit to your consideration another observation upon the subject. The book called Fleta is anonymous; but it is not on that account without authority. Doomsdaybook is anonymous, and was written above seven hundred years ago; yet our courts of law do not hold it to be without authority, as to the matters of fact related in it. Yes, you will say, but this book has been preserved with singular care amongst the records of the nation. And who told you that the Jews had no records, or that they did not preserve them with singular care? Josephus says the contrary; and in the Bible itself, an appeal is made to many books which have perished; such as the book of Jasher, the book of Nathan, of Abijah, of Iddo, of Jehu, of natural history of Solomon, of the acts of Manasseh, and others which might be mentioned. If any one having access to the journals of the lords and commons, to the books of the treasury, war-office, privy-council, and other public documents, should at this day write an history of the reigns of George the First and Second, and should publish it without his name, would any man, three or four hundreds or thousands of years hence, question the authority of that book, when he knew that the whole British nation had received it as an authentic book, from the time of its first publication to the age in which he lived? This supposition is in point. The books of the Old Testament were composed from the records of the Jewish nation, and they have been received as true by that nation, from the time in which they were written to the present day. Dodsley's Annual Register is an anonymous book, we only know the name of its editor; the New Annual Register is an anonymous book; the Reviews are anonymous books; but do we, or will our posterity, esteem these books as of 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 history of England and of Europe. So little foundation is there for our being startled by your assertion, "It is anonymous and without authority."

If I am right in this reasoning, (and I protest to you that I do not see any error in it,) all the arguments you adduce in proof that the book of Joshua was not written by Joshua, nor that of Samuel by Samuel, are nothing to the purpose for which you have brought them forward. These books may be books of authority, though all you advance against the genuineness of them should be granted. No article of faith is injured by allowing that there is no such positive proof, when or by whom these, and some other books of Holy Scripture, were written, as to