of mankind in the first ages of the world-the depravity of the Antedeluvians and the destruction of the world-Read the tenth chapter of Genesis. It may 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 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 Asur, and Elam, and Lud, and Madia, 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 au

thority alone; but you may as reasonably attribute cruelty and murder to the judge of the land in condemning criminals to death, as butchery and massacre to Moses in executing the command of God.

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The Midianites, through the counsil 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 Baalpeor :-for this offence, twenty-four thousand Isrealites 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 tresspass 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 love 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 wrath 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 subtility, and of all mischief, thou child of the devil, thou enemy of all righteousnesss, 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 practiced in former times, and still practiced in countries where the benignity of 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 show 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 decissive 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

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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 objections 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 Og 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 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, hoe. 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 in Shetland, I could, on proper testimony, have believed in the existence of the Linconshire 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 endeavor 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. 66 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 on the subject. The book called Fleta is anonymous; but it is not on that account without authority. Domesday book 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 facts 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 by Solomon, of the acts of Manasseh, and others which might be mentioned. If any one, having aecess 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 a 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 those books of no authority? On the contrary, they are admitted at present, and will be received in after ages, as authoritative records of the civil, and 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 positive proof, when or by whom these, and some other books of holy scripture, were written, as to exclude all possibility of doubt and cavil. There is no necessity, indeed, to allow this. The chronological and historical difficulties, which others before you have produced, have been answered, and as to the greatest part of them, so well answered, that I will not waste the reader's time by entering into a particular examination of them.

You make yourself merry with what you call the tale of the sun standing still upon mount Gibeon, and the moon in the valley of Ajalon; and you say that "the story detects itself, because there is not a nation in the world that knows any thing about it." How can you expect that there should, when there is not a nation in the world whose annals reach this era by many hundred years. It happens, however, that you are probably mistaken as to the fact: a confused tradition concerning this miracle, and a similar one in the time of Ahaz, when the sun went back ten degrees, has been preserved amongst one of the most ancient nations, as we are informed by one of the most ancient historians. Herodotus, in his Euterpe, speaking of the Egyptian priests, says-" They told me that the sun had four times deviated from his course, having twice risen

but believe what the captains of thousands, and the believed at the time when these things happene more hear of your objections to the Bible, from i of Moses.

You produce two or three other objections resp of the first five books of the Bible. I cannot stop commentator answers them in a manner suited to even a mere English reader. You calculate to the inch, the length of the iron bed of Og the king o not prove that the bed was too big for the body, would have been lost in it. You make no allow royal bed; nor ever suspect that king Og might with the same kind of vanity, which occupied the der, when he ordered his soldiers to enlarge the s they might give the Indians, in succeeding ages, a digious stature of a Macedonian. In many par speak much in commendation of science. I je commendation you can give it; but you speak o. gives room to believe that you are a great profici case, I would recommend a problem to your at which you will readily allow to be far above the versant only, as you represent priests and bishops The problem is this-To determine the height to preserving its similarity of figure, may be augmen by its own weight. When you have solved this " whether the bed of the king of Basan was too big the existence of a man twelve or fifteen feet 1: things impossible. My philosophy teaches me to but it does not teach me to reject every testimo my experience: had I been in Shetland, I cou have believed in the existence of the Lincons dray-horse in London; though the oxen and 1been bigger than mastiffs.

LETTER

HAVING finished your objections Moses, you proceed to your remar its internal evidence, you endea written by Joshua. What then? anonymous and without auth not connected with your p been ashamed of it. "A I have noticed this soleci ward, and, indeed, you to your consideration called Fleta is anon rity. Domesday hundred years ag