all its several parts revolve, and by corresponding assemblage, form a whole;-when we launch our eye into the boundless ocean of space, and see ourselves surrounded by innumerable worlds, not one of which varies from its appointed place-when we trace the power of a Creator, from a mite to an elephant; from an atom to an universe; can we suppose that the mind that could conceive such a design, and the power that executed it with incomparable perfection, cannot write without inconsistency; or that a book so written can be the work of such a power? The writings of Thomas Paine, even of Thomas Paine, need no commentator to explain, expound, arrange, and re-arrange their several parts, to render them intelligible-he can relate a fact, or write an essay, without forgetting in one page what he has written in another; certainly then, did the God of all perfection condescend to write or dictate a book, that book would be as perfect as himself is perfect: the Bible is not so, and it is confessedly not so, by the attempts to amend it.

Perhaps I shall be told, that though I have produced one instance, I cannot produce another of equal force. "One is sufficient to call in question the genuineness or authenticity of any book that pretends to be the word of God; for such a book would, as before said, be as perfect as its author is perfect.

I will, however, advance only four chapters further into the book of Genesis, and produce another example that is sufficient to invalidate the story to which it belongs.

We have all heard of Noah's Flood; and it is impossible to think of the whole human race, men, women, children, and infants (except one family) deliberately drowning, without feeling a painful sensation; that heart must be a heart of flint that can contemplate such a scene with tranquillity. There is nothing in the ancient mythology, nor in the religion of any people we know of upon the globe that records, a sentence of their God, or of their Gods, so tremendously severe and merciless. If the story be not true, we blasphemously dishonour God by believing it, and still more so, in forcing, by laws and penalties, that belief upon others. I go now to shew from the face of the story, that it carries the evidence of not being true.

I know not if the Judge, the Jury, and Mr. Erskine, who tried and convicted Williams, ever read the Bible, or know any thing of its contents, and therefore I will state the case precisely.

There were no such people as Jews or Israelites, in the time that Noah is said to have lived, and consequently there was no such law as that which is called the Jewish or Mosaic Law. It is, according to the Bible, more than six hundred years from the time the flood is said to have

happened, to the time of Moses, and consequently the time the flood is said to have happened, was more than six hundred years prior to the law, called the Law of Moses, even admitting Moses to have been the giver of that law, of which there is great cause to doubt.

We have two different epochs, or points of time; that of the flood, and that of the law of Moses; the former more than six hundred years prior to the latter. But the maker of the story of the flood, whoever he was, bas betrayed himself by blundering, for he has reversed the order of the times. He has told the story, as if the law of Moses was prior to the flood; for he has made God to say to Noah, Genesis, chap. vii. ver. 2, " Of every clean beast, thou shalt take unto thee by sevens, male and his female, and of beasts that are not clean by two, the male and his female." This is the Mosaic law, and could only be said after that law was given, not before. There was no such things as beasts clean and unclean in the time of NoahIt is no where said they were created so. They were only declared to be so, as meats, by the Mosaic law, and that to the Jews only, and there was no such people as Jews in the time of Noah. This is the blundering condition in which this strange story stands.

When we reflect on a sentence so tremendously severe, as that of consigning the whole human race, eight persous excepted, to deliberate drowning; a sentence, which represents the Creator in a more merciless character thanany of those whom we call Pagans, ever represented the Creator to be, under the figure of any of their' deities, we ought at least to suspend our belief of it, on a comparison of the beneficent character of the Creator, with the tremendous severity of the sentence; but when we see the story told with such an evident contradiction of circumstances, we ought to set it down for nothing better than at Jewish fable, told by nobody knows whom, and nobody. knows when.

It is a relief to the genuine and sensible soul of inan to find the story unfounded. It frees us from two painful sensations at once; that of having hard thoughts of the Creator, on account of the severity of the sentence; and that of sympathising in the horrid tragedy of a drowning world. He who cannot feel the force of what I mean, is not, in my estimation of character, worthy the name of a human being.

I have just said there is great cause to doubt, if the law, called the law of Moses, was given by Moses; the books, called the books of Moses, which contain among other things, what is called the Mosaic law, are put in front of the Bible, in the manner of a constitution, with a history annexed to it. IIad these books been written by Moses,

they would undoubtedly have been the oldest books in the Bible, and entitled to be placed first, and the law and the history they contain, would be frequently referred to in the books that follow; but this is not the case. From the time of Othniel, the first of the Judges (Judges, chap. iii. ver. 9.) to the end of the book of Judges, which contains a period of four hundred and ten years, this law, and those books, were not in practice, nor known among the Jews, nor are they so much as alluded to throughout the whole of that period. And if the reader will examine the 22d and 23d chapters of the 2d book of Kings, and 34th chap. 2d Chron. he will find, that no such law, nor any such books were known in the time of the Jewish monarchy, and that the Jews were Pagans during the whole of that time, and of their Judges.

The first time the law, called the law of Moses, made its appearance, was in the time of Josiah, about a thousand years after Moses was dead, it is then said to have been found by accident. The account of this finding, or pretended finding, is given, 2d Chron. chap. xxxiv. ver. 14, 15, 16, 18: "Hilkiah the priest found the book of the law of the Lord, given by Moses, and Hilkiah answered and said, to Shaphan the scribe, I have found the book of the law in the house of the Lord, and Hilkiah delivered the book to Shaphan, and Shaphan carried the book to the king, and Shaphan told the king (Josiah) saying, Hilkiah the priest hath given me a book."

In consequence of this finding, which much resembles that of poor Chatterton finding manuscript poems of Row'ley the Monk, in the Cathedral church at Bristol, or the late finding of manuscripts of Shakspeare in an old chest, (two well known frauds) Josiah abolished the Pagan religion of the Jews, massacred all the Pagan priests, though he himself had been a Pagan, as the reader will see in the 23d chap. 2d Kings, and thus established in blood, the law that is there called the law of Moses, and instituted a passover in commemoration thereof. The 22d ver. speaking of this passover, says, "Surely there was not holden. such a passover from the days of the Judges, that judged Israel, nor in all the days of the kings of Israel, nor the kings of Judah;" and the 25th ver. in speaking of this priest-killing Josiah, says, " Like unto him there was no king before him, that turned to the Lord with all his heart, and with all his soul, and with all his might, according to all the law of Moses; neither after him arose there any like him." This verse, like the former one, is a general declaration against all the preceding kings without exception. It is also a declaration against all that reigned after him, of which there were four, the whole time of whose reigning make but twenty-two years and six months,

before the Jews were entirely broken up as a nation and their monarchy destroyed. It is therefore evident that the law, called the law of Moses, of which the Jews talk so much, was promulgated and established only in the latter. time of the Jewish monarchy; and it is very remarkable, that no sooner had they established it than they were a destroyed people, as if they were punished for acting an imposition and affixing the name of the Lord to it, and mas sacreing their former priests under the pretence of religion. The sum of the history of the Jews is this-they continued to be a nation about a thousand years, they then established a law, which they called the law of the Lord given by Moses, and were destroyed. This is not opinion, but historical evidence.

Levi the Jew, who has written an answer to the Age of Reason, gives a strange account of the law called the law of Moses.

In speaking of the story of the sun and moon standing still, that the Israelites might cut the throats of all their enemies, and hang all their kings, as told in Joshua, chap. x. he says,There is also another proof of the reality of this miracle, which is, the appeal that the author of the book of Joshua makes to the book of Jasher," Is not this written in the book of Jasher? Hence," continues Levi," it is manifest that the book commonly called the boook of Jasher, existed and was well known at the time the book of Joshua was written; and pray, Sir," continues Levi, "what book do you think this was? why, no other than the law of Moses!" Levi, like the Bishop of Llandaff, and many other guess-work commentators, either forgets or does not know what there is in one part of the Bible, when he is giving his opinion upon another part.

I did not, however, expect to find so much ignorance in a Jew with respect to the history of his nation, though I might not be surprised at it in a Bishop. If Levi will look into the account given in the first chap. 2d book of Samuel of the Amalekite slaying Saul, and bringing the crown and bracelets to David, he will find the following recital, ver. 15, 17, 18: “ And David called one of the young men, and said, go near and fall upon him (the Amalekite), and he smote him that he died; and David lamented with this lamentation over Saul and over Jonathan his son; also he bade them teach the children the use of the bow-behold it is written in the book of Jasher." If the book of Jasher were what Levi calls it, the law of Moses, written by Moses, it is not possible that any thing that David said or did could be written in that law, since Moses died more than five hundred years before David was born: and on the other hand, admitting the book of Jasher to be the law called the law of Moses, that law

must have been written more than five hundred years after Moses was dead; or it could not relate any thing said or done by David. Levi may take which of these cases he pleases, for both are against him.

I am not going in the course of this letter to write a commentary on the Bible. The two instances I have produced, and which are taken from the beginning of the Bible, shew the necessity of examining it. It is a book that has been read more, and examined less, than any book that ever existed Had it come to us an Arabic or Chinese book, and said to have been a sacred book by the people from whom it came, no apology would have been inade for the confused and disorderly state it is in. The tales it relates of the Creator would have been censured, and our pity being excited for those who believed thein. We should have vindicated the goodness of God against such a book, and preached up the disbelief of it out-of reverence to him. Why then do we not act as honourably by the Creator in the one case as we would do in the other. As a Chinese book we would have examined it;-ought we not then to have examined it as a Jewish book? The Chinese are a people who have all the appearance of far greater antiquity than the Jews, and in point of permanency there is no comparison. They are also a people of mild manners and of good morals, except where they have been corrupted by European commerce. Yet we take the word of a restless bloody-minded people, as the Jews of Palestine were, when we would reject the same authority from a better people. We ought to see it is habit and prejudice that have prevented people from examining the Bible. Those of the church of England call it holy, because the Jews called it so, and because custom and certain acts of Parliament call it so, and they read it from custom. Dissenters read it for the purpose of doctrinal controversy, and are very fertile in discoveries and inventions. But none of them read it for the pure purpose of information, and of rendering justice to the Creator, by examining if the evidence it contains warrants the belief of its being what it is called. Instead of doing this they take it blindfolded, and will have it to be the word of God whether it be so or not. For my own part, my belief in the perfection of the Deity will not permit me to believe, that a book so manifestly obscure, disorderly, and contradictory, can be his work. I can write a better book myself. This disbelief in me proceeds from my belief in the Creator. I cannot pin my faith upon the say so of Hilkiah the priest, who said he found it, or any part of it; nor upon Shaphan the scribe, nor upon any priest, nor any scribe or man of the law of the present day.

As to acts of parliament, there are some that say there