and cattle after their kind, and every thing that creepeth. upon the earth after his kind: and God saw that it was good.

26. And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.

27. So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him: male and female created he them.

28. And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the foul of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon

the earth.

29. And God said, Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed: to you it shall be for meat.

30. And to every beast of the earth, and to every fowl of the air, and to every thing that creepeth upon the earth, wherein there is life, I have given every green herb for meat: and it was so.

31. And God saw every thing that he had made, and be. hold it was very good. And the evening and the morning were the sixth day.

CHAPTER II.

1. Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them.

2. And on the seventh day God ended his work which he had made, and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had made.

3. And God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it: because that in it he had rested from all his work, which God created and made.

4. These are the generations of the heavens and of the earth, when they were created; in the day that the Lord God made the earth and the heavens,

5. And every plant of the field, before it was in the earth, and every herb of the field, before it grew; for the Lord God had not caused it to rain upon the earth, and there was not a man to till the ground.

6. But there went up a mist from the earth, and watered the whole face of the ground.

7. And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.

8. And the Lord God planted a garden eastward of Eden; and there he put the man whom he had formed.

9. And out of the ground inade the Lord God to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight, and good for food; the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of knowledge of good and evil.

10. And a river went out of Eden to water the garden; and from thence it was parted, and became into four heads.

11. The name of the first is Pison: that is it which compasseth the whole land of Havilah, where there is gold.

12. And the gold of that land is good: there is bdellium and the onyx-stone.

13. And the name of the second river is Gibon: the same is it that compasseth the whole land of Ethiopia.

14. And the name of the third river is Heddekel: that is it which goeth toward the east of Assyria. And the fourth river is Euphrates.

15. And the Lord God took the man, and put him into he garden of Eden, to dress it and to keep it.

16. And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat:

17. But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it; for in the day that thou eatest thereof, thou shalt surely die.

18. And the Lord God said, it is not good that the man should be alone: I will make him an help meet for him.

19. And out of the ground the Lord God formed every beast of the field, and every fowl of the air, and brought them unto Adam, to see what he would call them: and whatsoever Adam called every living creature, that was the name thereof.

20. And Adam gave names to all cattle, and to the fowl of the air, and to every beast of the field; but for Adam there was not found an help meet for him.

21. And the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept; and he took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh instead thereof.

22. And the rib which the Lord God had taken from man, made he a woman, and brought her unto the man. 23. And Adam said, this is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called woman, because she was taken out of man.

24. Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mo

ther, and shall cleave unto his wife; and they shall be one flesh.

25. And they were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed.

These two chapters are called the Mosaic account of the creation; and we are told, nobody knows by whom, that Moses was instructed by God to write that account.

It has happened that every nation of people has been world-makers; and each makes the world to begin his own way, as if they had all been brought up, as Hudibras says, to the trade. There are hundreds of different opinions and traditions how the world began. My business, however, in this place, is only with those two chapters.

I begin then by saying, that those two chapters, instead of containing, as has been believed, one continued account of the creation written by Moses, contain two different and contradictory stories of a creation, made by two dif ferent persons, and written in two different styles of expression. The evidence that shews this is so clear when attended to without prejudice, that, did we meet with the same evidence in any Arabic or Chinese account of a creation, we should not hesitate in pronouncing it a forgery. I proceed to distinguish the two stories from each other. The first story begins at the first verse of the first chapter, and ends at the end of the third verse of the second chapter; for the adverbial conjunction, THUS, with which the second chapter begins (as the reader will see). connects itself to the last verse of the first chapter, and those three verses belong to, and make the conclusion of the first story.

The second story begins at the fourth verse of the second chapter, and ends with that chapter. Those two stories have been confused into one, by cutting off the three last verses of the first story, and throwing them into the second chapter.

I go now to shew that those stories have been written by two different persons.

From the first verse of the first chapter to the end of the third verse of the second chapter, which makes the whole of the first story, the word GOD is used without any epithet or additional word conjoined with it, as the reader will see: and this style of expression is invariably used throughout the whole of this story, and is repeated no less than thirty-five times, viz. "In the beginning GoD created the heavens and the earth, and the spirit of GOD inoved on the face of the waters, and GOD said, Let there be light, and GOD saw the light," &c. &c.

But immediately from the beginning of the fourth verse of the second chapter, where the second story begins, the style of expression is always the Lord God, and this style of expression is invariably used to the end of the chapter, and is repeated eleven times; in the one it is always GoD, and never the Lord God; in the other it is always the Lord God, and never GOD. The first story contains thirty-four verses, and repeats the single word GoD thirty-five times. The second story contains twenty-two verses, and repeats the compound word Lord-God eleven times; this difference of style, so often repeated, and so uniformly continued, shews, that those two chapters, containing two different stories, are written by different persons: it is the same in all the different editions of the Bible, in all the languages I have seen.

Having thus shewn, from the difference of style, that those two chapters divided, as they properly divide themselves, at the end of the third verse of the second chapter, are the work of two different persons, I come to shew, from the contradictory matters they contain, that they cannot be the work of one person, and are two different sto

riés.

It is impossible, unless the writer was a lunatic, without memory, that one and the same person could say, as is said in the 27th and 28th verses of the first chapter-"So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them: and God blessed them, and God said unto them. Be fruitful and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowls of the air, and over every living thing that moveth on the face of the earth." It is, I say, impossible that the same person, who said this, could afterwards say, as is said in the second chapter, ver. 5, " and there was not a man to till the ground;" and then proceed in the seventh verse to give another account of the making a man for the first time, and afterwards of the making a woman out of his rib.

Again, one and the same person could not write, as is written in the 29th verse of the first chapter; "Behold I (God) have given you every herb bearing seed, which is on t e face of all the earth; and every tree, in which is the fruit of a tree bearing seed, to you it shall be for meat," and afterwards say, as is said in the second chapter, that the Lord God planted a tree in the midst of a garden, and forbad man to eat thereof.

Again, one and the same person could not say, "Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them, and on the seventh day God ended his work which he had made;" and shortly after set the Creator to

work again, to plant a garden, to make a man and a woman, &c. as is done in the second chapter.

Here are evidently two different stories contradicting each other. According to the first, the two sexes, the male and the female, were made at the same time. According to the second, they were made at different times: the man first, the woman afterwards. According to the first story, they were to have dominion over all the earth. According to the second, their dominion was limited to a garden. How large a garden it could be, that one man and one woman could dress and keep in order, I leave to the prosecutor, the judge, the jury, and Mr. Erskine, to determine. The story of the talking serpent, and its tête-à-tête with Eve: the doleful adventure, called the Fall of Man: and how he was turned out of this fine garden, and how the garden was afterwards locked up and guarded by a flaming sword (if any one can tell what a flaming sword is), belong altogether to the second story. They have no connection with the first story. According to the first there was no garden of Eden: no forbidden tree: the scene was the whole earth, and the fruit of all trees was allowed to be eaten.

In giving this example of the strange state of the Bible. it cannot be said I have gone out of my way to seek it, for I have taken the beginning of the book; nor can it be said. I have made more of it, than it makes of itself. That there are two stories is as visible to the eye, when attended to, as that there are two chapters, and that they have been written by different persons, nobody knows by whom. If this, then, is the strange condition the beginning of the Bible is in, it leads to a just suspicion, that the other parts are no better, and consequently it becomes every man's duty to examine the case. I have done it for myself, and am satisfied that the Bible is fabulous.

Perhaps I shall be told in the cant-language of the day. as I have often been told by the Bishop of Llandaff and others, of the great and laudable pains, that many pious. and learned men have taken to explain the obscure, and reconcile the contradictory, or as they say, the seemingly contradictory passages of the Bible. It is because the Bi. ble needs such an undertaking, that is one of the first causes to suspect it is NOT the word of God: this single. reflection, when carried home to the mind, is in itself a volume.

What! does not the Creator of the Universe, the Fountain of all Wisdom, the Origin of all Science, the Author of all Knowledge, the God of Order and of Harmony, know how to write? When we contemplate the vast economy of the creation; when we behold the unerring regularity of the visible solar system, the perfection with which