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to me; the day of my new-birth. Sheffield is the place where I experienced this great change. Laft Tuefday was a fortnight, I went to Mr. Bramwell's, to inftru&t him in the French Language. I had been reading the Bible all the morning, and was particularly affected with fome paffages in which Pardon is promifed to the Penitent, and we are affured that whatfoever we afk in faith we fhall have. I prayed earnestly that GOD would pardon me, and was enabled to truft in his Word. I laid down the book, firmly perfuaded I fhould fee his Salvation. It then was fuggefted to my mind that GOD had faid, "The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much," and I thought I should do well to defire Mr. Bramwell to pray for my converfion. That day he dined with us at Mr. Holy's, and after dinner he defired me to return with him to his houfe. Mr. H. Taylor joined us, and after some converfation on indifferent fubjects, at least, indifferent to me, Mr. Taylor propofed prayer before he left us. I fell on my knees expecting to receive the Bleffing I fo much defired. They began to pray for my converfion: when by degrees my heart was much affected, till I was diffolved in tears. Meff. T. and B. appeared to me to pray by the affiftance of the Holy Spirit, and the Room to be filled with the Presence of GOD. No doubt Gon was in the midst of us. I trembled as a criminal before his tribunal, and with many fighs and tears befought him to forgive my fins. He graciously looked on my diftrefs and did not fuffer me to remain long in this anguifh of mind, but in his abundant mercy spoke these kind words to my heart, "I will remember thy fins no more: I will wipe away all tears from thine eyes." I believed. I felt an affurance of pardon. My foul was filled with joy unfpeakable, and all I could fay for a feafon was, "O infinite goodnefs doft thou condescend thus to notice a wretch like me." From that moment I have rejoiced in the Lord, and his Spirit hath witneffed with my fpirit, that I am a child of GOD. I feel that GOD dwells in me and I in him. And as Chrift prayed that the faithful might be one in him, I now feel united to them as I never did before. GOD grant we may never be disunited, but that our union may be more and more intimate, in time and in Eternity. Thus prays the whole foul of him who is your fincere friend for ever, DU PONTAVICE.

LETTER II. from the Bishop of Landaff to Thom. Paine.

"BE EFORE you commence your grand attack upon the Bible, you wish to establish a difference between the evidence neceffary to prove the authenticity of the Bible, and that of any other ancient books. I am not surprised at your anxiety on this head; for all writers on the subject have agreed in thinking that St. Auftin reasoned well, when, in vindicating the genuineness of the Bible, he asked "What proofs have we that the works of Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, Varo, and other profane authors, were

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written by those whose names they bear; unless it be that this has been an opinion generally received at all times, and by all those who have lived fince these authors ?" This writer was convinced, that the evidence which established the genuinenels of any profane book, would establish that of a facred book; and I profess myself to be of the fame opinion, notwithstanding what you have advanced to the contrary.

In this part your ideas feem to me to be confused; I do not fay that you, defignedly, jumble together mathematical science and hiftorical evidence; the knowledge acquired by demonstration, and the probability derived from teftimony.-You know but of one ancient book, that authoritatively challenges universal consent and belief, and that is Euclid's Elements. If I were difpofed to make frivolous objections, I fhould fay that even Euclid's Elements had not met with univerfal confent; that there had been men, both in ancient and modern times, who had questioned the intuitive evidence of fome of his axioms, and denied the juftness of fome of his demonftrations: but, admitting the truth, I do not fee the pertinency of your observation. You are attempting to fubvert 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 falfe? The moft illiterate fcrivener in the kingdom does not want to be informed, that the examples in his Wingate's Arithmetic, are proved by a different kind of reafoning from that by which he perfuades himself to believe, that there was fuch a person as Henry VIII. or that there is such a city as Paris.

It may be of ufe, to remove this confufion in your argument, to flate, diftinctly, 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 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 Richardfon and Fielding are genuine books, though the hiftories of Clariffa and Tom Jones are fables. The history of the island of Formola is a genuine book; it was written by Pfalmanazar; but it is not an authentic book, (though it was long efteemed as fuch, and tranflated into different languages,) for the author, in the latter part of his life, took fhame to himself for having imposed on the world, and confeffed that it was a mere romance. Anfon's Voyage may be confidered as an authentic book, it, probably, containing a true narration of the principal events recorded in it; but it is not a genuine book, having not been written by Walters, to whom it is afcribed, but by Robins.

This diftinction between the genuinenefs and authenticity of a book, will affift us in detecting the fallacy of an argument, which you state with great confidence in the part of your work now under confideration, and which you frequently allude to, in other

parts,

parts, as conclufive evidence against the truth of the Bible. Your
argument stands thus
If it be found that the books afcribed to
Mofes, Jofhua, and Samuel, were not written by Mofes, Joshua,
and Samuel, every part of the authority and authenticity of these
books is gone at one.-I prefume to think otherwife. The ge-
nuineness of thefe books (in the judgment of those who say that
they were written by thefe authors) will certainly be gone; but
their authenticity may remain; they may ftill contain a true account
of real tranfactions, though the names of the writers of them
fhould be found to be different from what they are generally esteem-
ed to be.

Had, indeed, Mofes faid that he wrote the five firft books of the Bible; and had Joshua and Samuel faid that they wrote the books which are respectively attributed to them; and had it been found, that Mofes, Joshua, and Samuel, did not write these books; then, I grant, the authority of the whole would have been gone at once; thefe 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 teftimony in every other; these books would have been juftly ftigmatized, as neither genuine nor

authentic.

An history may be true, though it fhould not only be ascribed to a wrong author, but though the author of it fhould not be known; anonymous teftimony does not deftroy the reality of facts, whether natural or miraculous. Had Lord Clarendon publifhed his Hiftory 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 hiftories would have been equally certain.

As to your affertion, that the miracles recorded in Tacitus, and in other profane hiftorians, are quite as well authenticated as those of the Bible-it, being a mere affertion deftitute of proof, may be properly answered by a contrary affertion. I take the liberty then to fay, that the evidence for the miracles recorded in the Bible is, both in kind and degree, fo greatly fuperior to that for the prodigies mentioned by Livy, or the miracles related by Tacitus, as to juftify us in giving credit to the one as the work of God, and in with-holding it from the other as the effect of superftition and impofture. This method of derogating from the cre dibility of christianity, by oppofing to the miracles of our Saviour, the tricks of ancient impoftors, feems to have originated with Hierocles in the fourth century; and it has been adopted by unbe. lievers from that time to this; with this difference, indeed, that the heathens of the third and fourth century admitted that Jefus wrought miracles; but left that admiffion fhould have compelled them to abandon their gods and become chriftians, they said, that their Apollonius, their Apuleius, their Arifleas, did as great: whilft modern deifts deny the fact of Jefus having ever wrought a miracle. And they have fome reafon for this proceeding; they

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are fenfible that the Gospel Miracles are fo different, in all their circumstances, from thofe related in pagan ftory, that, if they admit them to have been performed, they muft admit Christianity to be true; hence they have fabricated a kind of deistical axiom that no human teftimony can eftablish the credibility of a miracle. This, though it has been an hundred times refuted, is ftill infifted upon, as if it's truth had never been questioned, and could not be difproved.

You "proceed to examine the authenticity of the Bible; and you begin, you fay, with what are called the five books of Mofes, Genefis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. Your intention, you profefs, is to fhew that thefe books are fpurious, and that Mofes is not the author of them; and ftill farther, that they were not written in the time of Mofes, nor till feveral hundred years afterwards; that they are no other than an attempted history of the life of Mofes, and of the times in which he is faid to have lived, and alfo of the times prior thereto, written by fome very ignorant and flupid pretender to authorfhip, feveral hundred years after the death of Mofes.”- In this paffage the utmost force of your attack on the authority of the five books of Mofes is clearly ftated. You are not the firft who has started this difficulty; it is a difficulty, indeed, of modern date; having not been heard of, either in the fynagogue, or out of it, till the twelfth century. About that time Aben Ezra, a Jew of great erudition, noticed fome paffages (the fame you have brought forward) in the five firft books of the Bible, which he thought had not been written by Mofes, but inferted by fome perfon after the death of Mofes. But he was far from maintaining, as you do, that these books were written by fome ignorant and ftupid pretender to authorship, many hundred years after the death of Mofes. Hobbes contends that the books of Mofes are fo called, not from their having been written by Mofes, but from their containing an account of Mofes. Spinoza fupported the fame opinion: and Le Clerc, a very able theological critic of the laft and prefent century, once entertained the fame notion. You fee that this fancy has had fome patrons before you; the merit or the demerit, the fagacity or the temerity of having afferted, that Mofes is not the author of the Pentateuch, is not exclufively your's. 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 fubject in his younger years; he made a public recantation of his error, by annexing to his come mentary on Genefis, a Latin differtation-concerning Mofes, the author of the Pentateuch, and his defign in compofing it. If in your future life you fhould chance to change your opinion on the fubject, it will be an honour 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 fpurious, after it had been received as genuine and authentic for many ages. It has been maintained that the hiftory of Herodotus

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Herodotus was written in the time of Conftantine: and that the Claffics are forgeries of the thirteenth or fourteenth century. Thefe extravagant reveries amufed the world at the time of their publication, and have long fince funk into oblivion. You esteem all prophets to be fuch lying rafcals, that I dare not venture to predict the fate of your book.

Before you produce your main objections to the genuineness of the books of Mofes, you affert "that there is no affirmative evidence that Mofes is the author of them."-What! no affirmative evidence! In the 11th century Maimonides drew up a confeffion of faith for the Jews, which all of them at this day admit; it confifts of only thirteen articles; and two of them have respect to Moses; one affirming the authenticity, the other the genuinenefs of his books. The doctrine and prophecy of Mofes 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 fince the deftruction 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 fhewn, from the age of Mofes to the prefent hour, in which it was not their faith. Is this no affirmative evidence ? I cannot defire a stronger. Jofephus, 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 hiftory of all ages; five belong to Mofes, which contain the original of man, and the tradition of the fucceffion of generations, down to his death, which takes in a compass of about three thousand years." Do you confider this as no affirmative evidence? Why fhould I mention Juvenal fpeaking of the volume which Mofes had written? Why enumerate a long lift of prophane authors, all bearing teftimony to the fact of Mofes being the leader and law-giver of the jewish nation? and if a lawgiver, furely, a writer of the laws. But what fays the Bible? In Exodus it fays Mofes 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 fays..." And it came to pass, when Mofes had made an end of writing the words of this law in a book, until they were finished, (this furely imports the finishing a laborious work,) that Mofes commanded the Levites which bare the ark of the covenant of the Lord, faying, "Take this book of the law, and put it in the fide of the ark of the covenant of the Lord your God, that it may be there for a witness against thee." This is faid 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 firft five. books of the Old Teftament. What poffible doubt can there be that Mofes wrote the books in queftion? I could accumulate many other paffages from the fcriptures to this purpose; but if VOL XIX, Nov. 1796.

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