An apology for the Bible : in a series of letters addressed to Thomas Paine, author of a book entitled, "The age of reason, part the second, being an investigation of true and of fabulous theology"

LETTER I. Sir

I nave lately met with a book of yours, entitled— “Tue Acer or Reason, Part the Second, being an Investigation of true and of fabulous Theology ;’— and I think it not inconsistent with my station, and the duty I owe to society, to trouble you and the world a. some observations on so extraordinary a per-

ormance. Extraordinary I esteem it; not from any novelty in the objections which you have produced against revealed religion, (for I find little or no novelty in them,) but from the zeal with which you labour to disseminate your opinions, and from the confidence with which you esteem them true. You perceive, by this, that I give you credit for your sincerity, how much soever I may question your wisdom, in writing in such a manner, on such a subject : and I have no reluctance in acknowledging, that you possess a considerable share of energy of language, and acuteness of investigation ; though I must be allowed to lament, that these talents have not been applied in a manner more useful to human kind, and more creditable to yourself.

I begin with your preface. You therein state— that you had long had an intention of publishiag your thoughts upon religion, but that you had ori-

+198 ginally reserved it to a later period in life. I hope there is no want of charity in saying, that it would have been fortunate for the christian world, had your life been terminated before you had fulfilled your intention. In accomplishing your purpose, you will have unsettled the faith of thousands ; rooted from the minds of the unhappy virtuous all their comfortable assurance of a future recompense ; have annihilated in the minds of the flagitious all their fears of future punishment; you will have given the reins to the domination of every passion, and have thereby contributed to the introduction of the public insecurity, and of the private unhappiness usually and almost necessarily accompanying a state of corrupt morals. é

No one can think worse of confession to a priest and subsequent absolution, as practised in the church of Rome, than I do; but I cannot, with you, attribute the guillotine-massacres to that cause. Men’s minds are not prepared, as you suppose, for the commission of all manner of crimes, by any doctrines of the church of Rome, corrupted as I esteem it, but by their not thoroughly believing even that religion. What may not society expect from those, who shall imbibe the principles of your book °

A fever, which you and those about you expected would prove mortal, made you remember with renewed satisfaction, that you had written the former part of your “ Age of Reason ;” and you know, therefore, you say, by experience, the conscientious trial of your own principles. I admit this declaration to be a proof of the sincerity of your persuasion, but I cannot admit it to be any proof of the truth of your principles. What is conscience ? Is it, as has been thought, an internal monitor implanted in us by the Supreme Being, and dictating to us, on all occasions, what is right, or wrong? Or is it merely our own judgment of the moral rectitude or turpitude of our own actions? I take the word (with Mr Locke) in the latter, as in the only intelligible sense. Now who sees not that our judgments of virtue and vice, right and wrong, are not always formed from an enlightened and dispassionate use of our reason, in the investigation of truth ? They are more generally formed from the nature of the religion we profess; from the quality of the civil government under which we live; from the general manners of the age, or the particular manners of the persons with whom we associate ; from the education we have had in our youth; from the books we have read at a more advanced period ; and from other accidental causes. Who sees not that, on this account, conscience may be conformable or repugnant to the law of nature >—may be certain, or doubtful P—and that it can be no criterion of moral rectitude, even when it is certain, because the certainty of an opinion is no proof of its being a right opinion? A man may be certainly persuaded “of an error in reasoning, or an untruth in matters of fact. It is a maxim of every law, human and divine, that a man,ought never to act in opposition to his conscience; but it will not from thence follow, that he will, in obeying the dictates of his conscience, on all occasions act right. An inquisitor, who burns Jews and heretics ; a Robespierre, who massacres innocent and harmless wo- 1* men ; a robber, who thinks that all things ought to be in common, and that a state of property is an unjust infringement of natural liberty ;—these, and a thousand perpetrators of different crimes, may all follow the dictates of conscience ; and may, at the real or supposed approach of death, remember “ with renewed satisfaction” the worst of their transactions, and experience without dismay, “ a conscientious trial of their principles.” But this their conscientious composure, can be no proof to others of the rectitude of their principles, and ought to be no pledge to themselves of their innocence, in adhering to them.

Ihave thought fit to make this remark, with a view of suggesting to you a consideration of great importance—whether you have examined calmly and according to the best*of your ability, the arguments by which the truth of revealed religion may, in the judgment of learned and impartial men, be established ? You will allow, that thousands of learned and impartial men, (1 speak not of priests, who, however, are, I trust, as learned and impartial as yourself, but of laymen of the most splendid talents)—you will allow, that thousands of these in all ages have embraced revealed religion as true. Whether these men have all been in an error, enveloped in the darkness of ignorance, shackled by the chains of superstition, whilst you and:a few others have enjoyed light and liberty, is a question I submit to the decision of your readers.

If you have made the best examination you can, and yet reject revealed religion as an imposture, I pray that God may pardon what I esteem your error.

And whether you have made this examination or not, does not become me or any man to determine. ‘That gospel, which you despise, has taught me this moderation ; it has said to me,—‘* Who art thou that judgest another man’s servant? To his own master he standeth or falleth.” I think that you are in an error; but whether that error be to you a vincible or an invincible error, I presume not to determine. I know indeed where it is said— * that the preaching of the cross is to them that perish foolishness ; and that if the gospel be hid, it is hid to them that are lost.” ‘The consequence of your unbelief must be left to the just and merciful judgment of him, who alone knoweth the mechanism and the liberty of our understandings; the origin of our opinions ; the strength of our prejudices; the excellencies and the defects of our reasoning faculties.

I shall, designedly, write this, and the following letters in a popular manner; hoping that thereby they may stand a chance of being perused by that class of readers, for whom your work seems to be particularly calculated, and who are the most likely to be injured by it. The really learned are in no danger of being infected by the poison of infidelity : they will excuse me, therefore, for having entered ‘as little as possible into deep disquisitions concerning the authenticity of the Bible. The subject has

been so learnedly, and so frequently, handled by other writers, that it does not want ({ had almost said, it does not admit) any farther proof. And it is the more necessary to adopt this mode of answering your book, because you disclaim all learned appeals to other books, and undertake to. prove, from the Bible itself, that it is unworthy of credit. I hope to show, from the Bible itself, the direct contrary. But in case any of your readers should think that you had not-put forth all your strength, by not referring for proof of your opinion to ancient authors; lest they should suspect that all ancient authors are in your favour; I will venture to affirm, that had you made a learned appeal to all the ancient books in the world, sacred or profane, christian, jewish, or pagan, instead of lessening, they would have established the credit and authority of the Bible as the word of God.

Quitting your preface, let us proceed to the work ale ; in which there is much repetition, and a defect of proper arrangement. I will follow your track, however, as nearly as I can. The first question you propose for consideration is, “ Whether there is sufficient authority for believing the Bible to be the word of God, or whether there is not?” You determine this question in the negative, upon what you are pleased to call moral evidence. You hold it impossible that the Bible can be the word of God, because it is therein said, that the Israelites destroyed the Canaanites by the express command of God: and to believe the Bible to be true, we must, you affirm, unbelieve all our belief of the moral justice of God; for wherein, you ask, could crying or smiling infants offend ? Iam astonished that so acute a reasoner should attempt to disparage the Bible, by bringing forward this exploded and frequently refuted objection of Morgan, ‘Tindal, and Bolingbroke. You profess yourself to be a Deist, and to believe that there is a God, who created the universe, and established the laws of nature, by which it is sustained in existence. You profess that from the contemplation of the works of God, you derive a knowledge of his attributes ; and you reject the Bible, because it ascribes to God things inconsistent (as you suppose) with the attributes which you have discovered to belong to him: in particular, you think it repugnant to his moral justice, that he should doom to destruction the crying or smiling infants of the Canaanites.—Why do you not maintain it to be repugnant to his moral justice, that he should suffer crying or smiling infants to be swallowed up by an earthquake, drowned by an inundation, consumed: by a fire, starved by a famine, or destroyed by a_ pestilence?

‘The word of God is in perfect harmony with his work ; crying or smiling infants are subjected to death in both. We believe that the earth, at the express command of God, opened her mouth, and swallowed up Korah, Dathan, and Abiram, with their wives, their sons, and their little ones. This you esteem so repugnant to God’s moral justice, that you spurn, as spurious, the book in which the circumstance is related. When Catania, Lima, and Lisbon, were severally destroyed by earthquakes, men with their wives, their sons, and their little ones were swallowed up alive :— why do you not spurn, as spurious, the book of nature in which this fact is certainly written, and from the perusal of which you infer the moral justice of God? You will, probably, reply, that the evils which the Canaanites suffered from the express al command of God, were different from those which are brought on mankind, by the operation of the Jaws of nature.—Different! In what—Not in the magnitude of the evil—not in the subjects of sufferance—not in the author of it—for my philosophy, at least, instructs me to believe that God not only primarily formed, but that he hath through all ages executed the laws of nature; and that he will, _ through all eternity; administer them, for the general happiness of his creatures, whether we can, on every occasion, discern that end or not.

Tam far from being guilty of the impiety of questioning the existence of the moral justice of God, as proved either by natural or revealed religion ; what I contend for is shortly this—that you have no right, in fairness of reasoning, to urge any apparent deviation from moral justice, as an argu-" ment against revealed religion, because you do not urge an equally apparent deviation from it, as an argument against natural religion: you reject the former, and admit the latter, without adverting that, as to your ebreano ns they must stand or fall together.

As to the Canaanites, it is needless to enter into any proof of the depraved state of their morals ; they were a wicked people in the time of Abraham, and they, even then, were devoted to destruction by God; but their iniquity was not then full. In the time of Moses, they were idolaters, sacrificers of their own crying or smiling infants ; devourers of human flesh; addicted to unnatural lust; immersed in the filthiness of all manner of vice. Now, I think, it will be impossible to prove, that it was a proceeding contrary to God’s moral justice, to exterminate so wicked a people. He made the Israelites the executors of his vengeance ; and, in doing this, he gave such an evident and terrible proof of his abomination of vice, as could not fail to strike the surrounding nations with astonishment and terror, and to impress on the minds of the Israelites what they were to expect, if they followed the example of the nations whom he commanded them to cut off. ‘ Ye shall not commit any of these abominations—that the land spew not you out also, as it spewed out the nations that were before you.” How strong and descriptive this language ! ‘The vices of the inhabitants were so abominable, that the very land was sick of them, and forced to vomit them forth, as the stomach disgorges a deadly poison.

I have often wondered what could be the reason that men, not destitute of talents, should be desirous of undermining the authority of revealed religion, and studious in exposing, with a malignant and illiberal exultation, every little difficulty attending the scriptures, to popular animadversion and contempt. I am not willing to attribute this strange propensity to what Plato attributed the Atheism of his time—to profligacy of manners—to affectation of singularity—to gross ignorance, assuming the semblance of deep research and superior sagacity ; —I had rather refer it to an impropriety of judgment respecting the manners, and mental acquirements, of human kind in the first ages of the world. Most unbelievers argue, as if they thought that man, in remote and rude antiquity, in the very

12 birth and infancy of our species, had the same distinct conceptions of one, eternal, invisible, incorporeal, infinitely wise, powerful, and good God, which they themselves have now. ‘This I look upon as a great mistake, and a pregnant source of infidelity. Human kind, by a long experience; by the institutions of civil society ;- by the cultivation of arts and sciences ; by, as I believe, divine instruction actually given to some, and traditionally communicated to all; is in a far more distinguished situation as to the powers of the mind, than it was in the childhood of the world. The history of man is the history of the providence of God ; who, willing the supreme felicity of all his creatures, has adapted his government to the capacity of those, who in different ages were the subjects of it. ‘The history of any one nation throughout all ages, and that of all nations in the same age, are but separate parts of one great plan which God is carrying on for the moral melioration of mankind. But who can comprehend the whole of this immense design? ‘The shortness of life, the weakness of our faculties, the inadequacy of our means of information, conspire to make it impossible for us, worms of the earth! insects of an hour! completely to understand any one of its parts. No man, who well weighs the subject, ought to’be surprised, that in the histories of ancient times many things should occur foreign to our manners, the propriety and necessity of which we cannot clearly apprehend.

It appears incredible to many, that God Almighty should have had colloquial intercourse with our first parents ; that he should have contracted a kind of friendship for the patriarchs, and entered into covenants with them ; that he should have suspended the laws of nature in Egypt; should have been so apparently partial, as to become the God and governor of one particular nation; and should have so far demeaned himself, as to give to that people a burthensome ritual of worship, statutes, and ordinances, many of which seem to be beneath the dignity of his attention, unimportant, and impolitic. Ihave conversed with many deists, and have always found that the strangeness of these things was the only reason for their disbelief of them: nothing similar has happened in their time 5 they will not, therefore, admit that these events have really taken place at any time. As well might a child, when arrived at a state of manhood, contend that he had never either stood in need of, or experienced the fostering care of a mother’s kindness, the wearisome attention of his nurse, or the instruction and discipline of. his schoolmaster. The Supreme Being selected one family from an idolatrous world; nursed it up, by various acts of his providence, mto a great nation; communicated to that nation a knowledge of his holiness, justice, mercy, power, and wisdom; disseminated them, at various times, through every part of the earth, that they might be a “‘leaven to leaven the whole lump,” that they might assure all other nations of the existence of one Supreme God, the creator and preserver of the world, the only proper object of adoration. With what reason can we expect, that what was done to one nation, not out of any partiality to them, but for the general good, should o .

be done to all? that the mode of instruction, which was suited to the infancy of the world, should be extended to the maturity of its manhood, or to the imbecility of its old age ; [ own to you, that when T consider how nearly man, in a savage state, approaches to the brute creation, as to intellectual excellence ; and when I contemplate his miserable attainments, as to the knowledge of God, in a civilized state, when he has had no divine instruction on the subject, or when that instruction has been forgotten, (for all men have known something of God from tradition,) I cannot but admire the wisdom and goodness of the Supreme Being, in having let himself down to our apprehensions ; in having given to mankind, in the earliest ages, sensible and extraordinary proofs of his existence and attributes ; in having made the jewish and christian dispensations mediums to convey to all men, through all ages, that knowledge concerning himself, which he had vouchsafed to give immediately to the first. I own it is strange, very strange, that he should have made an immediate manifestation of himself in the first ages of the world ; but what is there that is not strange? It is strange that you and I are here— that there is water, and earth, and air, and fire— that there is a sun, and moon, and stars—that there is generation, corruption, reproduction. I can account ultimately for none of these things, without recurring to him who made every thing. IT also am his workmanship, and look up to him with hope of preservation through all eternity ; I adore him for his word as well as for his work : his work I cannot comprehend, but his word hath assured me of all that 1am concerned to know—that he hath prepared everlasting happiness for those who love and obey him. ‘This you will call preachment,—I will have done with it; but the subject is so vast, and the plan of Providence, in my opinion, so obviously wise and good, that I can never think of it without having my mind filled with piety, admiration, and gratitude.

In addition to the moral evidence (as you are pleased to think it) against the Bible, you threaten, in the progress of your work, to produce such other evidence as even a priest cannot deny. A philosopher in search of truth forfeits with me all claim to candour and impartiality, when he introduces railing for reasoning, vulgar and illiberal sarcasm in the room of argument. I will not imitate the example you set me; but examine what you shall produce with as much coolness and respect, as if you had given the priests no provocation ; as if you were a man of the most unblemished character, subject to no prejudices, actuated by no bad designs, not liable to have abuse retorted upon you with success.

Letter II

Berore you commence your grand attack upon the Bible, you wish to establish a difference between the evidence necessary to prove the authenticity of the Bible, and that of any other ancient book. I am not surprised at your anxiety on this head ; for all writers on the subject have agreed in thinking that St Austin reasoned well, when, in vindicating the genuineness of the Bible, he asked, ** What proofs have we that the works of Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, Varro, and other profane authors, were 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 since these authors?” ‘This writer was convinced, that the evidence which established the genuineness of any profane book, would establish that of a sacred book: and I profess myself to be of the same opinion, notwithstanding what you have advanced to the contrary.

In this part your ideas seem to me to be confused ; I do not say, that you, designedly, jumble together mathematical science and historical evidence ; the knowledge acquired by demonstration, and the probability derived from testimony. You know but of one ancient book, that authoritatively challenges universal consent and belief, and that is Euclid’s Elements. If Iwere disposed to make frivolous ° objections, I should say that even Euclid’s Elements had not met with universal consent; that there had been men, both in ancient and modern times, who had questioned the intuitive evidence of some of his axioms, and denied the justness of some of his demonstrations ; but, admitting the truth, I do not see the pertinency of your observation. You are attempting to subvert 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 false? ‘The most illiterate scrivener in the kingdom does not want to be informed, that the examples in his Wingate’s Arithmetic, are proved by a different kind of reasoning from that by which he persuades himself to believe, that there was such a person as Henry VIII. or that there is such a city as Paris.

It may be of use, to remove this confusion in your argument, to state, distinctly, 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 Richardson and Fielding, are genuine books, though the histories of Clarissa and Tom Jones are fables. The history of the island of Formosa is a genuine book’; it was written by

Psalmanazar; but it is not an authentic book, Qe

(though it was long esteemed as such, and translat- » into different lang euages,) for the author; in the latter part of his life, took shame to himself for having imposed on the world, and confessed that it was a mere romance. Anson’s s voyage may be considered as an authentic book, it, probably, containing a true narration of the principal events recorded in it 5 but it is not a genuine book, having not been written by Walters, to whom it is ascribed, but by Robins.

This distinction between the genuineness and authenticity of a book, will assist us in detecting the fallacy of an argument, which you state with great confidence in the part of your work now under consideration, and which you peey allude to, in other parts, as conclusive evidence against the truth of the Bible. Your argument stands thus—if it be found that the books ascribed to Moses, Joshua, and Samuel, were not written by Moses, Joshua, and Samuel, every part of the authority and authenticity of these books is gone at once. I presume to think otherwise. The genuineness of these books (in the judgment of those who say that they were written by these authors) will certainly be gone; but their authenticy may remain; they may still contain a true account of real transactions, though the names of the writers of them should be found to be different from what they are generally esteemed to be.

Had, indeed, Moses said that he wrote the first five books of the Bible; and had Joshua and Samuel said that they wrote the books which are respectively attributed to them; and had it been found, that Moses, Joshua, and Samuel, did not write these books; then, I grant, the authority of the whole would have been gone at once; these men would have been found hars, as to the genuineness of the books; and this proof of their want of veracity, in one point, would have invalidated their testimony in every other: these books would have been justly stigmatized, as neither genuine nor authentic.

An history may be true, though it should not only be ascribed to a wrong author, but though the author of it should not be known ; anonymous testimony does not destroy the reality of facts, whether natural or miraculous. Had Lord Clarendon published his History 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 histories would have been equally certain.

As to your assertion, that the miracles recorded in Tacitus, and in other profane histories, are quite as well authenticated as those of the Bible—it, being a mere assertion, destitute of proof, may be properly answered by a contrary assertion. I take the liberty then to say, that the evidence for the miracles recorded in the Bible is, both in kind and degree, so greatly superior to that for the prodigies mentioned by Livy, or the miracles related by Tacitus, as to justify us in giving credit to the one as the work of God, and in withholding it from the other as the effect of superstitition and imposture. This method of derogating from the credibility of

Christianity, by opposing to the miracles of our Saviour, the tricks of ancient impostors, seems to have originated with Hierocles in the fourth century ; and it has been adopted by unbelievers from that time to this; with this difference, indeed, that the heathens of the third and fourth century admitted that Jesus wrought miracles; but lest that admission should have compelled them to abandon their gods and become Christians, they said, that their Apollonius, their Apuleius, their Aristeas, did as great: whilst modern deists deny the fact of Jesus having ever wrought a miracle. And they have some reason for this proceeding : they are sensible that the gospel miracles are so different, in all their circumstances, from those. related in pagan story, that, if they admit them to have been performed, they must admit Christianity to be true; hence they have fabricated a kind of deistical axiom— that no human testimony can establish the credibility of a miracle.—This, though it has been a hundred times refuted, is still insisted upon, as if its truth had never been questioned, and could not be disproved.

You “proceed to examine the authenticity of the Bible ; and you begin, you say, with what are called the five books of Moses—Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. Your intention, you profess, is to show that,these books are spurious, and that Moses is not the author of them ; and still farther, that they were not written in the time of Moses, nor till several hundred years afterwards ; that they are no other than an attempted history of the life of Moses, and of the times in which he is said to have lived, and also of the times prior thereto, written by some very ignorant and stupid pretender to authorship, several hundred years after the death of Moses.” In this passage the utmost force of your attack on the authority of the five books of Moses is clearly stated. - You are not the first who has started this difficulty ; it is a difficulty, indeed, of modern date ; having not been heard of, either in the synagogue, or out of it, till the twelfth century. About that time ben Ezra, a Jew of great erudition, noticed some passages, (the same which you have brought forward) in the first five books of the Bible, which he thought had not been written by Moses, but inserted by some person after the death of Moses. But he was far from maintaining, as you do, that these books were written by some ignorant and stupid pretender to authorship, many hundred years.after the death of Moses. Hobbes contends, that the books of Moses sare so called, not from their having been written by Moses, but from their containing an account of Moses.