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nites who had beguiled the people. An army was equipped, and fent against Midian. When the army returned victorious, Mofes and the princes of the congregation went to meet it; and Mofes was wroth with the officers." He obferved the women captives, and he asked with astonishment, "Have ye faved all the women alive? Behold, these caused the children of Ifrael, through the counfel of Balaam, to commit trespass against the Lord in the matter of Peor, and there was a plague among the congrega tion." He then gave an order that the boys and the women should be put to death, but that the young maidens fhould be kept alive for themselves. I fee 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 Ifraelites to the love of licen tious 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 fay-" that thirty-two thousand women-children were configned to debauchery by the order of Mofes."-Prove this, and I will allow that Mofes 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, wickednefs, and blafphemy"-prove this, or excuse my warmth if I fay to you, as Paul faid to Elymas the forcerer, who fought to turn away Sergius Paulus from the faith, “O full of all fubtilty, and all mifchief, thou child of the devil, thou enemy of all righteousness, wilt thou not ceafe to pervert the right ways of the Lord ?"I did not, when I began thefe letters, think that I. fhould have been moved to this feverity of rebuke, by any thing you could have

written;

written; but when fo grofs a mifreprefentation is made of God's proceedings, coolness would be a crime. The women-children were not reserved for the purposes of debauchery, but of flavery ;-a cuftom abhorrent from our manners, but every where practifed in former times, and still practifed in countries where the benignity of the chriftian religion has not foftened the ferocity of human nature.

You

here admit a part of the account given in the Bible refpecting the expedition against Midian to be a true account: it is not unreasonable to defire that you will admit the whole, or fhew fufficient reason why you admit one part, and reject the other. I will mention the part to which you have paid no attention. The Ifraelitish army confifted but of twelve thousand men, a mere handful when oppofed to the people of Midian; yet, when the officers made a mufter of their troops after their return from the war, they found that they had not loft a fingle man! This circumftance ftruck them as fo decifive an evidence of God's interpofition, that out of the fpoils they had taken they offered "an oblation to the Lord, an atonement for their fouls." Do but believe what the captains of thousands, and the captains of hundreds, believed at the time when these things happened, and we fhall never more hear of your objections to the Bible, from its account of the wars of Mofes.

You produce two or three other objections respecting the genuineness of the first five books of the Bible. I cannot ftop to notice them: every commentator answers them in a manner suited to the apprehenfion of even a mere English reader. You calculate, to the thoufandth 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 loft in

it.

You make no allowance for the fize of a royal

bed; nor ever fufpect that king Og might have been
poffeffed with the fame kind of vanity, which occu-
pied the mind of king Alexander, when he ordered
his foldiers to enlarge the fize of their beds, that
they might give to the Indians, in fucceeding ages,
a great idea of the prodigious ftature of a Macedo-
nian. 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 fuch a manner as gives room to believe, that
you are a proficient in it; if this be the cafe, I would
recommend a problem to your attention, the folution
of which you will readily allow to be far above the
powers of a man converfant only, as you reprefent
priests and bishops to be, in bic, hæc, boc.
The
problem is this-To determine the height to which
a human body, preferving its fimilarity of figure,
may be augmented, before it will perish by its own
weight. When you have folved this problem, we
fhall 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 impoffible. My philofophy teaches me to
doubt of many things; but it does not teach me to
reject every teftimony which is oppofite to my expe-
rience: had I been born in Shetland, I could, on
proper teftimony, have believed in the existence of
the Lincolnshire ox, or of the largest dray-horfe in
London; though the oxen and horfes in Shetland
had not been bigger than mastiffs.

LETTER

HAVING finished your objections to the genuinenefs of the books of Mofes, you proceed to your remarks on the book of Joshua; and from its internal evidence you endeavour to prove, that this book was not written by Joshua.-What then? what is your conclufion?" that it is anonymous and without authority."-Stop a little; your conclufion is not connected with your premises; your friend Euclid would have been afhamed of it. "Anonymous, and therefore without authority!" I have noticed this folecifm before; but as you frequently bring it forward, and, indeed, your book ftands much in need of it, I will fubmit to your confideration 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 feven hundred years ago; yet our courts of law do not hold it to be without authority, as to the matters of fact related in it. Yes, you will fay, but this book has been preserved with fingular 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 fingular care? Jofephus fays the contrary: and, in the Bible itfelf an appeal is made to many books, which have perifhed; fuch as the book of Jafher, the book of Natham, of Abijah, of Iddo, of Jehu, of natural

D 2

hiftory

hiftory by Solomon, of the acts of Manaffeh, and others which might be mentioned. If any one, having access to the journals of the lords and commons, to the books of the treasury, war-office, privy council, and other public documents, fhould at this day write an history of the reigns of George the first and fecond, and should publish it without his name, would any man, three or four hundreds or thoufands of years hence, queftion 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 fuppofition is in point. The books of the Old Teftament were compofed 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. Dodfley's Annual Regifter 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 pofterity, efteem thefe books as of no authority? On the contrary, they are admitted at prefent, and will be received in after ages, as authoritative records of the civil, military, and literary hiftory of England and of Europe. So little foundation is there for our being ftartled by your assertion, "It is anonymous and without authority."

If I am right in this reafoning, (and I proteft to you that I do not fee any error in it,) all the arguments you adduce in proof that the book of Jofhua was not written by Joshua, nor that of Samuel by Samuel, are nothing to the purpose for which you have brought them forward: thefe books may be books of authority, though all you advance against the genuineness of them fhould be granted. No article of faith is injured by allowing that there is no fuch pofitive proof, when or by whom these, and fome other books of holy feripture, were written, as

to