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 cove-
nants with them ; that he should have suspended
the laws of nature in Egypt ; should haver been so
apparently partial as to become the God and gov-



WATSON'S REPLY TO PAINE. 369

ernor of one particular nation ; and should have so
far demeaned himself, as to give to that people a
burdensome ritual of worship, statutes, and ordi-
nances, many of which seem to be beneath the
dignity of his attention, unimportant, and impolitic.
I have 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; 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 never either stood in need of, or experi-
enced the fostering care of a mother's kindness,
the wearisome attention of his nurse, or the in-
struction and discipline of his schoolmaster. The
Supreme Being selected one family from an idola-
trous world ; nursed it up, by various acts of his
providence, into 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 par-

Infidelity. 2 t



370 WATSON'S REPLY TO PAINE.

tiality to them, hut for the general good, should he
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 ? I own to you, that when
I consider how nearly man, in a savage state, ap-
proaches to the brute creation, as to intellectual
excellence, and when I contemplate his miserable
attainments, as to the knowledge of God, in a civ-
ilized 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 wis-
dom and goodness of the Supreme Being, in hav-
ing let himself down to our apprehensions ; in
having given to mankind, in the earliest ages,- sen-
sible and extraordinary proofs of his existence and
attributes ; in having made the Jewish and Chris-
tian dispensations mediums to convey to all men,
through all ages, that knowledge concerning him-
self which he has vouchsafed to give immediately
to the first. I own it is strange, very strange,
that he should have made an immediate manifesta-
tion 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, corrup-



WATSON'S REPLY TO PAINE. 371

tion, reproduction. I can account ultimately for none
of these things, without recurring to Him who made
every thing. I 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
has assured me of all that I am concerned to know —
that he has 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, tltat I can
never think of it without having my mind filled
with reverence, 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 philoso-
pher in search of truth forfeits with me all claim to
candor 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, nor lia-
ble to have abuse retorted upon you with success.



372 WATSON'S REPLY TO PAINE.



LETTER II.

Before you commence your grand attack upon
the Bible, you wish to establish a difference be-
tween the evidence necessary to prove the authen-
ticity 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 name they bear ;
unless it be that this has been an opinion gener-
ally received at all tirties, and by all those who
have lived since the authors ?" This writer was
convinced that the evidence which established the
genuineness of any profane book, would establish
that of the 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 con-
fused : I do not say that you designedly jumble
together mathematical science and historical evi-
dence, the knowledge acquired by demonstration and
the probability derived from testimony. You know



WATSON'S REPLY TO PAINE. 373

but one ancient book that authoritatively challenges
universal consent and belief, and that is Euclid's
Elements. If I were disposed to make frivolous
objections, . I should say that even Euclid's Ele-
ments 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 observa-
tion. You are attempting to subvert the authen-
ticity of the Bible, and you tell us that Euclid's
Elements are certainly true. Wliat then ? Does it
follow that the Bible is certainly false ? The most
illiterate scrivener does not want to be informed
that the examples in his 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 be-
tween 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 autlicntic book, is that which relates mat-
ters of fact as they really happened. A book may
be genuine without being authentic ; and a book



374 WATSON'S REPLY TO PAINE.

may be authentic without being genuine. The
books written by Richardson and Fielding are gen-
uine books, though the histories of Clarissa and
Tom Jones are fables. The liistory of the Island
of Formosa is a genuine book ; it was written by
Psalmanazar, but it is not an authentic book —
though it was long esteemed as such, and trans-
lated into different languages — 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 Voyage may be
considered as an authentic book ; it probably con-
tains a true narration of the principal events re-
corded in it, but it is not a genuine book, having
not been written by Walters, to whom it is ascribed,
but by Robins.

The 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 j^our work now
under consideration, and which you frequently
allude to in other parts as conclusive evidence
against the truth of the Bible. Your arguments
stand 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 gen-



WATSON'S REPLY TO PAINE. 375

uineness of those books — in the judgment of those
who say that they were written by these authors —
will certainly be gone, but their authenticity 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
fiv^e books of the Bible ; and had Joshua and Samuel
said that they wrote the /books which are respec-
tively 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 liars as to the genuineness
of these books ; and this proof of their want of ve-
racity in one point, would have invalidated their
testimony in every other ; these books would have
been justly stigmatized as neither genuine nor
authentic.

A 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 testi-
mony does not destroy the reality of facts, whether
natural or miraculous. Had lord Clarendon pub-
lished his History of the Rebellion without prefix-
ing his name to it ; or had the History of Titus
Livius come down to us under the name of Vale-



376' WATSON'S REPLY TO PAINE.

rius Flaccus, or Valerius Maximus, the facts men-
tioned in these histories would have been equally
certain.

As to your assertion, that the miracles recorded
in Tacitus, and in other profane historians, 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
in degree, so greatly superior to that for the prod-
igies 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 superstition 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 cen-
tury ; and it has been adopted by unbehevers from
that time to this — with this difference, indeed, that
the heathens of the third and fourth century ad-
mitted that Jesus wrought miracles ; but lest that
admission should have compelled them to abandon
their gods and become Christians, they said that
their Apolonius, their Apukius, their Aristeas, did as
great : while modern deists deny the fact of Jesus
having ever wrought a miracle. And they have



WATSON'S REPLY TO PAINE. 377 .

some reasQn 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 *een 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 dis-.
proved.

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, Leviti-
cus, 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 Hfe of Moses, and of the times in which he
is said to have lived, and also of 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,



378 WATSON'S REPLY TO PAINE.

of modern date, having not been heard of, either in
synagogue or out of it, till the twelfth century.
About that time Aben Ezra, a Jew of great erudi-
tion, noticed S(?hie passages — the same that you
have brought forward — ^in the first five books of the
Bible, which he thought had not been written b}'-
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. Hohhes
contends that the books of Moses are so called,
not froni their having been written by Moses, but
from their containing an account of Moses. Spinoza
supported the same opinion ; and Le Clerc, a very
able theological critic of the last and present cen-
tury, once entertained the same notion. You see
that this fancy has had some patrons before you ;
the merit or the demerit, the sagacity or the temer-
ity of having asserted that Moses is not the author
of the Pentateuch, is not entirely yours. Le Clerc,
indeed, you must not boast of. When his judg-
ment was matured by age, he was ashamed of
what he had written on the subject in his younger
years ; he made a public recantation of his error,
by annexing to his commentary on Genesis a Latin
dissertation concerning Moses, the author of the
Pentateuch, and his design in composing it. If in



WATSON'S REPLY TO PAINE. 379

your future life you should chance to change
your opinion on the subject, it will be an honor to
your character to emulate the integrity and to imi-
tate the example of Le Clerc. The Bible is not the
only book which has undergone the fate of being
reprobated as spurious, after it had been received
as genuine and authentic for many ages. It has
been maintained that the history of Herodotus was
written in the time of Constantine ; and that the
Classics are forgeries of the thirteenth or fourteenth
century. These extravagant reveries amused the
world at the time of their publication, and have
long since sunk into oblivion. You esteem all
prophets to be such lying rascals, that I dare not
predict the fate of your book.

Before you produce your main objections to the
genuineness of the books of Moses, you assert
that "there is no affirmative evidence that Moses
is the author of them." What, no affirmative evi-
dence ? In the eleventh century, Maimomdes drew
up a confession of faith for the Jews, which all of
them at this day admit : it consists only of thirteen
articles, and two of them have respect to Moses ;
one affirming the authenticity, the other the gen-
uineness of his books. The doctrine and prophecy
of Moses 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 since the de-



380 WATSON'S REPLY TO PAINE.

struction of their city and temple ; it was their faith
at 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 shown, from the age of Moses
to the present hour, in which it was not their faith.
Is this no affirmative evidence ? I cannot desire a
stronger. Josephus^ in his book against Appmi,
writes thus, "We have only two and twenty books
which are to be beUeved as of divine authority, and
which comprehend the history of all ages ; five be-
long to Moses, which contain the original of man
and the tradition of the succession of generations,
down to his death, which takes in a compass of
about three thousand years." Do you consider this
as no -affirmative evidence? Why should I men-
tion Juvenal speaking of the volume which Moses
had written ? Why enumerate a long list of pro-
fane authors, all bearing testimony to the fact of
Moses being the leader and the lawgiver of the
Jewish nation ? And if a lawgiver, surely a writer
of the laws. But what says the Bible ? In Exodus
it says, "Moses 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 says,
"And it came to pass, when Moses had made an
end of writing the words of this law in a book, un-
til they were finished" — this surely imports the



WATSON'S REPLY TO PAINE. 381

finishing of a laborious work — ''that Moses com-
manded the Levites, which bear the ark of tlie
covenant of the Lord, saying, Take this book of
the law, and put it in the side of the ark of the
covenant of the Lord your God, that it may be
there for a witness against thee." This is said 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 first five books of the Old Testament.
What possible doubt can there be that Moses wrote
the books in question ? I could accumulate many
other passages from the Scriptures to this purpose ;
but if what I have advanced will not convince
you that there is affirmative evidence, and of the
strongest kind, for Moses being the author of these
books, nothing that I can advance will convince
you.

What if I should grant all j'ou undertake to
prove — the stupidity and ignorance of the writer
excepted ? What if I should admit that Savmel or
Ezra, or some other learned Jew, composed those
books from public records, many years after the
death of Moses ? Will it follow that there was no
truth in them ? According to my logic, it will only
follow that they are not genuine books ; every fact
recorded in them may be true, whenever or by
whomsoever they were written. It cannot be said



382 WATSON'S REPLY TO PAINE.

that the Jews had no pubhc records ; the Bible fur-
nishes abundance of j^roof to the contrary. I by-
no means admit 'that these books, as to the main
part of them, were not written by Moses ; but I
do contend, that a book may contain a true history,
though we know not the author of it, or though we
may be mistaken in ascribing it to a wrong author
The first argument you produce against Moses'
being the author of these books is so old, that I do
not know its original author ; and it is so miserable
a one, that I wonder you should adoj^t it. " These
books cannot be written by Moses, because they
are wrote in the third person — it is always, 'The
Lord said unto Moses, or Moses said unto the Lord.'
This," you say, *'is the style and manner that his-
torians use in speaking of the persons whose Hves
and actions they are writing." This observation is
true, but it does not extend far enough ; for this is
the sj^4e and manner not only of historians writing
of other persons, but of eminent men, such as
Xenophon and Josephus, writing of themselves. If
General Washington should write the history of the
American war, and should, from his great modesty,
speak of himself in the third person, would you
think it reasonable that, two or three thousand
years hence, any person should, on that account,
contend that the history was not true ? Cresar
writes of himself in the third person. It is always,



WATSON'.S REPLY TO PAINE. 383

Caesar made a speech, or a speech was made to
Csesar, Caesar crossed the Rhine, Caesar invaded
Britain ; but every school-boy knows that this cir-
cumstance cannot be adduced as a serious argu-
ment against Caesar's being the author of his own
Commentaries.

But Moses, you urge, cannot be the author of
the book of Numbers, because he says of himself,
that " Moses was a very meek man, above all the
men that were on the face of the earth." If he
said this of himself, he was, as you say, " a vain and
arrogant coxcomb" — such is your phrase — "and
unworthy of credit ; and if he did not say it, the
hooks are without authority." This your dilemma
is perfectly harmless ; it has not a horn to hurt the
weakest logician. If Moses did not write this little
verse — if it was inserted by Samuel, or any of his
countrymen, who knew his character and revered
his memory, will it follow that he did not write any
other part of the book of Numbers ? Or if he did
not write any part of the book of Numbers, will it
follow that he did not write any of the other books
of which he is usually reputed the author? And
if he did write this of himself, he was justified by
the occasion which extorted from him this com-
mendation. Had this expression been written in a
modern style and manner it would probably have
given you no offence. For who would be so fastid-



384 WATSON'S REPLY TO PAINE.

ious as to find fault with an illustrious man, who,
being calumniated by his nearest relations, as guilty
of pride and fond of power, should vindicate his
character hy saying. My temper was naturally as
meek and unassuming as that of any man upon
earth? There are occasions in which a modest
man, who speaks truly, may speak proudly of him-
self, without forfeiting his general character ; and
there is no occasion w^iich either more requires, or
more excuses this conduct, than when he is repel-
ling the foul and envious aspersions of those who
both knew his character and had experienced his
kindness ; and in that predicament stood Aaron and
Miriam, \he accusers of Moses. You yourself have
probably felt the sting of calumny, and have been
anxious to remove the impression. I do not call
you a vain and arrogant coxcomb for vindicating '
your character, when in the latter part of this very
work you boast, I hope truly, "The man does not
exist that can say I have persecuted him, or any
man, or any set of men, in the American revolu-
tion, or in the French revolution ; or that I have in
any case returned evil for evil." I know not what
kings and priests may say to this : 3'ou may not
have returned to them evil for evil, because they
never, I believe, did you any harm j but you have
done them all the harm you could, and that with-
out provocation.



WATSON'S HEPLY TO PAINE. 385

I think it needless to notice your observation
upon what you call the dramatic style of Deuteron-
omy ; it is an ill-founded hypothesis. You might
as well ask where the author of Caesar's Commen-
taries got the speeches of Caesar, as where the
author of Deuteronomy got the speeches of Moses.
But your argument, that Moses was not the author
of Deuteronomy, because the reason given in that
book for the observation of the Sabbath is different
from that given in Exodus, merits a reply.

You need not be told that the very name of this
book imports, in Greek, a repetition of a law ; and
that the Hebrew doctors have called it by a word
of the same meaning. In the fifth verse of the first
chapter it is said in our Bibles, "Moses began to
declare this law ;" but the Hebrew words, more
properly translated, import that ''Moses began, or
determined to explain the law." This is no shift
of mine to get over a difficulty ; the words are so
rendered in most of the ancient versions, and by
Fagius, Vatablus, and Le Clerc, men eminently
skilled in the Hebrew language. This repetition
and explanation of the law was a wise and benev-
olent proceeding in Moses, that those who were
either not born, or were mere infants, when it was
first — forty years before — delivered in Horeb, might
have an opportunity of knowing it ; especially as
Moses their leader was so soon to be taken from

lufidehty. 25



386 WATSON'S REPLY TO PAINE.:

them, and they were about to be settled in the
midst of nations given to idolatry and sunk in vice.
Now, where is the wonder that some variations
and some additions should be made to a law, when
a legislator thinks fit to republish it many years
after its first promulgation ?

With respect to the Sabbath, the learned are