was a Persian, had been brought up in the rehgion
of his country, and was probably addicted to the
magian superstition of two independent beings
equal in power but different in principle — one the
anthor of light and of all good, the other the author
of darkness and all evil. Now, is it probable that
a captive Jew, meaning to comphment the greatest
prince in the world, should be so stupid as to tell
the prince his religion was a lie ? "I am the Lord,
and there is none else : I form the light and create
darkness, I make peace and create evil : I the Lord
do all these things."

But if you will persevere in believing that the
prophecy concerning Cyrus was written after the
event, peruse the burden of Babylon : was that
also written after the event? Were the Modes
then stirred up against Babylon? Was Babylon,
the glory of the kingdoms, the beauty of the Chal-
dees, then overthrown, and become as Sodom and
Gomorrah ? Was it then uninhabited ? Was it
then neither fit for the Arabian^s tent nor the shep-
herd's fold? Did the wild beasts of the desert
then lie there ? Did the wild beasts of the islands
then cry in their desolate houses, and dragons in
their pleasant places ? Were Nebuchadnezzar and
Belshazzar, the son and the grandson, then cut off?



WATSON'S REPLY TO PAINE. 441

Was Babylon then become a possession of the bit-
tern, and pools of water ? Was it then swept with
the besom of destruction, so swept that the world
knows not where to find it ?

I am unwilling to attribute bad designs, deliber-
ate wickedness, to you or to any man ; I cannot
avoid believing that you think you have truth on
your side, and that you are doing service to man-
kind in endeavoring to root out what you esteem
superstition. What I blame you for is this, that
you have attempted to lessen the authority of the
Bible by ridicule more than by reason ; that you
have brought forward every petty objection which
your ingenuity could discover, or your industry
pick up from the writings of others, and, without
taking any notice of the answers which have been
repeatedly given to these objections, you urge and
enforce them as if they were new. There is cer-
tainly some novelty at least in your manner, for
you go beyond all others in boldness of assertion
and in profaneness of argumentation ; Bolingbroke
and Voltaire must yield the palm of scurriUty to
Thomas Paine.

Permit me to state to you what would, in my
opinion, have been a better mode of proceeding —
better suited to the character of an honest man,
sincere in his endeavors to search out truth. Such
a man, in reading the Bible, would, in the first



442 WATSON'S REPLY TO PAINE.

place, examine whether the Bible attributed to the
Supreme Being any attributes repugnant to holi-
ness, truth, justice, goodness ; whether it repre-
sented him as subject to human infirmities ; wheth-
er it excluded him from the government of the
world, or assigned the origin of it to chance and an
eternal conflict of atoms. Finding nothing of this
kind in the Bible — for the destruction of the Ca-
naanites by his express command I have shown
not to be repugnant to his moral justice — he would,
in the second place, consider that the Bible being,
as to many of its parts, a very old book, and writ-
ten by various authors and at different and distant
periods, there might probably occur some difficul-
ties and apparent contradictions in the historical
part of it ; he would endeavor to remove these dif-
ficulties, to reconcile these apparent contradictions,
by the rules of such sound criticism as he would
use in examining the contents of any other book ;
and if he found that most of them were of a trifling
nature, arising from short additions inserted into
the text as explanatory and supplemental, or from
mistakes and omissions of transcribers, he would
infer that all the rest were capable of being ac-
counted for, though he was not able to do it ; and
he would be the more wilHng to make this conces-
sion, from observing that there ran through the
whole book a harmony and connection utterly in-



WATSON'S REPLY TO PAINE. 443

consistent with every idea of forgery and deceit.
He would then, in the third place, observe that the
miraculous and historical parts of this book were
so intermixed that they could not be separated,
and that they must either both be true, or both
false ; and from finding that the historical part was
as well or better authenticated than that of any
other history, he would admit the miraculous part ;
and to confirm himself in this belief, he would ad-
vert to the prophecies, well knowing that the predic-
tion of things to come was as certain a proof of the
divine interposition as the performance of a miracle
could be. If he should find, as he cej-tainly would,
that many ancient prophecies had been fulfilled in
all their circumstances, and that some were fulfil-
ling at this very day, he would not suffer a few
seeming or real difficulties to overbalance the
weight of the accumulated evidence for the truth
of the Bible. Such, I presume to think, would be
a proper conduct in all those who are desirous of
forming a rational and impartial judgment on the
subject of revealed religion.

To return :

As to your observation that the book of Isaiah
is, at least in translation, that kind of composition
and false taste which is properly called prose run
mad, I have only to remark, that your taste for
Hebrew poetry, even judging of it from the trans-



444 WATSON'S REPLY TO PAINE.

lation, would be more correct if you would suffer
yourself to be informed on the subject by Bishop
Lowth, who tells you in his Prelections, that " a
poem translated literally from the Hebrew into any
other language, while the same forms of the sen-
tences remain, will still retain, even as far as re-
lates to versification, much of its native dignity, and
a faint appearance of versification." If this is what
you mean by prose run mad, your observation may
be admitted.

You explain at some length your notion of the
misapplication made by St. Matthew of the proph-
ecy in Isaiah, /'Behold, a virgin shall conceive and
bear a son." That passage has been handled
largely and minutely by almost every commenta-
tor, and it is too important to be handled superfi-
cially by any one. I am not on the present occa-
sion concerned to explain it. It is quoted by you
to prove — and it is the only instance you produce —
that Isaiah was " a lying prophet and an unpostor."
Now, I maintain that this very instance proves
that he was a true prophet, and no impostor. The
liistory of the prophecy, as deHvered in the seventh
chapter, is this : Rezin king of Syria, and Pekah
king of Israel, made war upon Ahaz king of Judah ;
not merely, or perhaps not at all, for the sake of
plunder or the conquest of territory, but with a
declared purpose of making an entire revolution in



WATSON'S REPLY TO PAINE. 445

the government of Judah, of destroying the royal
house of David, and of placing another family on
the throne. Their purpose is thus expressed :
'' Let us go up against Judah and vex it, and let
us make a breach therein for ns, and set a king in
the midst of it, even the son of Tabeal." Now,
what did the Lord commission Isaiah to say to
Ahaz ? Did he commission him to say. The kings
shall not vex thee ? No. The kings shall not
conquer thee ? No. The kings shall not succeed
against thee ? No. He commissioned him to say,
" It," the purpose of the two kings, " shall not
stand, neither shall it come to pass," I demand,
did it stand ? did it come to pass ? Was any rev-
olution effected ? Was the royal house of David
dethroned and destroyed ? Was Tabeal ever made
king of Judah ? No. The prophecy was perfectly
accomplished. You say, " Instead of these two
kings failing in their attempt against Ahaz, they
succeeded ; Ahaz was defeated and destroyed."
I deny the fact ; Ahaz was defeated, but was not
destroyed ; and even the " two hundred thousand
women, and sons, and daughters," whom you rep-
resent as carried into captivity, were not carried
into captivity ; they were made captives, but they
were not carried into captivity ; for the chief men
of Samaria, being admonished by a prophet, would
not suffer Pekah to bring the captives into the



446 WATSON'S REPLY TO PAINE.

land. "They rose up and took the captives, and
with the spoil clothed all that were naked among
them, and arrayed them, and shod them, and gave
them to eat and to drink, and anointed them, and
carried all the feeble of them upon asses" — some
humanity, you see, among those Israelites whom
you everywhere represent as barbarous brutes — >
"and brought them to Jericho, the city of palm-
trees, to their brethren." 2 Chron. 28 : 15. The
kings did fail in their attempt : their attempt was to
destroy the house of David, and to make a revolu-
tion ; but they made no revolution, they did not
destroy the house of David ; for Ahaz slept with
his fathers, and Hezekiah his son, of the house of
David, reigned in his stead.



WATSON'S REPLY TO PAINE. 447



LETTER VI.

After what I conceive to be a great misrepre-
sentation of the character and conduct of Jeremiah,
you bring forward an objection which Spinoza and
others before you had much insisted upon, though
it is an objection which neither affects the genuine-
ness nor the authenticity of the book of Jeremiah,
any more than the blunder of a bopkbinder, in mis-
placing the sheets of your performance, would les-
sen its authority. The objection is, that the book
of Jeremiah has been put together in a disordered
state. It is acknowledged that the order of time
is not everywhere observed ; but the cause of the
confusion is not known. Some attribute it to Ba-
ruch collecting into one volume all the several
prophecies which Jeremiah had written, and neg-
lecting to put them in their proper places. Others
think that the several parts of the work were at
first properly arranged, but that, through accident
or the carelessness of transcribers, they were de-
ranged. Others contend that there is no confusion ;
that prophecy differs from history in not being sub-
ject to an accurate observance of time and order.
But leaving this matter to be settled by critical
discussion, let us come to a matter of greater im-



448 WATSON'S REPLY TO PAINE.

portance — to your charge against Jeremiah for his
duplicity, and for his false prediction. First, as to
his duplicity.

Jeremiah, on account of his having boldly pre-
dicted the destruction of Jerusalem, had been
thrust into a miry dungeon by the princes of Ju-
dah, who sought his life ; there he M^ould have per-
ished, had not one of the eunuchs taken compassion
on him, and petitioned king Zedckiah in his favor,
saying, " These men," the princes, " have done evil
in all that they have done to Jeremiah the proph-
et" — no small testimony this of the probity of the
prophet's character — ''whom they have cast into
the dungeon, and he is like to die for hunger." On
this representation, Jeremiah was taken out of the
dungeon by an order from the king, who soon
afterwards sent privately for him, and desired him
to conceal nothing from him, binding himself by an
oath, that whatever might be the nature of his
prophecy, he would not put him to death, or de-
liver him into the hands of the princes who sought
his life. Jeremiah delivered to him the puq^ose of
God respecting the fate of Jerusalem. The con-
ference being ended, the king, anxious to perform
his oath to preserve the life of the prophet, dis-
missed him, saying, " Let no man know of these
words, and thou shalt not die. But if the princes
hear that I have talked with thee, and they come



WATSON'S REPLY TO PAINE. 449

unto thee, and say unto thee, Declare unto us now
what thou hast said unto the king, hide it not from
us, and we will not put thee to death ; also what
the king said unto thee : then thou shalt say unto
them, I presented my supphcation before the king,
that he would not cause me to return to Jona-
than's house to die there. Then came all the
princes unto Jeremiah, and asked him ; and he told
them according to all these words that the king
had commanded." Thus, you remark, "this man
of God, as he is called, could tell a lie, or very
strongly prevaricate ; for certainly he did not go
to Zedekiah to make his supplication, neither did
he make it." It is not said that he told the princes
he went to make his supplication, but that he pre-
sented it. Now, it is said in the preceding chapter
that he did make the supplication, and it is proba-
ble that in this conference he renewed it ; but be
that as it may, I contend that Jeremiah was not
guilty of duplicity, or, in more intelligible terms,
that he did not violate any law of nature or of civil
society, in what he did on this occasion. He told
the truth in part, to save his Ufe ; and he was
under no obligation to tell the whole to men who
were certainly his enemies, and no good subjects
to his king. *'In a matter," says Puffendorf,
'* which I am not obliged to declare to another, if
I cannot, with safety, conceal the whole, I may

Infiilelity. 29



450 WATSON'S REPLY TO PAINE.

fairly discover no more than a part." Was Jere-
miah under any obligation to declare to the princes
what had passed in his conference with the king ?
You may as well say that the house of lords has
a right to compel privy counsellors to reveal the
king's secrets. The king cannot justly require a
privy counsellor to tell a lie for him, but he may
require him not to divulge his counsels to those
who have no right to know them. Now for the
false prediction — I will give the description of it in
your own words.

In the 34th chapter is a prophecy of Jeremiah
to Zedekiah, in these words, verse 2 : " Thus saith
the Lord, Behold, I will give this city into the
hands of the king of Babylon, and he shall burn
it Tvith fire ; and thou shalt not escape out of his
hand, but shalt surely be taken and delivered
into his hand ; and thine eyes shall behold the
eyes of the king of Babylon, and he shall speak
with thee mouth to mouth, and thou shalt go to
Babylon. Yet hear the word of the Lord,
Zedekiah, king of Judah ; thus saith the Lord,
Thou shalt not die by the sword, but thou shalt
die in peace ; and with the burnings t)f thy fathers,
the former kings that were before thee, so shall
they burn odors for thee ; and they will lament
thee, saying, Ah, lord ! for I have pronounced the
word, saith the Lord."



WATSON'S REPLY TO PAINE. 451

" Now, instead of Zedekiah bcliolding the eyes
of the king of Babylon, and speaking with him
mouth to mouth, and dying in peace, and with the
burning of odors, as at the funeral of his fathers —
as Jeremiah had declared the Lord himself had
pronounced — the reverse, according to the 52d
chapter, was the case ; it is there stated, verse 10,
that ' the king of Babylon slew the sons of Zede-
kiah before his eyes ; then he put out the eyes of
Zedekiah, and bound him in chains, and carried him
to Babylon, and put him in prison till the day of
his death.' What can we say of these prophets,
but that they are impostors and liars ?" I can say
this, that the prophecy you have produced was
fulfilled in all its parts : and what then shall be
said of those who call Jeremiah a liar, and an im-
postor ? Here then we are fairly at issue : you
affirm that the prophecy was not fulfilled, and I
affirm that it was fulfilled in all its parts. '' I will
give this city into the hands of the king of Baby-
lon, and he shall burn it with fire :" so says the
prophet; what says the history? "They," the
forces of the king of Babylon, " burnt the house of
God, and brake down the walls of Jerusalem, and
burnt all the places thereof with fire." 2 Chron.
36 : 19. "Thou shalt not escape out of his hand,
but shalt surely be taken and delivered into his
hand :" so says the prophet ; what says the his-



452 WATSON'S REPLY TO PAINE.

tory ? " The men of war fled by night, and the
khig went the way towards the plain. And the
army of the Chaldees pursued after the king, and
overtook him in the plains of Jericho ; and all his
army were scattered from him. So they took the
king, and brought him up to the king of Babylon to
Riblah." 2 Kings 25 : 4-6. The prophet goes on,
"Thine eyes shall behold the ej^es of the king of
Babylon, and he shall speak with thee mouth to
mouth." No pleasant circumstance this to Zede-
kiah, who had provoked the king of Babylon by
revolting from him ! The history says, " The king
of Babylon gave judgment upon Zedekiah," or, as
it is more literally rendered from the Hebrew,
" Spake judgment with him at Riblah." The prophet
concludes this part with, " And thou shalt go to
Babylon ;" the history says, " The king of Babj^lon
bound him in chains, and carried him to Babylon,
and put him in prison till the day of his death."
Jer. 52 : 11. "Thou shalt not die by the sword."
He did not die by the sword, he did not fall in
battle. "But thou shalt die in peace." He did
die in peace : he neither expired on the rack, or on
the scaffold ; was neither strangled nor poisoned ;
no unusual fate of captive kings. He died peace-
ably in his bed, though that bed was in a prison.
" And with the burnings of thy fathers shall they
burn odors for thee." I cannot prove from the



WATSON'S REPLY TO PAINE. 453

history that tliis part of the prophecy was accom-
plished, nor can you prove that it was not. The
probabihty is, that it was accomphshcd ; and I
have two reasons on which I ground this proba-
bility. Daniel, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego,
to say nothing of otlicr Jews, were men of great
authority in the court of the king of Babylon, be-
fore and after the commencement of the imprison-
ment of Zedekiah ; and Daniel continued in power
till the subversion of the kingdom of Babylon by
Cyrus. Now, it seems to me to be very probable
that Daniel and the other great men of the Jews
would both have inclination to request, and influ-
ence enough with the king of Babylon to obtain,
}X3rmission to bury their deceased prince Zedekiah
after the manner of his fathers. But if there had
been no Jews at Babylon of consequence enough
to make such a request, still it is probable that the
king of Babylon would have ordered the Jews to
bury and lament their departed prince after the
manner of their country. Monarchs, like other
men, are conscious of the instability of human con-
dition ; and when the pomp of war has ceased,
when the insolence of conquest is abated, and the
fury of resentment subsided, they seldom fail to
revere royalty even in its ruins ; and grant, with-
out reluctance, proper obsequies to the remains of
captive kings.



454 WATSON'S REPLY TO PAINE.

You profess to have been particular in treating
of the books ascribed to Isaiah and Jeremiah. Par-
ticular ; in what ? You have particularized two or
three passages, which you have endeavored to
represent as objectionable, and which I hope have
been shown to the reader's satisfaction, to be not
justly liable to your censure ; and you have passed
over all the other parts of these books without no-
tice. Had 3^ou been particular in your examina-
tion, you would have found cause to admire the
probity and the intrepidity of the characters of the
authors of them ; you would have met with many
instances of sublime composition, and what is of
more consequence, with many instances of prophet-
ical veracity. Particularities of these kinds you
have wholly overlooked. I cannot account for
this ; I have no right, no inclination to call you a
dishonest man ; am I justified in considering you
as a man not altogether destitute of ingenuity,
but so entirely under the dominion of prejudice in
every thing respecting the Bible, that, like a cor-
rupted judge, previously determined to give sen-
tence on one side, you are negligent in the exam-
ination of the truth ?

You proceed to the rest of the prophets, and you
take them collectively, carefully, however, select-
ing for your observations such peculiarities as are
best calculated to render, if possible, the prophets



WATSON'S REPLY TO PAINE. 455

odious or ridiculous in the eyes of your readers.
You confound prophets with poets and musicians ;
I would distinguish them thus : many prophets
were poets and musicians, but all poets and musi-
cians were not prophets. Prophecies were often
delivered in poetic language and measure • but
flights and metaphors of the Jewish poets have
not, as you affirm, been foolishly erected into what
are now called prophecies ; they are now called,
and have always been called, prophecies, because
they were real predictions, some of which have
received, some are now receiving, and all will re-
ceive their full accomphshment.

That there were false prophets, witches, necro-
mancers, conjurers, fortune-tellers, among the Jews,
no person will attempt to deny ; no nation, barba-
rous or civilized, has been without them ; but
when you would degrade the prophets of the Old
Testament to a level with these conjuring, dream-
ing, strolling gentry — when you would represent
them as spending their lives in fortune-telling,
casting nativities, predicting riches, fortunate or
unfortunate marriages, conjuring for lost goods,
etc., I must be allowed to say that you wholly
mistake their office and misrepresent their charac-
ter : their office was to convey to the children of
Israel the commands, the promises, the threaten-
ings of Almighty God ; and their character was



456 WATSON'S REPLY TO PAINE.

that of men sustaining, with fortitude, persecution
in the discharge of their duty. There were false
prophets in abundance among the Jews ; and if
you oppose these to the true prophets, and call
them both party prophets, you have the liberty of
doing so, but you will not thereby confound the
distinction between* truth and falsehood. False
prophets are spoken of with detestation in many
parts of Scripture, particularly by Jeremiah, who
accuses them of prophesying lies in the name of
the Lord, saying, " I have dreamed, I have dream-
ed. Behold, I am against the prophets, saith the
Lord, that use their tongues and say. He saith ;
that prophesy false dreams, and cause my people
to err by their lies, and by their lightness." Jere-
miah cautions his countrymen against giving credit
to their prophets, to their diviners, to their dream-
ers, to their enchanters, to their sorcerers, which
speak unto you, saying, "Ye shall not serve the
king of Babylon." You cannot think more con-
temptibly of these gentrj^ than they were thought
of by the true prophets at the time they lived ;
but, as Jeremiah says on this subject, " what is
the chaff to the wheat ?" what are the false proph-
ets to the true ones ■? Every thing good is liable
to abuse ; but who argues against the use of a
thing from the abuse of it? against physicians,
because there are pretenders to physic? Was



"WATSON'S REPLY TO PAINE. 457

Isaiah a fortune-teller predicting riches, when he
said to king Hezekiah, "Behold, the da3^s come
that all that is in thy house, and that which thy
fathers have laid up in store until this day, shall
be carried to Babylon : nothing shall be left, saitb
the Lord. And of thy sons that shall issue from
thee, which thou shalt beget, shall they take away, '
and the}^ shall be eunuchs in the palace of the king
of Babylon." Fortune-tellers generally predict
good luck to their simple customers, that they may
make something by their trade ; but Isaiah pre-
dicts to a monarch desolation of his country and
ruin of his family. This prophecy was spoken in
the year before Christ 113 ; and, above a hun-
dred years afterwards, it was accomplished ; when
Nebuchadnezzar took Jerusalem, and carried out
thence all the treasures of the house of the Lord,
and the treasures of the king's house, 2 Kings
24 : 13, and when he commanded the master of the
eunuchs, Dan. 1 : 3, that he should take certain of
the children of Israel, and of the king's seed, and
of the princes, and educate them for three years,
till they were able to stand before the king.

Jehoram king of Israel, Jehoshaphat king of
Judah, and the king of Edom, going with their
armies to make war on the king of Moab, came
into a place where there was no water either for
their men or cattle. In this distress they waited



458 ^YATSON•S REPLY TO PAINE.

upon Elisha — a high honor for one of your conjur-
ers — by the advice of Jehoshaphat, who knew that
the word of the Lord was with him. The prophet,
on seeing Jehoram, an idolatrous prince, wlio had