e express command of God. To believe therefore the Bible
to be true, we must unbelieve all our belief in the moral justice of
God; for wherein could crying or smiling infants offend? And to read
the Bible without horror, we must undo every thing that is tender,
sympathising, and benevolent in the heart of man. Speaking for myself,
if I had no other evidence that the Bible is fabulous, than the
sacrifice I must make to believe it to be true, that alone would be
sufficient to determine my choice.

But in addition to all the moral evidence against the Bible, I will, in
the progress of this work, produce such other evidence as even a
priest cannot deny; and show, from that evidence, that the Bible is not
entitled to credit, as being the word of God.

But, before I proceed to this examination, I will show wherein the Bible
differs from all other ancient writings with respect to the nature of
the evidence necessary to establish its authenticity; and this is is
the more proper to be done, because the advocates of the Bible, in their
answers to the former part of 'The Age of Reason,' undertake to say, and
they put some stress thereon, that the authenticity of the Bible is as
well established as that of any other ancient book: as if our belief of
the one could become any rule for our belief of the other.

I know, however, but of one ancient book that authoritatively challenges
universal consent and belief, and that is Euclid's Elements of Geometry;
[Euclid, according to chronological history, lived three hundred years
before Christ, and about one hundred before Archimedes; he was of the
city of Alexandria, in Egypt.--Author.] and the reason is, because it
is a book of self-evident demonstration, entirely independent of its
author, and of every thing relating to time, place, and circumstance.
The matters contained in that book would have the same authority they
now have, had they been written by any other person, or had the work
been anonymous, or had the author never been known; for the identical
certainty of who was the author makes no part of our belief of the
matters contained in the book. But it is quite otherwise with respect to
the books ascribed to Moses, to Joshua, to Samuel, etc.: those are
books of testimony, and they testify of things naturally incredible;
and therefore the whole of our belief, as to the authenticity of those
books, rests, in the first place, upon the certainty that they were
written by Moses, Joshu