a, and Samuel; secondly, upon the credit we give
to their testimony. We may believe the first, that is, may believe the
certainty of the authorship, and yet not the testimony; in the same
manner that we may believe that a certain person gave evidence upon a
case, and yet not believe the evidence that he gave. But if it should
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 those books is gone at once; for there can be no such
thing as forged or invented testimony; neither can there be anonymous
testimony, more especially as to things naturally incredible; such
as that of talking with God face to face, or that of the sun and moon
standing still at the command of a man.

The greatest part of the other ancient books are works of genius; of
which kind are those ascribed to Homer, to Plato, to Aristotle, to
Demosthenes, to Cicero, etc. Here again the author is not an essential
in the credit we give to any of those works; for as works of genius they
would have the same merit they have now, were they anonymous. Nobody
believes the Trojan story, as related by Homer, to be true; for it is
the poet only that is admired, and the merit of the poet will remain,
though the story be fabulous. But if we disbelieve the matters related
by the Bible authors (Moses for instance) as we disbelieve the things
related by Homer, there remains nothing of Moses in our estimation, but
an imposter. As to the ancient historians, from Herodotus to Tacitus, we
credit them as far as they relate things probable and credible, and no
further: for if we do, we must believe the two miracles which Tacitus
relates were performed by Vespasian, that of curing a lame man, and a
blind man, in just the same manner as the same things are told of Jesus
Christ by his historians. We must also believe the miracles cited by
Josephus, that of the sea of Pamphilia opening to let Alexander and his
army pass, as is related of the Red Sea in Exodus. These miracles are
quite as well authenticated as the Bible miracles, and yet we do not
believe them; consequently the degree of evidence necessary to establish
our belief of things naturally incredible, whether in the Bible or
elsewhere, is far greater than that which obtains our belief to natural
and probable things; and therefore the advocates for the Bible have no
claim to our belief of the Bible because that we believ