d, which obliges the writer to
explain the story in the terms or language used in the time the writer
lived.

Samuel, in the account given of him in the first of those books, chap.
ix. 13 called the seer; and it is by this term that Saul enquires after
him, ver. 11, "And as they [Saul and his servant] went up the hill to
the city, they found young maidens going out to draw water; and they
said unto them, Is the seer here?" Saul then went according to the
direction of these maidens, and met Samuel without knowing him, and said
unto him, ver. 18, "Tell me, I pray thee, where the seer's house is? and
Samuel answered Saul, and said, I am the seer."

As the writer of the book of Samuel relates these questions and answers,
in the language or manner of speaking used in the time they are said
to have been spoken, and as that manner of speaking was out of use when
this author wrote, he found it necessary, in order to make the story
understood, to explain the terms in which these questions and
answers are spoken; and he does this in the 9th verse, where he says,
"Before-time in Israel, when a man went to enquire of God, thus he
spake, Come let us go to the seer; for he that is now called a prophet,
was before-time called a seer." This proves, as I have before said, that
this story of Saul, Samuel, and the asses, was an ancient story at the
time the book of Samuel was written, and consequently that Samuel did
not write it, and that the book is without authenticity.

But if we go further into those books the evidence is still more
positive that Samuel is not the writer of them; for they relate things
that did not happen till several years after the death of Samuel. Samuel
died before Saul; for i Samuel, xxviii. tells, that Saul and the witch
of Endor conjured Samuel up after he was dead; yet the history of
matters contained in those books is extended through the remaining part
of Saul's life, and to the latter end of the life of David, who succeeded
Saul. The account of the death and burial of Samuel (a thing which he
could not write himself) is related in i Samuel xxv.; and the chronology
affixed to this chapter makes this to be B.C. 1060; yet the history of
this first book is brought down to B.C. 1056, that is, to the death of
Saul, which was not till four years after the death of Samuel.

The second book of Samuel begins with an account of things that did not
happen till four years after Samuel was dead; for it begins with th