e
reign of David, who succeeded Saul, and it goes on to the end of David's
reign, which was forty-three years after the death of Samuel; and,
therefore, the books are in themselves positive evidence that they were
not written by Samuel.

I have now gone through all the books in the first part of the Bible,
to which the names of persons are affixed, as being the authors of those
books, and which the church, styling itself the Christian church, have
imposed upon the world as the writings of Moses, Joshua and Samuel; and
I have detected and proved the falsehood of this imposition.--And now ye
priests, of every description, who have preached and written against the
former part of the 'Age of Reason,' what have ye to say? Will ye with
all this mass of evidence against you, and staring you in the face,
still have the assurance to march into your pulpits, and continue to
impose these books on your congregations, as the works of inspired
penmen and the word of God? when it is as evident as demonstration can
make truth appear, that the persons who ye say are the authors, are not
the authors, and that ye know not who the authors are. What shadow of
pretence have ye now to produce for continuing the blasphemous fraud?
What have ye still to offer against the pure and moral religion of
deism, in support of your system of falsehood, idolatry, and pretended
revelation? Had the cruel and murdering orders, with which the Bible
is filled, and the numberless torturing executions of men, women, and
children, in consequence of those orders, been ascribed to some friend,
whose memory you revered, you would have glowed with satisfaction at
detecting the falsehood of the charge, and gloried in defending his
injured fame. It is because ye are sunk in the cruelty of superstition,
or feel no interest in the honour of your Creator, that ye listen to the
horrid tales of the Bible, or hear them with callous indifference. The
evidence I have produced, and shall still produce in the course of this
work, to prove that the Bible is without authority, will, whilst it
wounds the stubbornness of a priest, relieve and tranquillize the minds
of millions: it will free them from all those hard thoughts of the
Almighty which priestcraft and the Bible had infused into their minds,
and which stood in everlasting opposition to all their ideas of his
moral justice and benevolence.

I come now to the two books of Kings, and the two books of
Chronicles.--Those book