I have seen, since I have been at liberty, several publications written, some in America, and some in England, as answers to the former part of "The Age of Reason." If the authors of these can amuse themselves by so doing, I shall not interrupt them. They may write against the work, and against m as much as they please; they do me moře servi than they intend, and I can have no objection th they write on. They will find however, by this s cond part, without its being written as an answer them, that they must return to their work, and spi their cobweb over again. The first is brushed awa by accident.

They will now find that I have furnished mysel with a Bible and Testament; and I can say also that I have found them to be much worse book than I had conceived. If I have erred in any thing in the former part of the Age of Reason, it has bee by speaking better of some parts of those books tha they have deserved.

I observe, that all my opponents resort, more o less, to what they call Scripture Evidence and Bibl Authority, to help them out. They are so littl masters of the subject, as to confound a dispute ab out authenticity with a dispute about doctrines; will, however, put them right, that if they shoul be disposed to write any more, they may know how to begin. THOMAS PAINE.

October, 1795.

THE

AGE OF REASON.

PART II.

It has often been said, that any thing may be proved from the Bible, but before any thing can be dmitted as proved by the Bible, the Bible itself must be proved to be true; for if the Bible be not rue, or the truth of it be doubtful, it ceases to have uthority, and cannot be admitted as a proof of any ing.

It has been the practice of all christian commentators on the Bible, and of all christian priests and preachers, to impose the Bible on the world as "mass of truth, and as the word of God; they have isputed and wrangled, and have anathematized ich other about the supposable meaning of particuar parts and passages therein; one has said and insted that such a passage meant such a thing; anoter that it meant directly the contrary; and a third, hat it meant neither one nor the other, but someing different from both ; and this they call underanding the Bible.

It has happened, that all the answers which I Iave seen to the former part of the Age of Reason ive been written by priests, and these pious men, ke their predecessors, contend and wrangle, and Pretend to understand the Bible; each understands differently, but each understands it best; and they ive agreed in nothing, but in telling their readers hat Thomas Paine understands it not.

shua, to Samuel, &c. those are books of testimony, and they testify of things naturally incredible; and therefore the whole of our belief, as to the authenti city of these books, rests, in the first place, upon the certainty that they were written by Moses, Joshu and Sanuel; secondly, upon the credit we give to their testimony. We may believe the first that i, we 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 ferged or invented testimony; neither can there be anonymous testimony, more especially as to thing naturally incredible; such as that of talking wit God face to face, or that of the sun and moon stand ing still at the command of a man. The greates 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, &c. 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 it we disbelieve the matters related by the Bible au thors (Moses for instance) as we disbelieve the things related by Homer, there remains nothing of Moses in our estimation, but an impostor. As to the an cient historians from Herodotus to Tacitus, we cre dit 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 miracle cited by Jo

sephus, 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 be lief of the Bible, because that we believe things stated in other ancient writings; since we believe the things stated in these writings no further than they are probable and credible, or because they are self-evident, like Euclid; or admire them because they are elegant, like Homer; or approve them because they are sedate, like Plato; or judicious, like Aristotle.

Having premised these things, I proceed to examine the authenticity of the Bible, and begin with what are called the five books of Moses, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. My intention is to show that those books are spurious, and that Moses is not the author of them; and still further, that they were not written in the time of Moses, nor till several hundred years afterwards; that they are no other than an attempted history of the life of Moses, and for the times in which he is said to have lived, and also of the times prior thereto, written by some very ignorant and stupid pretenders to authorship, several hundred years after the death of Moses, as men now write histories of things that happened, or are supposed to have happened, several hundred or several thousand years ago.

The evidence that I shall produce in this case is from the books themselves; and I will confine myself to this evidence only.-Were I to refer for proof to any of the ancient authors, whom the advocates of the Bible call profane authors, they would controvert that authority, as I controvert theirs; I will therefore meet them on their own ground, and oppose them with their own weapon, the Bible.

In the first place, there is no affirmative evidence that Moses is the author of those books; and that he is the author, is altogether an unfounded opinion, got abroad nobody knows how. The style and manner in which those books are written, give no room to believe, or even to suppose, they were written by Moses; for it is altogether the style and manner of another person speaking of Moses. In Exodus, Leviticus, and Numbers (for every thing in Genesis is prior to the times of Moses and not the least allusion is made of him therein) the whole, I say, of these books is in the third person; it is always, the Lord said unto Moses, or Moses said unto the Lord: or Moses said unto the people, or the people said unto Moses; and this is the style and manner that historians use, in speaking of the person whose lives and actions they are writing. It may be said that a man may speak of himself in the third p rson; and therefore it may be supposed that Moses did; but supposition proves nothing; and if the advocates for the belief that Moses wrote those books himself, have nothing better to advance than supposition, they may as well be silent.

But granting the grammatical right, that Moses might speak of himself in the third person, because any man might speak of himself in that manner, it cannot be admitted as a fact in those books, that it is Moses who speaks, without rendering Moses truly ridiculous and absurd:-for example, Numbers, chap. xii. ver. 3. "Now the man Moses was very meek, above all the men which were on the face of the earth." If Moses said this of himself, instead of being the meekest of men, he was one of the most vain and arrogant of coxcombs; and the advocates for those books may now take which side they please, for both sides are against them; if Moses was not the author, the books are without authority; and if he was the author, the author was without credit, because to boast of meckness, is the reverse of meekness, and is a lie in sentiment.

In Deuteronomy, the style and manner of writing marks more evidently than in the former books, that Moses is not the writer. The manner here used is