as a motive presented to the offender to abstain from a repetition of the offence, and to amend his disposition: is it not from kindness, and for their good, that we correct our children? Or 2dly, To secure the peace of society by preventing an incorrigible offender from going at large, and indulging in his evil propensities at the expense of others. Many good men doubt whether this ought to go further than corporal confinement without taking away life. All pain inflicted under the name of punishment unless for those purposes, and on these motives, or exceeding in degree, what is reasonably necessary for these purposes, is cruelty. Can the benevolent author and parent of the human race, inflict punishment revengefully? Moreover, was there no other means of reformation within the power of omnipotence, than a total destruction of the whole human family? Is there no other way of exterminating vice, but by exterminating man, woman and child, the innocent with the guilty, even to every animal on the face of the earth? Et ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant, says the old Briton speaking of the Romans. But what had the sheep, and the cows, and the oxen, to do with all this! Why was the Revenge of the Destroyer exercised upon them?

Quid meruistis oves, placidum pecus inque tegendos
Nati homines? Quid meruere boves?

Were not the fish as guilty as these poor animals? We must not however forget (says the Professor) that the fish are not mentioned in the history of the Deluge. The obvious answer to this is, that being tenants of the water they might well be left to take care of themselves!!! (p. 93.) Surely the Deity when he gave existence to this race of men, knew the propensities with which he had endowed them, the temptations to which he submitted them, and the course of conduct they would pursue. Were they created then, only to be exterminated?

The more I consider this collection of blasphemies against a good and gracious being, the kind parent and protector of all his creatures, who could have had no other motive for bringing them into existence but their own happiness, the more satisfied I am that this dreadful account of vindictive, punitive infliction, of exterminating cruelty, is a disgrace to the book that contains it, and the intellect that can believe it. I thank God that I hold the whole story in utter detestation and abhorrence; nor can any weight of testimony make it creditable to me, that a wise and a good being could thus act. I ask of every parent, are these vindictive feelings, the dispositions he would wish to be encouraged in his own son?

I am perfectly aware that although these arguments will be treated by Professor Silliman as a gentleman ought to treat them, and that from him they will receive fair and argumentative replies, yet there are many who will raise the hue and cry of infidelity, and heap calumny, falsehood and abuse upon the author, when they find his reasonings not within their power of confutation. All this is so much in the common course that I expect it. But it is high time in my opinion, to resist the intermeddling of the clergy and their devoted adherents, in matters of science: Philosophy may well appeal to its own exclusive evidence, and refuse to be dragged on as a slave fastened to the triumphal car of orthodox theology. The time has arrived when the votaries of fashionable creeds must expect their tenets to undergo the searching ordeal of free discussion, if they imprudently provoke it. Nor is that man an honest man, who endeavors to keep the rising generation in darkness, for fear they should discover the weak side of his own opinions. The times call for full and unlimited freedom of examination in every department of knowledge without exception; nor ought any opinion of any kind or description, pass current as truth, unless it be founded on such facts and such arguments as will stand the test of minute and accurate investigation before the tribunal of the public.

The liberty I claim in this respect, I freely grant. Let those who think my reasonings untenable, refute them. Attached as I am to my own notions, I hope I am attached to the cause of truth still more. When the arguments here advanced, have been fully sifted and examined through a free press, we shall know where the truth actually lays; and not before.

There are many and most grave objections that have been, and well may be raised against these books, from descriptions and commands contained in them, of a most objectionable character: but I do not wish to go beyond the occasion that has compelled these remarks; or engage my respectable opponent in a discussion which he has not provoked. Sufficient for the occasion, are the preceding pages.

One general result of this discussion, must strike the most careless observer: the arguments that may reasonably be urged against the Mosaic authority, and inspired character of these books, have induced many men of undoubted honesty, of acknowledged talents and abundant learning in various parts of Europe, and in recent times, to doubt whether the Pentateuch is a composition of Moses, and entitled to be considered as the dictate of divine inspiration. Much labor and much learning, far more than the generality of men can bring to the examina

tion, are required even to discuss, not to say elucidate, the difficulties that stand in the way of the orthodox opinion: is it thus that divine inspiration works? Doubts and difficulties, obscurities, distractions and denials in abundance accompany human efforts and investigations in pursuit of truth; where divine inspiration takes a part, we have a right to expect that all doubt and difficulty shall be removed, and that supernatural evidence shall be to every one conclusive both as to fact and argument; else it has interfered in vain. Shall the language of inspiration be doubtful or unintelligible? Shall it render a plain question obscure, or a doubtful one more difficult? Has it removed all obscurity from the present investigation? Why then introduce it? Cui bono? Let Prof. Silliman and his clerical friends answer this inquiry.

APPENDIX.

NOTE A. On the uncertainty of History, Preface to Horace Walpole's Historic doubts on Richard 3rd. (1768.)

L'Histoire n'est fondee, &c. History is based only on the testimony of authors who have transmitted it to us. It is of great consequence therefore to our knowledge of history, that we should be well informed who are the authors, and what character they are entitled to. Nothing is to be neglected on this point: the time when they lived, their birth, their country, the part they bore in the transactions related, the kind of interest they might feel in them, their means of coming at the knowledge of them, are essential circumstances of which we ought not to be ignorant; for upon these circumstances depend the greater or less authority to which the history is entitled. Without this knowledge, we very often run the risk of taking for our guide an historian unworthy of confidence, or at least very ill informed. Hist. de l'Acad. des Inscrip. v. X.

So incompetent has the generality of historians been for the province they have undertaken, that it is almost a question, whether, if the dead of past ages could revive, they would be able to reconnoitre the events of their own times, as transmitted to us by ignorance and misrepresentation. All very, ancient history, except that of the illuminated Jews, is a perfect fable. It was written by priests, or collected from their reports; and calculated solely to raise lofty ideas of the origin of each nation. Gods and demi-gods were the principal actors; and truth is

seldom to be expected where the personages are supernatural. The Greek historians have no advantage over the Peruvian, but in the beauty of their language, or from that language being more familiar to us. Mango Capac, the son of the Sun, is as authentic a founder of a royal race, as the progenitor of the Heraclidæ. What truth indeed could be expected, when even the identity of person is uncertain? The actions of one were ascribed to many, and of many to one. It is not known

whether there was a single Hercules or twenty.

As nations grew polished, History became better authenticated. Greece itself learned to speak a little truth. Rome, at the hour of its fall, had the consolation of seeing the crimes of its usurpers published. The vanquished inflicted eternal wounds on their conquerors-but who knows, if Pompey had succeeded, whether Julius Cæsar would not have been decorated as a martyr to public liberty? At some periods the suffering criminal captivates all hearts; at others, the triumphant tyrant. Augustus, drenched in the blood of his fellow citizens, and Charles Stuart, falling in his own blood, are held up to admiration. Truth is left out of the discussion; and odes and university sermons give the law to history and credulity.

*

But if the crimes of Rome are authenticated, the case is not the same with its virtues. And able critic has shown that nothing is more problematic than the history of the three or four first ages of that city. As the confusion of the State increased, so does the confusion in its story. The empire had masters, whose names are only known from medals. It is uncertain of what princes several expresses were the wives. If the jealousy of two antiquaries intervenes, the point becomes inexplicable. Oriuna, on the medals of Carausius, used to pass for the moon: of late years it is become a doubt whether she was not his consort. It is of little importance whether she was moon or express: but how little must we know of those times, when those land marks to certainty, royal names, do not serve even that purpose! In the cabinet of the king of France are several coins of sovereigns, whose country cannot now be guessed at.

The want of records, of letters, of printing, of critics; wars, revolutions, factions, and other causes, occasioned these defects in ancient history. Chronology and astronomy are forced to tinker up and reconcile, as well as they can, those uncertainties. This satisfies the learned-but what should we think of the reign of George the Second, to be calculated two thousand

*M. De Beaufort, sur l'Incertitude de l'histoire Romaine pendant les quatres premieres siecles.

years hence by eclipses, lest the conquest of Canada should be ascribed to James the First?

At the very moment that the Roman empire was resettled, nay, when a new metropolis was erected, in an age of science and arts, while letters still held up their heads in Greece; consequently, when the great outlines of truth, I mean events, might be expected to be established; at that very period a new deluge of error burst upon the world. Christian monks and saints laid truth waste; and a mock sun arose at Rome, when the Roman sun sunk at Constantinople. Virtues and vices were rated by the standard of bigotry; and the militia of the church became the only historians. The best princes were represented as monsters; the worst, at least the most useless, were deified, according as they depressed or exalted turbulent and enthusiastic prelates and friars. Nay, these men were so destitute of temper and common sense, that they dared to suppose that common sense would never revisit the earth: and accordingly wrote with so little judgment, and committed such palpable forgeries, that if we cannot discover what really happened in those ages, we can at least be very sure what did not. How many general persecutions does the church record, of which there is not the smallest trace? What donations and charters were forged, for which those holy persons would lose their ears, if they where in this age to present them in the most common court of judicature? Yet how long were these impostors the only persons who attempted to write history!

But let us lay aside their interested lies, and consider how far they were qualified in other respects to transmit faithful memorials to posterity. In the ages I speak of, the barbarous monkish ages, the shadow of learning that existed was confined to the clergy: they generally wrote in Latin, or in verse and their compositions in both were truly barbarous. The difficulties of rhyme, and the want of correspondent terms in Latin, where no small impediments to the severe march of truth. But there were worse obstacles to encounter. Europe was in a continual state of warfare. Little princes and great lords were constantly skirmishing and scrambling for trifling additions of territory, or wasting each others borders. Geography was very imperfect; no police existed; roads, such as they were, were dangerous, and posts were not established. Events were only known by rumour, from pilgrims, or by letters carried by couriers to the parties interested: the public did not enjoy even those fallible vehicles of intelligence, newspapers. In this situation did monks, at twenty, fifty, and hundred, nay, a thousand miles distance (and under the circumstances I have