PROSPECT; or, View of the Moral World.

Comments upon the Sacred Writings of the Jews and Christians. Exodus Chapter 11.

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HE continued feries of blunders and of villainy ex

hibited in this book, muft be fhocking to every correct mind, and ftamp it with an odious character, which the ingenuity of priesteraft can never efface. This chap tèr, fhort as it is, furnithes a ftriking verification of this remark. It begins with another threatening denunciation from the God of Mofes, that he would bring one plague more upon Pharaoh and the people of Egypt; inftead however of declaring with correctnefs what this plague fhould be, the account prefents us with a fpecial command from Jehovah of an unjuft and thieving nature relative to the conduct of his chofen people. He commands them to borrow the property of the Egyptians to accomplish this object, whereas it is evident upon the very face of the record that the real intention was theft and fpoliation, deceit, hypocricy and the manifeftation of all thofe vices by which the character of man is so often degraded. In verfe 2d it is thus faid. "Speak now in the ears of the people, and let every man borrow of his neighbour, and every woman of her neighbour, jewels of filver and jewels of gold," The very word borrowing includes the idea of repayment, and in deficiency of making fuch return the person who borrows is considered in the light of a fwindler, provided it was his intention at the time of borrowing never to pay again. This is exactly the fact in the prefent cafe; neither Mofes nor his God, nor the chofen people had any intention to re turn the goods or property which they had borrowed. They intended when they borrowed thefe jewels of gold and filver, to give the Egyptians leg bail for fecurity. They had no intention to act upon fair, open and candid ground-deception was the leading feature of their conduct, and in this fcene of hypocricy they were aided and abetted by the power and character of their God. A divinity of fuch a character has forfeited all claim to human

adoration, and becomes the object of contempt and difgult to every intelligent mind. A God who either directly or indirectly commands theft is no better than the thief himself; he joins his efforts and unites his power with the fpoliators of the world-he is the coadjutor of villainy, abhorred by science, spurned at by virtue, and held in universal contempt by the moral and intellectual powers of man. This deceptive and thieving bufinefs is followed by a bloody and ferocious intention on the part of Jehovah to murder the first born of Pharaoh and the people of Egypt, including alfo a vindictive temperament against the brute creation. In verfe 5th are these words," And the first born in the land of Egypt fhall die, from the first born of Pharaoh that fetteth upon the throne, even unto the first born of the maid fervant that is behind the mill; and all the first born of beafts." We afk of those who believe this book to be divine, whether it was neceffary for God to commit murder for the purpose of emancipating his chofen people? We afk emphatically in the fecond place, whether the objects of his wroth were well felected? If it was neceflary to make a fpecial difplay of his divine vengeance, would it not have been more confiftent with the principles of justice to have seized upon Pharaoh and his fubordinate agents, inftead of offering up infantine innocence, and glutting himself with the gore of harmless babes? But this book is a diftortion of every thing that is juft-it theoretically and practically holds in abhorrence all the moral sympathies of human existence; it is a reproach to virtue, a dishonour to the character of God, hoftile to the immutable principles of justice and essentially deftructive to the true interests of intellectual life. Mofes enlifts his God in all the schemes of villainy of which he was himself the author; he calls Heaven to aid him in his projects— Heaven bows in humble fubmiflion to his mandates, and lies, theft, murder, deception and hypocricy ftain the annals of the Jewish history, and mark the character of this partial divinity with immoral traits injurious to all the fentiments of virtue, and calculated to hold the world in bondage for ever.

Hints towards forming a Society for enquiring into the Truth or Falshood of Ancient History, so far as History is connected with systems of Religion ancient and modern.

It has been cuftomary to clafs History into three divifions, diftinguifhed by the names of Sacred, Prophane, and Ecclefiaftical. By the firft is meant the Bible; by. the fecond, the hiftory of nations, of men and things; and by third, the history of the church and its priesthood.

Nothing is more eafy than to give names, and therefore mere names signify nothing unless they lead to the dif covery of some caufe for which that name was given. For example, Sunday is the name given to the first day of the week, in the English language, and it is the fame in the Latin, that is, it has the fame meaning, (Dies Solis) and alfo in the German, and in feveral other languages. Why then was this name given to that day? Becaufe it was the day dedicated by the ancient world to the luminary, which in English we call the Sun, and therefore. the day Sun-day, or the day of the Sun; as in the like. manner we call the fecond day Monday, the day dedi cated to the Moon.

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Here the name, Sunday, leads to the caufe of its being called fo, and we have vifible evidence of the fact, because we behold the Sun from whence the name comes; but this is not the cafe when we diftinguish one part of hiftory from another by the name of sacred. All hiftories have been written by men. We have no evidence, nor any caufe to believe, that any have been written by God. That part of the Bible called the Old Teftament, is the Hiftory of the Jewish nation, from the time of Abraham, which begins in the 11th chap of Genefis to the downfall. of that nation by Nebuchadnezar, and is no more entitled to be called facred than any other hiftory. It is altogether the contrivance of prieftcraft that has given it that name. So far from its being sacred it has not the ap. pearance of being true in many of the things it relates. It must be better authority than a book, which any impofture might make, as Mahomet made the Koran, to make

a thoughtful man believe that the Sun and Moon flood ftill, or that Mofes and Aaron turned the Nile, which is larger than the Delaware, into blood, and that the Egyp tian magicians did the fame. These things have too much the appearance of romance to be believed for fact.

It would be of use to enquire, and afcertain the time, when that part of the Bible called the Old Teftament first appeared. From all that can be collected there was no fuch book till after the Jews returned from captivity in Babylon, and that it is the work of the Pharifees of the Second Temple. How they came to make the 19th chapter of the ad book of King, and the 37 of Ifaiah, word for word alike, can only be accounted for by their having no plan to go by, and not knowing what they were about. The fame is the cafe with refpect to the laft verfes in the 2d book of Chronicles, and the firft verfes in Ezra, they alfo are word for word alike, which fhews that the Bible has been put together at random.

But befides these things there is great reafon to believe we have been impofed upon, with refpect to the antiquity of the bible, and efpecially with refpect to the books afcribed to Moses. Herodotus, who is called the father of hiftory, and is the most ancient hiftorian whose works have reached to our time, and who travelled into Egypt, converfed with the priests, hiftorians, aftronomers, and Jearned men of that country, for the purpose of obtaining all the information of it he could, and who gives an account of the ancient state of it, makes no mention of fuch a man as Mofes, though the Bible makes him to have been the greatest hero there, nor of any one circumftance mentioned in the book of Exodus, respecting Egypt, fuch as turning the rivers into blood, the duft into lice, the death of the first born throughout all the land of Egypt, the paffage of the Red-Sea, the drowning of Pharaoh and all his hoft, things which could not have been a fecret in Egypt, and must have been generally known, had they been facts; and therefore as no fuch things were known in Egypt, nor any fuch man as Mofes, at the time Herodotus was there, which is about two

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thousand two hundred years ago, it fhews that the account of these things in the book afcribed to Mofes is a made ftory of later times, that is, after the return of the Jews from the Babylonian captivity, and that Mofes is not the author of the books afcribed to him.

With refpect the cofmogony, or account of the creationin the firft chapter of Genefis, of the Garden of Eden in the fecond chapter, and of what is called the fall of man in the third chapter, there is fomething concerning them we are not historically acquainted with. In none of the books of the bible after Genefis, are any of these things mentioned, or even alluded to. How is this to be accounted for? The obvious inference is, that either they were not known, or not believed to be facts, by the writers of the other books of the bible, and that Mofes is not the author of the chapters where thefe accounts are given.

The next question on the cafe is, how did the Jews come by these notions and at what time were they writ ten?

To answer this question we muft firft confider what the state of the world was at the time the Jews began to be a people, for the Jews are but a modern race, com, pared with the antiquity of other nations. At the time there were, even by their own account, but thirteen Jews or Ifraelites in the world, Jacob and his twelve sons, and four of these were baftards. The nations of Egypt, Chaldea, Perfia and India, were great and populous, abounding in learning and science, particularly in the knowledge of aftronomy of which the jews were always ignorant. The chronological tables mention, that Eclypfis were obferved at Babylon above two thoufand years before the Chriftian era, which was before there was a fingle Jew or Ifraelite in the world.

All thofe ancient nations had their cosmogonies, that is their accounts, how the creation was made, long before there was fuch people as Jews or Ifraelites. An account · of the cofmogonies of India and Perfia is given by Henry Lord, Chaplain to the Eaft India Company, at Surat, and