and in that predicament stood Aaron and Miriam, the accusers of Moses. You yourself have, probably, felt the stings of calumny, and have been anxious to remove the impression. I do not call you a vain and arrogant coxcomb for vindicating your character, when in the latter part of this very work you boast, and I hope truly, "that the man does not exist that can say I have persecuted him, or any man, or any set of men, in the American revolution, or in the French revolution; or that I have in any case returned evil for evil." I know not what kings and priests may say to this; you may not have returned to them evil for evil, because they never, I believe, did you any harm; but you have done them all the harm you could, and that without provocation.

I think it needless to notice your observation upon what you call the dramatic style of Deuteronomy; it is an ill-founded hypothesis. You might as well ask, where the author of Cæsar's Commentaries got the speeches of Cæsar, as where the author of Deuteronomy got the speeches of Moses. But your argument, that Moses was not the author of Deuteronomy, because the reason given in that book for the observation of the Sabbath, is different from that given in Exodus, merits a reply.

You need not be told that the very name of this book imports, in Greek, a repetition of a law; and that the Hebrew doctors have called it by a word of the same meaning. In the fifth verse of the first chapter it is said in our Bibles, "Moses began to declare this law;" but the Hebrew words, more properly translated, import that Moses "began, or determined, to explain the law."-This is no shift of mine to get over a difficulty; the words are so rendered in most of the ancient versions, and by Fagius, Vetablus, and Le Clerc, men eminently skilled in the Hebrew language. This repetition and explanation of the law, was a wise and benevolent proceeding in Moses; that those who were either not born, or were mere infants, when it was first

(forty years before) delivered in Horeb, might have an opportunity of knowing it; especially as Moses their leader was soon to be taken from them, and they were about to be settled in the midst of nations given to idolatry, and sunk in vice.-Now, where is the wonder, that some variations, and some additions, should be made to a law, when a legislator thinks fit to republish it many years after its first promulgation?

With respect to the Sabbath, the learned are divided in opinion concerning its origin; some contending, that it was sanctified from the creation of the world ; that it was observed by the patriarchs before the flood '; that it was neglected by the Israelites during their bondage in Egypt; revived on the falling of manna in the wilderness; and enjoined, as a positive law, at mount Sinai. Others esteem its institution to have been no older than the age of Moses; and argue, that what is said of the sanctification of the Sabbath in the book of Genesis, is said by way of anticipation. There may be truth in both these accounts. To me it is probable, that the memory of the creation was handed down from Adam to all his posterity; and that the seventh day was, for a long time, held sacred by all nations, in commemoration of that event; but that the peculiar rigidness of its observance was enjoined by Moses to the Israelites alone. As to there being two reasons given for its being kept holy, one, that on that day God rested from the work of creation-the other, that on that day God had given them rest from the servitude of Egypt-I see no contradiction in the accounts. If a man, in writing the history of England, should inform his readers, that the Parliament had ordered the fifth of November to be kept holy, because on that day God had delivered the nation from a bloody intended massacre by gunpowder; and if, in another part of his history, he should assign the deliverance of our church and nation from Popery and arbitrary power, by the arrival of King William, as a reason for its being kept holy;

would any one contend, that he was not justified in both these ways of expression, or that we ought from thence to conclude, that he was not the author of them both?

You think " that law in Deuteronomy inhuman and brutal, which authorizes parents, the father and the mother, to bring their own children to have them stoned to death, for what it is pleased to call stubbornness."-You are aware, I suppose, that paternal power among the Romans, the Gauls, the Persians, and other nations, was of the most arbitrary kind; that it extended to the taking away the life of the child. I do not know whether the Israelites in the time of Moses exercised this paternal power: it was not a custom adopted by all nations, but it was by many; and in the infancy of society, before individual families had coalesced into communities, it was probably very general. Now Moses, by this law, which you esteem brutal and inhuman, hindered such an extravagant power from being either introduced or exercised amongst the Israelites. This law is so far from countenancing the arbitrary power of a father over the life of his child, that it takes from him the power of accusing the child before a magistrate-the father and the mother of the child must agree in bringing the child to judgement-and it is not by their united will that the child was to be condemned to death; the elders of the city were to judge whether the accusation. was true; and the accusation was to be not merely, as you insinuate, that the child was stubborn, but that he was stubborn and rebellious,. a glutton, and a drunkard." Considered in this light, you must allow the law to have been an humane restriction of a power improper to be lodged with any parent.

That you may abuse the priests, you abandon your subject-" Priests," you say, "preach up Deuteronomy, for Deuteronomy preaches up tythes."-I do not know that priests preach up Deuteronomy, more than they preach up other books of Scripture; but I

do know that tythes are not preached up in Deuteronomy, more than in Leviticus, in Numbers, in Chronicles, in Malachi, in the law, the history, and the prophets of the Jewish nation.-You go on-" It is from this book, chap. xxv. ver. 4, they have taken the phrase, and applied it to tything, Thou shalt not muzzle the ox when he treadeth out the corn;' and that this might not escape observation, they have noted it in the table of contents at the head of the chapter, though it is only a single verse of less than two lines. O priests! priests! ye are willing to be compared to an ox for the sake of tythes !"-I cannot call this reasoning-and I will not pollute my page by giving it a proper appellation. Had the table of contents, instead of simply saying-the ox is not to be muzzled-said-tythes enjoined, or priests to be maintained-there would have been a little ground for your censure. Whoever noted this phrase at the head of the chapter, had better reason for doing it than you have attributed to them. They did it, because St. Paul had quoted it, when he was proving to the Corinthians, that they who preached the Gospel had a right to live by the Gospel; it was Paul, and not the priests, who first applied this phrase to tything. St. Paul, indeed, did not avail himself of the right he contended for; he was not, therefore, interested in what he said. The reason on which he grounds the right, is not merely this quotation which you ridicule; nor the appointment of the law of Moses, which you think fabulous; nor the injunction of Jesus, which you despise; no, it is a reason founded in the nature of things, and which no philosopher, no unbeliever, no man of common sense can deny to be a solid reason; it amounts to this-that "the labourer is worthy of his hire." Nothing is so much a man's own, as his labour and ingenuity; and it is entirely consonant to the law of nature, that by the innocent use of these he should provide for his subsistence. Husbandmen, artists, soldiers, physicians, lawyers, all let out their la

bour and talents for a stipulated reward; why may not a priest do the same? Some accounts of you have been published in Eng and; but, conceiving them to have proceeded from a design to injure your character, I never read them. I know nothing of your parentage, your education, or condition in life. You may have been elevated, by your birth, above the necessity of acquiring the means of sustaining life by the labour either of hand or head: if this be the case, you ought not to despise those who have come into the world in les favourable circumstances. If your origin has been less fortunate, you must have supported yourself, either by manual labour, or the exercise of your geniu. Why should you think that conduct disreputable in priests, which you probably consider as laudable in yourself? I know not whether you have as great a dislike of Kings as of priests: but that you may be induced to think more favourably of men of my profession, I will just mention to you, that the payment of tythes i no new institution, but that they were paid in the most ancient times, not to priests only, but to kings. I could give you an hundred instances of this: two may be sufficient. Abraham paid tythes to the king of Salem, four hundred years before the law of Moses was given. The king of Salem, was priest also of the Most High God. Priests, you see, existed in the world, and were held in high estimation, for kings were priests long before the impostures, as you esteem them, of the Jewish and Christian dispensations were heard of. But as this instance is taken from a book which you call " a book of contradictions and lies"-the Bible;-I will give you another, from a book, to the authority of which, as it is written by a profane author, you probably will not object. Diogenes Laertius, in his life of Solon, cites a letter of Pisistratus to that lawgiver, in which he says "Pisistratus, the tyrant, am contented with the stipends which were paid to those who reigned before me; the people of Athens set apart a