Your next remark is concerning miracles. I have already observed, that no testimony can give them belief. You maintain, that the degree and kind of evidence for the prodigies recorded in the Bible exceeds that for any other wonders. How this happens I am unable to comprehend. I know they are contained in a book composed by the priests of the most credulous and ignorant nation that perhaps ever existed; and the authority of these unknown and obscure persons, is all the evidence we have for crediting their stories. An English Bishop tells his countrymen, that the miracle of the sun standing still is better supported than the prodigies of Abbe Paris, Mesmer, and the late Labre at Rome, than the numerous Indian, Chinese, and Popish miracles, of which a great part are attested by magistrates, divines, physicians, and the most enlightened classes of society; while the wonderful repast of the angels with Abraham, or the marvellous tale of Jonah's three days' residence in the belly of a fish, depends upon the authority of a book which we shall prove to be spurious, to have been lost for several ages, and to be compiled, if not altogether composed, by some Jewish scribes, who were, as they themselves acknowledge, the only men versed in the scriptures of the nation. I thought you would have known sacred history better than at the present day to make such unsupported assertions. Have you forgotten the wonders of the magicians of Pharaoh? Do you not recollect the express acknowledgment of Moses himself, that there may be miracles and prophecies performed by men who adored not the Lord Jehovah? Does he not say, in chap. xiii. of Deuteronomy, "If there arise among you a prophet, or a dreamer of dreams, and giveth thee a sign or a wonder, and the sign or the wonder come to pass whereof he spake unto thee, saying, Let us go after other gods, &c.--that prophet, or that dreamer of dreams, shall be put to death, _because he hath spoken to you to turn away from the Lord your God_." It is not because he is a false prophet, but because he is not a prophet of Jehovah. Does not this at once show the grossness of the conceptions of the Jews, and the sophistical mode of arguing of their legislator? For I would ask, How did Moses prove himself the oracle of God? Or how did Jesus Christ show himself the Son of God, but by their pretended miracles? Why then believe the testimony of a miracle in one instance, and not in another? But the Jews certainly imagined, that there were several gods, and that they quarrelled with each other, as kings are used to do; therefore it was natural that one set of prophets should try to exterminate another, and be as inveterate against them as the Lord Jehovah was against Baal, or other rival gods. If the reader imagines I speak at random when I say, the Jews believed in other gods, I refer him to Judges, chap. xi. ver. 23, 34, where it is said, "So now the Lord God of Israel hath