I have now followed your animadversions on the objections of Thomas Paine upon the Old Testament; and I trust I have shown that you have in no degree been a more successful labourer in the cause of Judaism than your predecessors; even your wonderful prophecy of Daniel is converted into a mere historical tale, and the application Jesus Christ makes of it to himself is accordingly proved to be ridiculous, the more so, as it comes from the Son of God. I have a few more observations to make, before I leave this book. I cannot pass in silence the gross blunder you have committed, when you refer Mr. Paine to Ferguson for an astronomical proof of the miracle of the total darkness at the crucifixion of Jesus. An odd conceit, upon my word! You might know that the event is omitted by all the authors of eminence who wrote at that time; that even Pliny passes it unnoticed. Lest you should mislead the reader with your groundless assertions, I shall state the matter as it stands in reality. You avoid learned disquisitions to be intelligible, but you ought not to have been so deficient of authority, where it is most needed. Besides the gospels, the darkness is not mentioned in any author; but divines have attempted to prove the event from a supposed passage of Phlegon, related by Eusebius; it is in the following words: "In the fourth year of the two hundred and second Olympiad, there was the greatest eclipse ever seen; it was night at six, and even the stars could be seen." This passage has long been disregarded by men of knowledge; it alludes to an eclipse, not to a miraculous darkness. Both Mr. Ferguson and you have blundered in chronology and astronomy. It is certain, in the year of Christ's crucifixion, according to the common chronology, there could have been no eclipse of the sun visible at that time at Jerusalem; Ferguson, therefore, concludes it a miracle. But you ought to have known, that the fourth year of the two hundred and second Olympiad, is not the year of the crucifixion in any system of chronology; that there was an eclipse of the sun, in the year mentioned by Phlegon, in the month of November, which, however, was not central; and you know that Jesus is said to have died at the time of the full moon in March, or in the beginning of April. Besides, had even such a darkness taken place, are you ignorant of the existence of comets, and would not one passing between the earth and the sun eclipse that luminary? Have not such miracles taken place if we credit historians? The death of Caesar was preceded by wonderful prodigies, and a comet made its appearance immediately after. The supposed miraculous influence of comets, and their being prophetic signs, was once an article of faith throughout all Europe, and the ancient history of every country records many events which the authors maintain arose from comets.