5. It is admitted that Ezra contains a contradiction in the estimate of the numbers who returned from Babylon; it is attributed to a transcriber's mistake of one Hebrew figure for another (p. 30). [Paine's question here had been: "What certainty then can there be in the Bible for anything"? It is no answer to tell him how an error involving a difference of 12,542 people may perhaps have occurred.]
5. It is admitted that David did not write some of the Psalms ascribed to him (p. 131).
7. "It is acknowledged that the order of time is not everywhere observed" [in Jeremiah]; also that this prophet, fearing for his life, suppressed the truth [as directed by King Zedekiah]. "He was under no obligation to tell the whole [truth] to men who were certainly his enemies and no good subjects of the king" (pp. 36, 37). [But how can it be determined how much in Jeremiah is the "word of God," and how much uttered for the casual advantage of himself or his king?]
8. It is admitted that there was no actual fulfilment of Ezekie's prophecy, "No foot of man shall pass through it [Egypt], nor foot of beast shall pass through it, for forty years" (p. 42).
9. The discrepancies between the genealogies of Christ, in Matthew and Luke, are admitted: they are explained by saying that Matthew gives the genealogy of Joseph, and Luke that of Mary; and that Matthew commits "an error" in omitting three generations between Joram and Ozias (p. 48.) [Paine had asked, why might not writers mistaken in the natural genealogy of Christ be mistaken also in his celestial genealogy? To this no answer was attempted.]
Such are some of the Bishop's direct admissions.
There are other admissions in his silences and evasions. For instance, having elaborated a theory as to how the error in Ezra might occur, by the close resemblance of Hebrew letters representing widely different numbers, he does not notice Nehemiah's error in the same matter, pointed out by Paine,—a self-contradiction, and also a discrepancy with Ezra, which could not be explained by his theory. He says nothing about several other contradictions alluded to by Paine. The Bishop's evasions are sometimes painful, as when he tries to escape the force of Paine's argument, that Paul himself was not convinced by the evidences of the resurrection which he adduces for others. The Bishop says: "That Paul had so far resisted the evidence which the apostles had given of the resurrection and ascension of Jesus, as to be a persecutor of the disciples of Christ, is certain; but I do not remember the place where he declares that he had not believed them." But when Paul says, "I verily thought with myself that I ought to do many things contrary to the name of Jesus of Nazareth," surely this is inconsistent with his belief in the resurrection and ascension. Paul declares that when it was the good pleasure of God "to reveal his Son in me," immediately he entered on his mission. He "was not disobedient to the heavenly vision." Clearly then Paul had not been convinced of the resurrection and ascension until he saw Christ in a vision.
In dealing with Paine's moral charges against the Bible the Bishop has left a confirmation of all that I have said concerning the Christianity of his time. An "infidel" of to-day could need no better moral arguments against the Bible than those framed by the Bishop in its defence. He justifies the massacre of the Canaanites on the ground that they were sacrificers of their own children to idols, cannibals, addicted to unnatural lust Were this true it would be no justification; but as no particle of evidence is adduced in support of these utterly unwarranted and entirely fictitious accusations, the argument now leaves the massacre without any excuse at all. The extermination is not in the Bible based on any such considerations, but simply on a divine command to seize the land and slay its inhabitants. No legal right to the land is suggested in the record; and, as for morality, the only persons spared in Joshua's expedition were a harlot and her household, she having betrayed her country to the invaders, to be afterwards exalted into an ancestress of Christ. Of the cities destroyed by Joshua it is said: "It was of Jehovah to harden their hearts, to come against Israel in battle, that he might utterly destroy them, that they might have no favor, but that he might destroy them, as Jehovah commanded Moses" (Joshua xi., 20). As their hearts were thus in Jehovah's power for hardening, it may be inferred that they were equally in his power for reformation, had they been guilty of the things alleged by the Bishop. With these things before him, and the selection of Rahab for mercy above all the women in Jericho—every woman slain save the harlot who delivered them up to slaughter—the Bishop says: "The destruction of the Canaanites exhibits to all nations, in all ages, a signal proof of God's displeasure against sin."
The Bishop rages against Paine for supposing that the commanded preservation of the Midianite maidens, when all males and married women were slain, was for their "debauchery."
"Prove this, and I will allow that Moses was the horrid monster you make him—prove this, and I will allow that the Bible is what you call it—'a book of lies, wickedness, and blasphemy'—prove this, or excuse my warmth if I say to you, as Paul said to Elymas the sorcerer, who sought to turn away Sergius Paulus from the faith, 'O full of all subtilty, and of all mischief, thou child of the devil, thou enemy of all righteousness, wilt thou not cease to pervert the right ways of the Lord?'—I did not, when I began these letters, think that I should have been moved to this severity of rebuke, by anything you could have written; but when so gross a misrepresentation is made of God's proceedings, coolness would be a crime."