1932. As a corollary to these axioms, it results that God never has performed any miracle for the purpose of conveying a knowledge of the true religion; simply because all that have been alleged to have come from God have only produced religious discord. Of course God, foreseeing the failure of those miracles, would not have resorted to them.
Did God a special creed require,
Each soul would he not with that creed inspire?
1933. This I answer affirmatively. The truth of the affirmative is as clear to my mind as any of Euclid’s axioms.
1934. Another conclusion I consider as inevitable: that no document can be substantiated by the facts of which it furnishes the sole evidence.
1935. In this predicament I place the Bible, the Koran, the Shaster, or Veda, and the Zendavesta, or any religious record of antiquity.
1936. Manifestly, a record made by man can have no higher authority than that of the men whose testimony it records, and those by whom it was recorded.
Of the origin of the Books of Moses no higher evidence exists, according to the testimony of the Bible itself, than that of an obscure priest and a fanatical king.
1937. If we are to judge of the Jewish priesthood by the example afforded by Samuel, we have no more reason to trust a Hebrew pontiff than a Romish pope, ([1091].) Bishop Hopkins has sufficiently shown how far priests are to be trusted, ([1296].) What would be said of any book, alleged to be due to Divine inspiration, if it had, agreeably to its own authority, an origin no more reliable than the allegation of a priest that it had been found in a temple or church, there being no other evidence of its not having been forged by the priest, or his accomplices, than his own allegation? What better evidence would there be of the sacred origin of such a document, than there is of the Book of Mormon—the Bible brought forward by Joe Smith? Yet the following quotation will show that there was no Bible in use in Judea in the reign of Josiah, 350 years after the reign of David, and just before the Babylonian captivity; and that, in consequence, idolatry had to a great extent superseded the true worship.
1938. Under these circumstances, the high priest alleged a copy of the Bible to be found, and sent it by a scribe to the king. This monarch had lived in such ignorance of the existence of this holy code, that he was thrown into a state of such deep penitence for the sinful omissions arising from his ignorance, as to rend his clothes by way of expressing his sorrow. Moreover, orders were forthwith given to have the abuses abated, which had been introduced solely through ignorance.