1946. “The king strictly enjoined the high priest to take a particular account of the plate and vessel in the temple, and to cast out so many of them as they should find to have been dedicated by any of his ancestors to idolatrous services. Those that were found were reduced to dust, and in that state thrown into the air. All the priests were likewise put to death, that were not of the flock of Aaron.
1947. “Having effected this reformation in Jerusalem, Josiah made a progress throughout his whole dominions, where he destroyed all the relics of Jeroboam’s superstition and idolatry, and burnt the bones of false prophets, upon the very altar which that impious king had set up. Of this we have taken notice before, as well as the intervention of the prophet, with a prediction in the hearing of the multitude, at the time when Jeroboam was offering sacrifice, ‘That one of the race of David, Josiah by name, was to do this.’ The prediction was verified, by the event, three hundred and fifty-one years after it was foretold.
1948. “So ardent was the zeal of Josiah for extending the great work of reformation, that he went in person to several of the Israelites who had escaped the Assyrian bondage, in order to dissuade them from continuing in superstition, and prevail with them to embrace the pure religion of their forefathers, according to the long established custom of their country. Nor did he rest here, but caused the towns and villages to be searched for the discovery of any remains of idolatrous practices that might lie concealed. The very figures of the horses over the porch of the temple, which their forefathers had dedicated to the sun, and all the monuments to which the people had ascribed divine honour, were, by his special order, taken away and destroyed.
1949. “Having thus purged the whole nation from idolatry, and fully restored the true worship of the one only and true God, he called an assembly of the people at Jerusalem, for the purpose of celebrating the passover, the time for that festival being near at hand. On this occasion the king gave out of his own store, for paschal sacrifices, thirty goats, a thousand lambs, and three thousand oxen. The heads of the priests presented to the others of the sacerdotal order two thousand six hundred lambs, and the chief of the Levites gave to their tribes five thousand lambs, and five hundred oxen. A solemn sacrifice was made of these victims, according to the precepts of Moses, and the ceremony was performed under the direction of the priests. From the time of the prophet Samuel to that day, there had never been a festival celebrated with equal solemnity; for this had the allowed preference, because the whole was conducted in strict conformity to the very letter of the laws, and the precise mode of their forefathers. Josiah, after the accomplishment of a work of such moment and importance to the nation in general, enjoyed his government in honour, peace, and plenty, till he closed his life.”—Book 10, page 153.
If the Pentateuch had been previously known to the Jews, it is incredible that it could have become obsolete and forgotten prior to the alleged discovery of it in the Temple, in the reign of Josiah.
1950. After the Pentateuch had been viewed as the word of God, made known to a people as their peculiar inheritance, lifting them, in their own estimation, above the rest of mankind, as God’s chosen people, this code being the sole authority for their bloody and rapacious course toward their neighbours, is it credible that such a document, had it ever existed, could have become both obsolete and forgotten?[45] Yet we have no alternative but to admit this absurdity, or to conclude that the Bible has no better authority than the Book of Mormon; the one being no more than the other the work of a designing priesthood and would-be rulers.
1951. What credit would be given to any work having no better authority for divine origin than that of the allegation that some pope had found it in a cathedral or in the Vatican, and had sent it to some monarchical bigot as the mislaid testament of the Almighty, given by inspiration through some ancient predecessor of his holiness?
1952. It may be difficult to conceive that Hilkiah and his associates, in writing a book, as proceeding by inspiration from Jehovah, could have fabricated any facts so derogatory to an immaculate Deity as those mentioned under the authority of Moses. How impious must have been their conceptions, to represent him as authorizing them to borrow trinkets of the Egyptians, in order to purloin them; the sanctioning the cold-blooded murder of three thousand people for religious error; the slaughtering of whole nations, even to their suckling babes, as in the case of the Midianites, Canaanites, and Amalekites, with the setting aside virgins for the fate from which the Roman Virginius relieved his daughter by his dagger! It is difficult to conceive that an idea, so derogatory of God, could have been entertained by his chosen people. Yet, on the other hand, inasmuch as they were written, there must have been some mind so impious as to have originated them; and it may be a less wonder that such fabricators should have existed in a cruel and barbarous age of the world, than that, in the present age of superior morality and civilization, they should find endorsers in the professed ministers of the Being whom they have thus misrepresented.
1953. Mr. Mahan alleges: “Every reader will agree with us in the assumption that the incorruptible God has never performed and never will perform a miracle in attestation of that which is unreal or untrue. A religion really and truly attested by divine miracles must therefore be admitted to be true.”
1954. To this very admissible truism, I add that an omnipotent and prescient God could not have any occasion to perform miracles in attestation of any thing, since, by the premises, his will must be carried out without miracles. That any thing should, even for an instant, be contrary to his will, is inconsistent with his foresight and omnipotency. It would be a miracle that any thing counter to his will should exist.