2046. But, independently of the incredibility of this Mosaic miracle as an isolated fact discordant with the laws of nature and human experience, is it not incredible on account of its inconsistency with the just and humane idea of God which the truly pious entertain, that he should give this assistance to the Jews in their unchristian warfare? This reasoning is at least as applicable to the alleged arrestation of the sun, (involving that of the rotary motion of the earth,) in order that Joshua might make a further slaughter of the vanquished Canaanites. For this slaughter the prominent excuse seems to have been that Moses, wishing to possess the territory of the Canaanites, professed to have the authority of God for extirpating them as idolaters, agreeably to the following language, which is represented by Mr. Mahan and others as the word of God, (Deut. viii. 16, 20, 22:)
2047. “And thou shalt consume all the people which the Lord thy God shall deliver thee; thine eye shall have no pity upon them: neither shalt thou serve their gods; for that will be a snare unto thee. Moreover, the Lord thy God will send the hornet among them, until they that are left, and hide themselves from thee, be destroyed. And the Lord thy God will put out those nations before thee by little and little; thou mayest not consume them at once, lest the beasts of the field increase upon thee.”
The Evidence which is insufficient to establish the Iniquity of a Sinner cannot be sufficient to establish the Divine Authority of a Book.
2048. “One witness shall not rise up against a man for any iniquity or any sin: at the mouth of two witnesses, or three witnesses, shall the matter be established,” (Deut. xix. 15.)
2049. Agreeably to the preceding quotation from Scripture, one witness is not sufficient to convict a man of any iniquity. Two witnesses, at least, are necessary to establish guilt. But if a single witness be insufficient to establish the iniquity of a man, how is it to be established, on the evidence of the priest Hilkiah alone, that the manuscript, which, as he represented, he had found in the temple, was the inspired code of Moses, or, as Mahan and others would have it, the word of God?
2050. Should the righteousness of a religious code be established by evidence insufficient to establish the iniquity of an individual? A fortiori, when, by proving the righteousness of a code, a whole generation was to be convicted of iniquity, was the evidence of one individual sufficient, especially when the iniquity thus to be adjudged was to draw down the unquenchable wrath of God, agreeably to Huldah the prophetess?
Word of God, impiously so called, or the Golden Rule inverted by God’s alleged Commands.
2051. “When thou comest nigh unto a city to fight against it, then proclaim peace unto it. And it shall be, if it make thee answer of peace, and open unto thee, then it shall be that all the people that is found therein shall be tributaries unto thee, and they shall serve thee. And if it will make no peace with thee, but will make war against thee, then thou shalt besiege it. And when the Lord thy God hath delivered it into thine hands, thou shalt smite every male thereof with the edge of the sword: but the women, and the little ones, and the cattle, and all that is in the city, even all the spoil thereof, shalt thou take unto thyself: and thou shalt eat the spoil of thine enemies, which the Lord thy God hath given thee. Thus shalt thou do unto all the cities which are very far off from thee, which are not of the cities of these nations. But of the cities of these people which the Lord thy God doth give thee for an inheritance, thou shalt save alive nothing that breatheth: but thou shalt utterly destroy them, namely, the Hittites, and the Amorites, the Canaanites, and the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites, as the Lord thy God hath commanded thee,” (Deut. xx. 10-17.)