After a short pause, Mr. Carlile proceeded. He at length came to a passage in which Sir W. Drummond stated that he did not believe God had ever spoken to Moses.
Mr. Gurney submitted that was the denial of the truth and divine origin of part of the Old Testament, and was punishable by the statute law. It could not therefore be tolerated in that Court.
Mr. Carlile: To what are we to appeal, if not to reason?
The Chief Justice: You are charged with publishing a calumny on the Christian religion; show that the book does not contain such calumny. You cannot prove that there is no calumny in it by reading works of a similar nature.
Mr. Carlile: There are passages in the Bible which I view with as much horror as your lordship does this book. I do not believe them—your lordship does, or you profess that you do. Now it is only by reading controversial disputes on the subject of religion that we can know what is right or what is wrong.
The Chief Justice: We are not here trying the verity of passages of Scripture. I cannot put it to the jury to say whether the Holy Scriptures contain the will of God. This cannot be done in a Christian country.
Mr. Carlile: I am obliged to read, in my defence, things that are disgusting to myself, and which I would not read if I were not compelled to do so.
The Chief Justice: You are not compelled. It can do you no service to read passages of a similar tendency with those which you are charged with having published.
Mr. Carlile: As there is no other passage in this book essential to my defence, I shall now go to the Bible. In reading that work, which the information charges me with calumniating, I can only express my own opinion, as a justification of what I have done. If that opinion is not satisfactory to the minds of the jury, still it would afford some ground for believing that I act from conviction.—[Here Mr. Carlile exhibited a large Bible, which was interleaved for the purpose of entering remarks on different passages.]—The Old Testament, like many other books, begins with giving an account of the creation.—[Mr. Carlile here read several verses from the book of Genesis: "In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth," etc.]—Now (continued he) I have to state to you that that part of society who believe in this book differ in their ideas of the account of the creation. Some believe it to be an allegory—others consider it a statement of a real transaction. Some of the greatest fathers of the Christian Church, one of whom was Origen, considered it an allegory. When we see persons, who call themselves Christians, and who rest all their future hopes on this book, differing on such a passage, I think an individual, whose mind is not made up on the subject, is at liberty to enquire into the reasons offered for one party believing it to be an allegory, and the other for taking it literally. Moses is stated to be the author of the book of Genesis, but I think it is proved by Paine that he did not write it. Whether it was written by him or not did not, however, invalidate the work. When you read, "In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth," the philosopher naturally asks, what beginning? If it were said, from the beginning of time, then the world had existed through all eternity, for, to deny the eternity of time, is to deny the eternity of God. But this doctrine did not coincide with that of the Old Testament, although it was founded in reason.
Mr. Carlile was then proceeding with an enquiry into the nature and probability of such a revelation as was mentioned in the Old Testament, but was interrupted by