Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: and profane, acknowledge Moses to have been the legislator of the Jews; and that whole nation has always carefully preserved his books, as containing their law. When the tribes were divided into two kingdoms, both of them preserved the same respect for those books, as being written by him. The Samaritans, who came afterwards, received them from the Israelite priests; the Jews carried them to Babylon, when they were led captives thither; they brought them back, and afterwards revised and corrected them. Profane authors have spoken of them, as written by Moses. In short, it is as certain, that they were written by Moses, as those which are ascribed to Herodotus, Thucydides, and Caesar, appertain to those whose names they bear. It is possible there may have been some slight additions and alterations made in them; but the bulk of the history and the laws could not be altered. As to the truth of the history we have several proofs.' 1. It is the most ancient in the world; for whether Moses was contemporary with Inachus the first king of Argos, who lived six hundred years before the war of Troy; or whether he did not live till the time of Cecrops, king of Athens, who reigned three hundred years before that war, it is certain he is much more ancient than Homer, Hesiod, or any profane writer. 2. Moses is the only person that has given a plain and historical account of the origin of the world, and who has continued that history uniformly, and without any interruption to his own time. All that others have written of the first ages is, as they own themselves, mere ignorance, darkness, and fable. 3. Moses wrote at a. time, when he could be sure of the truth of what he wrote, and when it might have been easy to have convicted him of falsehood, had he delivered any fables. 4. We ha...