going to Heaven as ambassador for the whole family. Every mother who wished that the days of her son might be long in the land would call him Methuselah; and all the Jews. that might have to traverse the ocean would be named Noah. as a charm against shipwreck and drowning.

This is domestic evidence against the book of Genesis, which joined to the several kinds of evidence before recited, shew the book of Genesis not to be older than the Babylonian captivity and to be fictitious. I proceed to fix the character and antiquity of the book of

JOB.

The book of Job has not the least appearance of being a book of the Jews, and though printed among the books of the bible does not belong to it. There is no reference in it to any Jewish law or ceremony. On the contrary all the internal evidence it contains shew it to be a book of the Gentiles either of Persia or Chaldea.

The name of Job does not appear to be a Jewish name, There is no Jew of that name in any of the books of the bible, neither is there now that I ever heard of. The country where Job is said, or supposed to have lived, or rather where the scene of the drama is laid, is called Uz, and there was no place of that name ever belonging to the Jews. If Uz is the same as Ur it was in Chaldea, the country of the Gentiles.

The Jews can give no account how they came by this book, nor who was the author, nor the time when it was written. Origin in his work against Celsus (in the first ages of the christian church) says, that the book of Job is older than Moses. Eben-Ezra, the Jewish commentator whom (as I have before said) the bishop allows to have been a man of great erudition, and who certainly understood his own language, says, that the book of Job, has been translated from another language into Hebrew. Spinosa, another Jewish commentator, of great learning confirms the opinion

of Eben-Ezra, and says moreover, "Je crois que Job etoit Gentil"'*; I believe that Job was a Gentile.

The bishop (in his answer to me) says, that "the structure of the whole book of Job, in whatever light of history or drama it be considered, is founded on the belief that prevailed with the Persians and Chaldeans and other Gentile nations of a good and an evil spirit."

In speaking of the good and the evil spirit of the Persians the bishop writes them Arimanius and Oromasdes. I will not dispute about the orthography because I know that translated names are differently spelled in different languages. But he has nevertheless made a capital error. He has put the Devil first; for Arimanius, or as it is more generally written Ahriman is the evil spirit, and Oromasdes, or Ormusd, the good spirit. He has made the same mistake, in the same paragraph, in speaking of the good and evil spirit of the ancient Egyptians Osiris and Typho, He pats Typho before Osiris. The error is just the same as if the bishop in writing about the christian religion, or in preaching a sermon, were to say the Devil and God. A priest ought to know his own trade better. We agree, however, about the structure of the book of Job, that it is Gentile. I have said in the second part of the Age of Reason, and given my reasons for it, that the Drama of it is not Hebrew.

"

From the Testimonies I have cited, that of Origin, who, about fourteen hundred years ago, said that the book of Job was more ancient than Moses, that of Eben-Ezra, who in his commentary on Job, says, it has been translated from another language (and consequently from a Gentile language) into Hebrew. That of Spinosa who not only says the same thing, but that the author of it was a Gentile; and that of the bishop, who says, that the structure of the whole book of Job is Gentile, it follows, in the first place, that the book of Job is not a book of the Jews originally.

* Spinosa on the ceremonies of the Jews, page 296, pudlished in French at Amsterdam 1078.

Then in order to determine to what people or nation, any book of religion belong, we must compare it with the leading dogmas and precepts of that people or nation; and therefore, upon the bishop's own construction, the book of Job belongs either to the ancient Persians, the Chaldeans or the Egyptians; because the structure of it is consistent with the dogma they held, that of a good and an evil spirit called in Job, God and Satan, existing as distinct and separate beings, and it is not consistent with any dogma of the Jews.

The belief of a good and an evil spirit, existing as distinct and separate beings, is not a dogma to be found in any of the books of the bible. It is not till we come to the New-Testament that we hear of any such dogma. There the person called the Son of God, holds conversation with Satan on a mountain as familiarly as is represented in the drama of Job. Consequently the bishop cannot say, in this respect, that the New-Testament is founded upon the Old. According to the Old, the God of the Jews was the God of every thing. All good and all evil came from him. According to Exodus it was God, and not the Devil, that hardened Pharoah's heart. According to the book of Samuel it was an evil spirit from God that troubled Saul. And Ezekiel makes God to say, in speaking of the Jews, "I gave them statutes that were not good, and judgments by which they should not live." The bible describes the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in such a contradictory manner, and under such a two-fold character, there would be no knowing when he was in earnest and when in irony; when to believe and when not.

As to the precepts, principles, and maxims in the book of Job, they shew that the people abusively called the heathen in the books of the Jews, had the most sublime ideas of the creator, and the most exalted devotional morality. It was the Jews who dishonoured God. It was the Gentiles who glorified him. As to the fabulous personifications introdused by the Greek and Latin Poets, it was a corruption of the

ancient religion of the Gentiles which consisted in the adoration of a first cause of the works of the creation, in which the sun was the great visible agent. It appears to have been a religion of gratitude and adoration, and not of prayer and discontented solicitation. In Job we find adoration and submission but not prayer. Even the ten commandments enjoin not prayer. Prayer has been added to devotion by the Church of Rome as the instrument of fees and perquisites. All prayers by the priests of the christian Church whether public or private must be paid for. It may be right individually to pray for virtues, or for mental instruction, but not for things. It is an attempt to dictate to the Almighty in the government of the world.-But to return to the book of Job.

As the book of Job decides itself to be a book of the Gentiles, the next thing is to find out to what particular nation it belongs, and lastly what is its antiquity.

As a Composition it is sublime, beautiful and scientific : full of sentiment, and abounding in grand metaphorical description. As a Drama it is regular. The Dramatis Per sonæ, the persons performing the several parts are regularly introduced and speak without interruption or confusion. • The scene as I have before said is laid in the country of the Gentiles, and the unities, though not always necessary in a drama, are observed here as strictly as the subject would admit.

In the last act where the Almighty is introduced as speaking from the whirlwind to decide the controversy between Job and his friends, it is an idea as grand as poetical imagination can conceive. What follows of Job's future prosperity does not belong to it as a Drama. It is an epilogue of the writer, as the first verses of the first chapter, which give an account of Job, his country and his riches are the prologue.

The Book carries the appearance of being the work of some of the Persian Magi, not only because the structure of it corresponds to the dogma of the religion of those people,

as founded by Zoroaster, but from the astronomical references on it to the constellations of the Zodiac and other objects in the heavens, of which the sun, on their religion called Mithra, was the chief. Job, in describing the power of God, (Job 9, v. 27) says, "Who commandeth the sun, and it riseth not, and scaleth up the stars-Who alone spreadeth out the heavens, and treadeth upon the waves of the sea-Who maketh Arcturus, Orion, and Pleiades, and the chambers of the south." All this astronomical allusion is consistent with the religion of the Persians.

Establishing then the Book of Job, as the work of some of the Persian or Eastern Magi, the case naturally follows, that when the Jews returned from captivity, by the permis sion of Cyrus king of Persia, they brought this book with them, had it translated into Hebrew, and put into their scriptural canons, which was not formed till after their return. This will account for the name of Job being mentioned in Ezekiel, (Ezekiel, chap. 14, v. 14) who was one of the captives, and also for its not being mentioned in any book said or supposed to have been written before the captivity.

Among the astronomical allusions in the book, there is one which serves to fix its antiquity. It is that where God is made to say to Job, in the stile of reprimand, “ Canst thou bind the sweet influences of Pleiades." (Chap. 38, v. 31.) As the explanation of this depends upon astronomical calculation, I will, for the sake of those who would not otherwise understand it, endeavour to explain it as clearly as the subjeet will admit.

The Pleiades are a cluster of pale, milky stars, about the size of a man's hand, in the constellation Taurus, or, in English, the Bull. It is one of the constellations of the Zodiac, of which there are twelve, answering to the twelve months of the year. The Pleiades are visible in the winter nights, but not in the summer nights, being then below the horizon.

The Zodiac is an imaginary belt or circle in the heavens, 18 degrees broad, in which the sun apparently makes his an