books of the Bible of the historical value which was generally
attributed to them by our forefathers. The story of Creation in the
Book of Genesis, unless we play fast and loose either with words or
with science, cannot be brought into harmony with what we have learnt
from geology. Its ethnological statements are imperfect, if not
sometimes inaccurate. The stories of the Fall, of the Flood, and of
the Tower of Babel, are incredible in their present form. Some
historical element may underlie many of the traditions in the first
eleven chapters in that book, but this we cannot hope to recover."
Canon Bonney proceeded to say of the New Testament also, that "the
Gospels are not so far as we know, strictly contemporaneous records,
so we must admit the possibility of variations and even inaccuracies
in details being introduced by oral tradition." The Canon thinks the
interval too short for these importations to be serious, but that any
question of this kind is left open proves the Age of Reason fully
upon us. Reason alone can determine how many texts are as spurious as
the three heavenly witnesses (i John v. 7), and like it "serious"
enough to have cost good men their lives, and persecutors their
charities. When men interpolate, it is because they believe their
interpolation seriously needed. It will be seen by a note in Part II.
of the work, that Paine calls attention to an interpolation
introduced into the first American edition without indication of its
being an editorial footnote. This footnote was: "The book of Luke was
carried by a majority of one only. Vide Moshelm's Ecc. History." Dr.
Priestley, then in America, answered Paine's work, and in quoting
less than a page from the "Age of Reason" he made three alterations,
-- one of which changed "church mythologists" into "Christian
mythologists," -- and also raised the editorial footnote into the
text, omitting the reference to Mosheim. Having done this, Priestley
writes: "As to the gospel of Luke being carried by a majority of one