“These rites, it is most likely, having their origin in the simplest occurrences, might still have been practised prior to the forgeries; and these books, by allusions to them, deceived the nation, causing it to believe they were performed in memory of some miraculous events which never happened.”

“What!  Is it possible to persuade men they have kept laws which they have not even heard of?  If I were to frame some idle story of things done a long while ago, and say that our Sabbath was kept holy in commemoration of these events—­this I think, my lord, will answer to the terms of your assertion.  Suppose I made an attempt to persuade the people this day was kept holy in memory of Julius Caesar or Mahomet, and that everybody had been circumcised or baptized in their names; that in the courts of judicature oaths had been taken on these very writings I had fabricated, and which, of necessity, they could not have seen prior to my attempt; and that these books likewise contained their laws and religion—­ordinances which they had always acknowledged—­is it possible, I ask, that such a cheat could for one moment have existed?  An impostor would not have dared to make any such references, knowing they must inevitably have led to the rejection of his testimony.”

“But surely if this great transaction, the passage of the Red Sea, had really happened, and in the way thou hast pointed out, the evidence would not have been suffered to rest solely on the frail and uncertain records to which thou hast referred.  Books of laws, for instance, the writings of Mahomet, we know have been forged, as even thou wilt acknowledge.”

“True, but those books refer not to miracles and the testimony of eye-witnesses, nor to laws and ordinances handed down from generation to generation, even to that time.  That Mahomet pretended not to the working of miracles, he tells us in the Koran.  The ridiculous legends related by his followers are rejected as spurious by the scholars and expounders of the prophet; and even his converse with the moon, his night journey from Mecca to Jerusalem, and from thence to heaven, were not performed before witnesses.  The same may be said of the absurd exploits related of the heathen deities.”

“But had not the heathen their priests, their public rites and sacrifices, equally with the Jews?”

“They had.  But it was not even pretended that these rites commenced at the time when the things which they commemorate were said to have happened.  The Bacchanalia, for example, and other festivals, were established long after the fabulous events to which they refer.  The priests of Juno and Venus were not appointed by those imaginary deities, but arose in some after-age, and are therefore no evidence whatever to the truth of their worship.”

“But where is thy proof in the unwritten evidence—­monuments which cannot lie, bearing silent but convincing testimony to the truth of these miracles?”