"
"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.
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