in which he said : " I cannot deny that the increase of scien-
tific knowledge has deprived parts of the earlier 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 state-
ments are imperfect, if not sometimes inaccurate. The stories
of the Fall, of the Flood, and of the Tower of Babel, are in-
credible 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 con-
temporaneous 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 interpo-
late, 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 Mos-
heim's Ecc. History." Dr. Priestley, then in America, an-
swered 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 car-
ried by a majority of one only, it is a legend, if not of Mr.
