hich translations are again subject, the
mistakes of copyists and printers, together with the possibility of
wilful alteration, are of themselves evidences that human language,
whether in speech or in print, cannot be the vehicle of the word of God.
The word of God exists in something else.

It has been the practice of all Christian commentators on the Bible, and
of all Christian priests and preachers, to impose the Bible on the world
as a mass of truth, and as the word of God; they have disputed and
wrangled, and have anathematised each other about the supposable meaning
of particular parts and passages therein; one has said and insisted that
such a passage meant such a thing; another, that it meant directly the
contrary; and a third, that it meant neither the one nor the other, but
something different from both; and this they have called understanding
the Bible.

Now, instead of wasting their time, and heating themselves in fractious
disputations about doctrinal points drawn from the Bible, these men
ought to know, and if they do not it is civility to inform them, that
the first thing to be understood is, whether there is sufficient
authority for believing the Bible to be the word of God, or whether
there is not.

I therefore pass on to an examination of the Books called the Old and
the New Testament. The case historically appears to be as follows:

When the Church mythologists established their system, they collected
all the writings they could find and managed them as they pleased. It is
a matter altogether of uncertainty to us whether such of the writings as
now appear under the name of the Old and the New Testament are in the
same state in which these collectors say they found them; or whether
they added, altered, abridged, or dressed them up.

Be this as it may, they decided by _vote_ which of the books out of the
collection they had made should be the word of God, and which should
not. They rejected several; they voted others to be doubtful, such as
the books called the Apocrypha; and those books which had a majority of
votes they voted to be the word of God. Had they voted otherwise, all
the people since calling themselves Christians, had believed otherwise;
for the belief of the one comes from the vote of the other. Who the
people were that did all this we know nothing of; they call themselves
by the general name of the Church; and this is all we know of the
matter.

There are matters in the Bible, said