at least an hundred and fifty years after Isaiah was
dead.

These chapters are a compliment to Cyrus, who permitted the Jews to
return to Jerusalem from the Babylonian captivity, to rebuild Jerusalem
and the temple, as is stated in Ezra. The last verse of the 44th
chapter, and the beginning of the 45th [Isaiah] are in the following
words: "That saith of Cyrus, he is my shepherd, and shall perform all
my pleasure; even saying to Jerusalem, thou shalt be built; and to
the temple thy foundations shall be laid: thus saith the Lord to his
enointed, to Cyrus, whose right hand I have holden to subdue nations
before him, and I will loose the loins of kings to open before him the
two-leaved gates, and the gates shall not be shut; I will go before
thee," etc.

What audacity of church and priestly ignorance it is to impose this book
upon the world as the writing of Isaiah, when Isaiah, according to their
own chronology, died soon after the death of Hezekiah, which was
B.C. 698; and the decree of Cyrus, in favour of the Jews returning to
Jerusalem, was, according to the same chronology, B.C. 536; which is a
distance of time between the two of 162 years. I do not suppose that the
compilers of the Bible made these books, but rather that they picked up
some loose, anonymous essays, and put them together under the names
of such authors as best suited their purpose. They have encouraged the
imposition, which is next to inventing it; for it was impossible but
they must have observed it.

When we see the studied craft of the scripture-makers, in making
every part of this romantic book of school-boy's eloquence bend to the
monstrous idea of a Son of God, begotten by a ghost on the body of a
virgin, there is no imposition we are not justified in suspecting them
of. Every phrase and circumstance are marked with the barbarous hand of
superstitious torture, and forced into meanings it was impossible they
could have. The head of every chapter, and the top of every page, are
blazoned with the names of Christ and the Church, that the unwary reader
might suck in the error before he began to read.

Behold a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son (Isa. vii. I4), has been
interpreted to mean the person called Jesus Christ, and his mother Mary,
and has been echoed through christendom for more than a thousand years;
and such has been the rage of this opinion, that scarcely a spot in
it but has been stained with blood and marked with desolation in