Many of the Scriptural facts were old to me: to the importance of
the history of Josiah I had perhaps even become dim-sighted by
familiarity. Why had I not long ago seen that my conclusions ought to
have been different from those of prevalent orthodoxy?--I found that
I had been cajoled by the primitive assumptions, which though not
clearly _stated_, are unceremoniously _used_. Dean Graves, for
instance, always takes for granted, that, _until the contrary shall be
demonstrated_, it is to be firmly believed that the Pentateuch is
from the pen of Moses. He proceeds to set aside, _one by one_, as not
demonstrative, the indications that it is of later origin: and when
other means fail, he says that the particular verses remarked on
were added by a later hand! I considered that if we were debating
the antiquity of an Irish book, and in one page of it were found an
allusion to the Parliamentary Union with England, we should at once
regard the whole book, _until the contrary should be proved_, as the
work of this century; and not endure the reasoner, who, in order
to uphold a theory that it is five centuries old, pronounced that
sentence "evidently to be from a later hand." Yet in this arbitrary
way Dean Graves and all his coadjutors set aside, one by one, the
texts which point at the date of the Pentateuch. I was possessed with
indignation. Oh sham science! Oh false-named Theology!

O mihi tam longæ maneat pars ultima vitæ,
Spiritus et, quantum sat erit tua dicere facta!

Yet I waited some eight years longer, lest I should on so grave
a subject write anything premature. Especially I felt that it was
necessary to learn more of what the erudition of Germany had done
on these subjects. Michaelis on the New Testament had fallen into my
hands several years before, and I had found the greatest advantage