ter bring the history 52 years more forward, that is, to 536. But these verses do not belong to the book, as I shall shew when I come to speak of the book of Ezra.

The two books of Kings, besides the history of Saul, David, and Solomon, who reigned over all Israel, contain an abstract of the lives of seventeen kings and one queen, who are styled kings of Judah, and of nineteen who are styled kings of Israel; for the Jewish nation immediately on the death of Solomon split into two parties, who chose separate kings and who carried on most rancorous wars against each other.

Those two books are little more than a history of assassinations, treachery, and wars. The cruelties that the Jews had accustomed themselves to practice on the Canaanites, whose country they had savagely invaded, under a pretended gift from God, they afterwards practised as furiously on each other. Scarcely half their kings died a natural death, and in some instances whole families were destroyed to secure possession to the successor, who, after a few years, and sometimes only a few months, or less, shared the same fate. In the tenth chapter of the second book of Kings, an account is given of two baskets full of children's heads, 70 in number, being exposed at the entrance of the city; they were the children of Ahab, and were murdered by the orders of Jehu, whom Elisha, the pretended man of God, had anointed to be king over Israel, on purpose to cc amit this bloody deed, and assassinate his predecessor. And in the account of the reign of Manaham, one of the kings of Israel who had murdered Shallum, who had reigned but one month, it is said, 2 Kings, chap. xv. ver. 16, that Manaham smote the city of Tipshah, because they opened not the city to him, and all the women that were therein that were with child they ripped up.

Could we permit ourselves to suppose that the Almighty would distinguish any nation of people by the name of his chosen people, we must suppose that people to have been an example to all the rest of the world of the purest piety and humanity, and

'not such a nation of ruffians and cut-throats as the ancient Jews were; a people, who, corrupted by and copying after, such monsters and impostors as Moses and Aaron, Joshua, Samuel, and David, hac distinguished themselves above all others, on the face of the known earth, for barbarity and wickedness. If we will not stubbornly shut our eyes, and steel our hearts, it is impossible not to see, in spite of all that long-established superstition imposes upon the mind, that the flattering appellation of his chosen people is no other than a lie, which the priests and leaders of the Jews had invented, to cover the baseness of their own characters; and which Christian priests, sometimes as corrupt, and often as cruel, have professed to believe.

The two books of the Chronicles are a repetition o the same crimes; but the history is broken in seve ral places, by the author leaving out the reign o some of their kings; and in this, as well as in tha of Kings, there is such a frequent transition from kings of Judah to kings of Israel, and from kings o Israel to kings of Judah, that the narrative is obscur in the reading. In the same book the history some times contradicts itself; for example, in the secon book of Kings, chap. i. ver. 8, we are told, but i rather ambiguous terms, that after the death of Aha ziah, king of Israel, Jehoram, or Joram, (who wa of the house of Ahab) reigned in his stead in th second year of Jehoram, or Joram, son of Jehosha phat king of Judah; and in chap. viii. ver 16, c the same book, it is said, and in the fifth year o Joram the son of Ahab, king of Israel, Jehosha phat being then king of Juhah, began to reign that is, one chapter says Joram of Judah began reign in the second year of Joram of Israel; an the other chapter says that Joram of Israel bega to reign in the fifth year of Joram of Judah.

Several of the most extraordinary matters relate in one history, as having happened during the reig of such and such of their kings are not to be four in the other, relating the reign of the same king for example, the two first rival kings, after the dead of Solomon were Rehoboam and Jeroboam; any

il Kings, chap. xii. and xiii. an account is given o Jeroboam, making an offering of burnt incense, and that a man who is there called a man of God, cried out against the altar, chap. xiii. ver. 2, "O altar! altar! thus saith the Lord; Behold a child shall be born to the house of David, Josiah by name, and upon thee shall he offer the priests of the high places, and burn incense upon thee, and men's bones shall be burnt upon thee."-Ver. 3, "And it came to pass, when king Jeroboam heard the saying of the man of God, which had cried against the altar in Bethel, that he put forth his hand from the altar, saying, Lay hold on him; and his hand which he put out against him dried up, so that he could not pull it in again to him."

One would think that such an extraordinary case as this, (which is spoken of as a judgment) happening to the chief of one of the parties, and that at the first moment of the separation of the Israelites into two nations, would, if it had been true, been \ recorded in both histories. But though men in later times have believed all that the prophets have said unto them, it does not appear that these prophets or historians believed each other; they knew each other too well.

A long account also is given in Kings about Elijah. It runs through several chapters, and concludes with telling, (2 Kings, chap. ii. ver. 11,)"And it come to pass, as they (Elijah and Elisha) still went on, and talked, that behold, there appeared a chariot of fire, and horses of fire, and parted them both asunder, and Elijah went up by a whirl wind into heaven. Hum! this the author of Chronicles, miraculous as the story is, makes no mention of, though he mentions Elijah by name; neither does he say any thing of the story related in the second chapter of the same book of Kings, of a parcel of children calling Elisha bald head, bald head; and that this man of God, (ver. 24) "turned back, and looked upon them, and cursed them in the name of the Lord; and there came forth two she bears out of the wood, and tore forty and two children of them." He also passes over in silence the story told, (2 kings, chap.

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xiii.) that when they were burying a man in the sepulchre, where Elisha had been buried, it happened that the dead man, as they were letting him down, (ver. 21,) "touched the bones of Elisha, and he (the dead man) revived an stood upon his feet." The story does not tell us whether they buried the man notwithstanding he revived and stood upon his feet, or drew him up again. Upon all these stories, the writer of Chronicles is as silent as any writer of the present day, who did not choose to be accused of lying, or at least of romancing, would be about stories of the same kind.

But however these two historians may differ from each other with respect to the tales related by either, they are silent alike with respect to those men styled prophets, whose writings fill up the latter part of the Bible. Isaiah, who lived in the time of Hezekiah, is mentioned in Kings, and again in Chronicles, when these historians are speaking of that reign; but except in one or two instances at most, and those very slightly, none of the rest are so much as spoken of, or even their existence hinted at; tho', according to the Bible chronology, they lived within the time those histories were written; some of them long before. If those prophets, as they are called, were men of such importance in their day, as the compilers of the Bible, and priests and commentators have since represented them to be, how can it be accounted for, that not one of these histories should say any thing about them?

The history in the books of Kings and Chronicles is brought forward, as I have already said, to the year 588 before Christ; it will therefore be proper to examine which of these prophets lived before that period.

1

Here follows a table of all the prophets : with the times in which they lived before Christ, according to the Chronology affixed to the first chapter of each of the books of the prophets: and also of the number of years they lived before the books of Kings and Chronicles were written.

Table of the Prophets, with the time in which they lived before Christ, and also before the books of Kings and Chronicles were written.

This table is either not very honorable for the Bible historians, or not very honorable for the Eible prophets; and I leave to priests, and commentators, who are very learned in little things, to settle the point of etiquette between the two; and to assign a reason, why the authors of Kings and Chronicles

*In 2 Kings, chap. xiv. ver. 25, the name of Jonah is mentioned on account of the restoration of a tract of land by Jeroboam; but nothing further is said of him, nor is any allusion made to the book of Jonah, to his expedition to Ninevah, nor to his encounter with the whale.