Some reverend panegyrists* on our late king,** have, a little
unfortunately, been fond of comparing him with a monarch in no respect
resembling him; except in the length of his reign, thirty and three
years: which a lucky text informed them to be the duration of David's
sovereignty over the Hebrew nation. Had our good old king died a year
sooner, or had we been indulged with him a year longer, the opportunity
of applying this text would then have been lost; and in either case we
might not have heard of the parallel.
A reverence for the memory of a worthy Prince, has occasioned the
world's being troubled with a new history of king David, (which,
otherwise might not have appeared) merely to shew how the memory of the
British monarch is affected by the comparison.
"Why even of yourselves judge ye not what is right?" is the language of
Jesus Christ. "Prove all things; hold fast that which is good;" is the
language of the apostle Paul. The liberty thus granted is unlimited; but
it is more than mere grant of liberty, these are positive injunctions:
let no one then be so timid as to resign an inclination to satisfy
just doubts: in Britain, thanks to the obstinate heresy of our brave
forefathers, no audacious Romish priest dare prescribe limits to the
exercise of our reasoning faculties; and Protestant ones surely will
not: nay, they cannot, consistently with those principles which justify
their dissent from the Romish communion. An honest desire to obtain
truth, will sanctify the most rigid scrutiny into every thing. An
apostle has told us, that we are not to believe even an angel from
Heaven, who should preach any other gospel than that of Christ;* and,
no authority can be so sacred, as to set aside the _most valuable
distinction of humanity_, with which our Creator has furnished us; or to
give the lie to our most self-evident conceptions of right and wrong.
* Dr. Chandler, Mr. Palmer and others.
** George the IId.
If that liberty, of which Britons boast the possession, means any thing,
it must primarily include freedom of thought; without which there can be
no freedom of action. Thus it must mean an uncontrolled power to examine
the validity of every proposition offered to our assent; without which
power, and the due exercise of it, our assent cannot be the assent of
rational beings. If the reformed religion means any thing, it must mean
a religion founded by the authority, not of councils and synods, but
of conviction, the result of private judgment. True Protestants do not
puzzle themselves about the decisions of Trent, Constance, or Dort; they
protest against all authoritative dictates; disciples of the meek, the
lowly, the humane Jesus, they seek of themselves to judge of right or
wrong. Who is most the Protestant, the friend to human kind, and to
truth? Those who appeal to the human understanding, and submit to the
public judgment whether things are really so or not; or those who say,
they are so, they shall be so, you shall acknowledge them to be so, or
else----?
* Galatians i. 8.
Let not weak-minded Christians who think truth not able to maintain its
authority without legal enforcements, lament what they call licentious
abuses of that liberty on which we are happy to congratulate ourselves:
injudicious productions of the pen will always meet the treatment they
deserve. Fallacious pretensions to reasoning cannot deceive mankind in
these liberal times; nor can truth be obscured, when the attention of
honest inquiries after it, is properly exerted. If the little historical
sketch which follows, and which in fact, exhibits no more than what we
have all daily read, without presuming to decide upon; if it really
is that audacious calumny which many roundly affirm it to be; it will
doubtless be considered as such: if, on the contrary, it contains
undeniable matters of fact, fallaciousness will appear in the angry
objections against it; and the writer trusts, the futility of such
objections, have already been made sufficiently apparent.
The name of David has never been mentioned by divines but with the
greatest respect, from the time in which he lived to the present day;
and he is always quoted as an illustrious example of holiness! so
illustrious, that the greatest instance of purity that ever existed on
earth, was frequently saluted by way of eminence, in reference to him,
_Son of David!_ so illustrious, that on the death of the late king
of Great Britain, many sermons were preached and published, in which,
parallels are drawn betwixt him and this standard of piety, in order to
justify encomiums on the former, by declaring how nearly he resembled
the latter.
In what manner David first acquired, and has ever since maintained, this
extraordinary reputation, is not difficult to deduce, he was advanced,
by an enraged prophet, from obscurity to the Hebrew throne; and taught
by the fate of the unhappy monarch who was raised in the same manner,
whom he supplanted, and whose family he crushed, he prudently attached
himself to the cause of his patrons,* and they were the trumpeters
of his fame. The same order of men, true to their common cause, have
continued to sound the praise of this church-hero from generation to
generation, unto the present time: in like manner the grand violator of
the English constitution obtained the epithet of _holy Martyr_.
A new scrutiny being made, however, into David's claim to sanctity,
which, notwithstanding a very learned defence of him, turned out so
greatly to his dishonour; the scene has been shifted by a few whose
sense has overbalanced their bigotry by two or three scruples. Some
such, like Sheba of old, blow the trumpet and cry, "We have no part in
David, neither have we inheritance in the son of Jesse!" In this manner
have some clerical weather-cocks veered about to an opposite point of
the compass; and David, who, till now has been considered as a man who
"did that which was right in the eyes of the Lord, and turned not aside
from any thing that he commanded him all the days of his life, save only
in the matter of Uriah the Hittite," has, by one stroke of politics,
been resigned to the mercy of his detectors; and the importance of the
detection endeavoured to be annihilated, as the easier task; all which
appears with rather an ill grace, at a time when it is manifestly
extorted.
* The Prophets and Priest.
Thus much being premised relating to the conduct of the champions for
orthodoxy, on the occasion of this little squib which has produced so
much bustle in the clerical hives, proceed we to say something of the
tract itself.
The intention was, without any regard to remote objects, or heed of
future consequences, which in fact ought _never_ to be considered in
investigating any point; to give a fair undisguised narrative of the
life and transactions of David, king of Israel.
This, however, was not so easy to perform, as it was to project; from
three difficulties which impeded the execution.
1. It is not easy to conquer the early prejudices of education in favour
of the Hebrew nation; which the careful inculcation of their story
during our infancy, hinders our seeing in a proper light: so that
relations which might shock humanity in what is called prophane history,
are read without any emotion but that of reverence, in _this_. This
misconception is in great measure assisted.
2. By their History being written _by themselves_: and difficult to be
corrected.
3. By the broken unconnected manner in which it is transmitted down
to us: which renders it impossible to give a complete narrative of any
period in it.
A common share of humanity, which a little attention to common sense
enabled the author to extend to every nation under Heaven as the objects
of it, relieved him from the first of these difficulties: to overcome
the other two, he has assumed the liberty of giving _his_ sense to what
appears dark, or misrepresented; which he hopes will not be denied him,
so long as it is not found that a forced construction is put upon any
thing cited; or, that it is represented in any other light than what it
naturally appears in, when considered with the freedom, which it is our
duty to use in the examination of every historical record.
And lest it should be imagined that too great liberties are taken with
the biblical writers; it may not be amiss to mention once for all, that
innumerable instances might be produced, to shew that the authority of
_the Lord_, so continually quoted to sanctify every transaction related;
constituted for the most part, nothing more than national phrases, which
obtained universally among so bigoted a people as on all occasions the
Jews appear to have been: one-twelfth part of whom were appropriated
to the priesthood! A phraseology in some measure similar obtained in
England, at that time, when shunning the cruel talons of papacy, the
people rushed into the jaws of wild enthusiasm. That the sense in which
the acts of David are here understood, is the most obvious and natural,
appears from the amazing pains it has occasioned his champions, to force
another upon them. Of this, the Life of David, by Dr. Delany, is a most
remarkable instance; but the gross palliations, puerile conjectures,
and mean shifts to which he has been driven, prove the difficulty of the
task; while they are too frivolous to bias any, but the most _Catholic
believers_.
Mr. Stockhouse, in his History of the Bible, has urged arguments against
particular passages, under the title of _Objections_; so cogent, that
_his answers_ to them, certainly could not be satisfactory even to
himself.
Dr. Chandler has lately added his name to the list of David's
apologists. Strange! that so holy a king should need the exertion of so
much learned and critical dexterity, to establish his fame for goodness
of heart! This gentleman's performance, which was published as a reply
to the first edition of the present work, is a very extraordinary piece;
and shews that, great learning is no security for soundness of judgment.
The Doctor's book has been considered in a letter addressed to him, and
published separately; to which the reader is referred for an examination
into the merits of his arguments. In answering the Doctor, new lights
opened on many occurrences, which, as far as they could be detached from
that particular controversy, are taken into the present edition.
The best of kings is a title which adulation and servility have always
conferred on the most contemptible, as well as the most detestable
tyrants; and the frequency of its application to the object is ever in
proportion as he is undeserving of it. Had the flattering sycophants
of king David been satisfied with applying to him this common-place
appellation, rational men, who form their conclusions from the result of
general experience, would have inferred only that he had been one of the
numerous herd of bad princes who have oppressed mankind, and there would
have been nothing peculiar either in the fact or the inference. But
when the extremity of adulation conferred on David the title of _The
Man after God's own heart_, thinking men, who know the source from which
such adulation ever flows, are prepared to expect, in the development of
his history, a character pre-eminently wicked, and in this they are not
deceived.
All historians of credit agree in describing _God's chosen people_,
the _Jews_, as the most vicious and detestable of mankind;* their own
historians confirm this character of them, and the whole series of facts
which constitute their history, prove it beyond a possibility of doubt.
* Tacitus describes the Jewish people as formed of the worst
outcasts of the surrounding nations, collected together by
Moses, and kept for ever separated from the rest of mankind,
by an opposition of manners, and hostility of sentiment. Nam
passimus quisque, spretis religionibus patriis, tributa et
stipes illuc congerebant; unde auctæ Judeorum res--ad versus
omnes alios hostile odium--transgressi in morem eorum, idem
usurpent; nec quidquam prius imbuuntur quam contemnere Deos,
exuere patriam; arentes, liberos, fratres, vilia habere.--
Ticiti Hist. Lib. v.
Among _the chosen people of God_--the most depraved of all nations--it
is pretty certain that the worst and wickedest man of that nation was
David, _The Man after God's own heart_. The truth of this proposition
will be abundantly proved in the following short history.
A question will here naturally present itself, how the Jews became so
much more vicious and depraved than their neighbours? And to resolve
that question, it will be necessary to consider in what respects their
laws and customs differed from those of others. It will be found that
they differed most essentially from all other nations in the world in
two particulars: 1st. They had more religion than any other nation;
and, 2dly. They had more priests. Other nations among whom superstitious
rites and ceremonies prevailed, were satisfied with practising them on
solemn festivals, and occasionally on particular or important events;
but the Jews practised their superstition incessantly: none of the
common duties, or ordinary functions of life, could be performed by
them, without a reference to the rules of their superstition; they
were bound to a strict observance of them whenever they ate, drank, or
performed any other of the natural functions.* **
* Moses quo sibi in posterum gentem firmaret, novos ritus
coutrariosque ceteris mortalibus indidit; profana illic
omnia, quae apud nos sacra; rursum concessa apud illos, quæ
nobis incesta.--Seperati epulis, discreti cubilibus,
projectissima ad libidinem gens, aliena rum cubitu
abstinent, inter se nihil illicitum, circumcidere genitalia
instituere, ut diversitate noscanttir.--Taciti Hist. Lib. v.
It is impossible to draw a more disgusting picture of a
nation than this elegant and correct historian, in
describing the Jews.
** The Romans, though so numerous and powerful a nation, had
but very few priests, compared to the Jews. The Augurs were
at first only 3, and in process of time were increased to
15. The Arnspices were 12. The Pontifices were at first but
4, and were afterwards increased to 10. The Flamines were
but 3. The Sàlit 12. The Feciales, who were 20 in number,
though classed by authors among the priesthood, were merely
civil officers employed as heralds. And the Vestals, or Nuns
of Rome, were only 4; altogether between 50 and 60. Vide
Kennett's Roman Antiq. And yet Saint Austin, De Cevitate
Dei, Lib. iv. cap. 15, admits that the Romans were so
virtuous, that God gave them the empire of the world because
they were more virtuous than other nations, vet, with true
Christian charity, he says, that they must nevertheless he
damned as heathens. We do not find that the priests of other
enlightened nations of antiquity were proportionality much
more numerous than amoung the Romans. In England at present
the number of the priesthood cannot be much less than
20,000; there are near 10,000 parishes, each having one
priest at least, several two, and some three or more,
exclusive of Deans and Chapters, Prebends, &c. &c. and all
these in the established church, as it is called, exclusive
of a great variety of other sectaries of different
denominations.
Other nations had a few priests dedicated to their gods or idols,
seldom exceeding a few dozen in a whole nation but the Jewish priesthood
constituted a twelfth part of the whole people, and claimed and
exercised the privilege of devouring a tenth part of the produce of the
country, without contributing any thing to its productive labour.* And
it is probable that the Jewish nation alone, though but a miserable
handful of semi-barbarous savages, had more priests than the rest of the
then known world collectively, and were consequently more vicious and
more enslaved than any other people.
* The Jewish priesthood being one tribe, or twelfth part of
the nation, do not appear to have assumed to themselves much
more than an equal proportion, compared to their numbers, in
taking the tithe or tenth part of the produce of the land,
however unjust it may appear that they should be supported
in idleness at the expence of the industry of the rest: but
the English priesthood, though abundantly numerous, do not
form above one five-hundredth part of the whole nation, yet
they have the conscience to take also the tenth of the whole
produce, which is near fifty times more than their just
share, according to the proportion of their romish models,
from whose example they pretend to derive them.
Mankind have been too long duped by that universal _cant_ of priests,
who, in their language, have ever affected to couple _religion and
morality_ together, and to represent them as _inseparably united_,
though the slightest attention must show that they are perfectly
_distinct_, and a full and mature consideration of the subject must
prove that they are even extremely _opposite_. They well knew that man,
in the most abject state of mental degradation to which superstition
could reduce him, must still acknowledge the force and excellence of
virtue and morality, and must perceive their necessary tendency to
promote his welfare and happiness. They well knew how useful to their
own views and interests it would be to persuade him that religion,
virtue, and morality, were one and the same, or, at least, intimately
and inseparably connected; the credulity of man gave credit to the
imposture without examination, and the uniform experience of above 2,000
years has not hitherto been sufficient to undeceive him.
Unhappy man! destined for ever to be the dupe of his own credulity, in
opposition to the testimony of his experience, and the evidence of his
senses. Does not the history of all ages show, that the most religious
nations have always been, and still are, the most vicious and immoral!
Another most formidable evil necessarily results from such a system of
superstition, that is, a state of civil slavery, which is always found
its universal concomitant. Whenever the human mind is debased and
degraded by a system of gross superstition, it becomes incapable of any
one manly, liberal, or independent sentiment; every energy of the mind
is lost, reason is surrendered, virtue, the chief support, if not the
sole foundation of freedom, is banished, and man is fitted to receive
the abject yoke of slavery; tyranny and despotism make an easy conquest
of him, and the priest is ever ready to rivet his chains, and perpetuate
his bondage, by the pretended sanction of Heaven. The power and
influence of the priest and the tyrant is ever in proportion to the
debasement of man; they have a common interest, have ever made a common
cause against him, and have constantly erected their common throne on
the ruins of his freedom, his welfare, and his happiness.
Let us not, therefore, be deterred from unmasking to the view of mankind
that immense mass of vice and depravity which constitute the foundation
of the Jewish superstition; let no blind veneration for that hideous
idol deter us from exposing its deformity; let us cultivate that which
is truly good and useful; let reason assume her just empire over the
mind of man, and credulity, ignorance, and folly, abdicate their usurped
dominion: then shall we soon behold the galling fetters of vice and
superstition broken by the irresistible power of virtue, morality, and
truth.