Some intelligent and virtuous persons are inclined to doubt the authenticity of the accounts delivered by Moses. - William Jones

In the preface to his Grammar of the Persian Language (1771), Jones again feels the need to plead for wider cultural sympathies: "Some men never heard of the Asiatick writings, and others will not be convinced that there is anything valuable in them; some pretend to be busy, and others are really idle; some detest the Persians, because they believe in Mahomed, and others despise their language, because they do not understand it: we all love to excuse, or conceal, our ignorance, and are seldom willing to allow any excellence beyond the limits of our own attainments: like savages, who thought the sun rose and set for them alone, and could not imagine that the waves, which surrounded their island, left coral and pearls upon any other shore."8'

Either the first eleven chapters of Genesis, all due allowances being made for a figurative Eastern style, are true, or the whole fabrick of our national religion is false.

I . . . am obliged of course to believe the sanctity of the venerable books [of Genesis].