1817 Oct. 13

Not Paul

Period before Conversion

§. 2 Cloven tongues

As to the cloven tongues, it seems to have been added /slipped in/ by the historian, for the improvement of the miracle for the purpose of adding to the compound mass of the efficient causes of wonder: with the principal effect /result/ it has no particular /peculiar/ connection in any one of three characters, that of a cause that of an effect or that of a concomitant circumstance. If in any part of the room so it really was that by any part of the light by it passage through a transparent body the prismatic spectrum happened to be /was/ produced, the figure of such a spectrum resembles that of a tongue, and if a straw or any other […?] body happened to coincide with the axis of the cylinder /divide it longitudinally in any part of its length/, the tongue would be a cloven one. By multiplying by the number of the persons present any one such cloven tongue would produce ‘the cloven tongues like as of fire’ which ‘sat upon each of them’. In any such muliplication it is not natural that the author should find much difficulty: he who on that same occasion brings to Jerusalem and makes /making/ them dwellers there ‘men out of every nation under heaven’ ‘all of them devout.’

But when it is considered how many years were there that had intervened between the supposed time of the supposed incident and the time of the penning this account of it, and that in /for/ the writing of the words which in English have been rendered by cloven tongues no more labour was necessary than in the writing of any two other words of equal length, it will be manifest how little need there can be for any such supposition as that of a prismatic mass frequently as we see it produced by accident, or any other supposition, the expence of which shall be incurred for no better purpose than that of giving /affording/ credibility to a fact so compleatly destitute of importance.