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POLYNESIAN RESEARCHES. 
inclined to all that is essential to Christianity^ I do not 
remember to have met with an individual disposed to 
doubt the origin^ or dispute the authority, of revelation. 
It was to the injunctions and doctrines of the Bible, 
that humbled their pride, and prohibited their vicious 
practices, &c. that they objected. 
It may be said, that while they believed in idolatry— 
and revelations from the gods by dreams, or other in¬ 
timations through the medium of the priests, were ac¬ 
knowledged—that they might suppose the truths of the 
Bible to be a collection of revelations similar in kind to 
these, only, as a priest on one occasion stated to me, 
better preserved, being ‘^^made fast upon the paper.’' 
But after they had renounced idolatry, and treated with 
contempt the notions formerly entertained respecting 
the power of the gods, and regarded all the pretended 
revelations of them as deceptions of the priests, the 
claims of the Bible remained undisputed. 
The uniform acceptance of the declarations of Scripture 
as Divine communications to mankind, was not the result 
of any arguments emploj^ed by us. We never attempted 
to establish by argument what they were not inclined 
to doubt. Our instructions were, therefore, generally 
delivered in the simplicity of assertion, or testimony, 
accompanied with suitable admonition and application to 
our hearers; taking it as an admitted principle, that the 
Scriptures contained a declaration of the will of God. 
When asked, as we sometimes were, How do you 
know the Bible is the word of God?” we did not adduce 
an infallible church, by which it had been determined 
what were the canonical books, and by whom they had been 
preserved; nor did we refer them often to the testimony 
of history, to prove that the persons, whose names were 
