Porteus examines the career of Bryant, claiming that his latest research centres on the earliest Ages of the World. He remarks: ‘Throughout the whole he brings many astonishing proofs in confirmation of the Mosaic Account & it appears from the clearest evidence that everything which that Sacred Historian has advanced literally true. To us who are apt to think that there is some Truth in the Bible it is…no small satisfaction to see it’s Authority vindicated by the testimony of a Layman, who is undoubtedly one of the first Scholars in Europe; at a time too, when such shallow Writers as Voltaire, D’Alembert, Diderot & others of that respectable school are everyday nibbling & pecking at the sacred volumes, however, God be thanked they find a little too hard for their teeth though they are somewhat of the sharpest’.