was fit for the purposes of vegetation the very same day.

6. However the sun may now contribute by his light and heat to the support and maintenance of vegetable and animal life, he was not the original cause of either. For the surface of the earth was stored with vegetables, flourishing and bearing fruit and seed before the sun had existed; and the water, the air, and the land, were all replenished with their proper animals, propagating each its kind, before the sun had existed long enough to warm the mud, which the returning waters, it is supposed, might in many places leave behind them.

7. The celestial bodies were set in the firmament in their respective places, when they were first created; and they were at the same time appointed to be "for lights, to give light upon the earth; and to be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and for years." At this same time therefore, that is, when these bodies were first created, the motions in the orbits were impressed. The notion that our earth was a lump, by some means knocked off from the body of the sun is an idle dream; for the earth was already four days old when the sun was first made. Nor less idle is the dream, that our moon

was originally a comet, stopped in its fall towards the sun, by the attraction of the earth, which it chanced to approach too nearly and so was compelled to become the satellite of the earth, in its annual journey round the sun, itself describing a narrow monthly orbit round the earth. The moon was originally created for the purpose she now serves, to give light upon the earth in the night, and to mark and measure periods of time.

8. The earth being stored with vegetables, and the firmament lighted up, the terraqueous globe was fit for the habitation of animals; and only then, and not before animals were created. In this progress of the work every thing bears the mark of design and wisdom, nothing of chance.

9. Man was created in the image of God. The notion therefore, that he originally existed in a savage state, is a falsehood, and an idle fiction.

10. Man was no sooner created, than he had intercourse with the Creator; in which he was informed of his rank in the creation, and received directions concerning the means of supporting life. From these early communications, the first man received his first knowledge of God. The notion,

therefore, of a religion of nature, prior to revelation, is a falsehood, and a wicked fiction.

CHAP. II.

He was

In this chapter, the history proceeds to relate the first condition of the newly created man. placed in a spot prepared by the Creator for his residence; a garden it is called, which God himself had planted, causing to grow out of the ground every tree that was either beautiful to the sight, or good for food. In this garden the man was placed, with orders to dress it, and to keep it. The free use of the fruits of the garden was permitted to him, with a prohibition however, with respect to the fruit of one tree, which he was not to taste upon pain of death. Thus he was in a condition of ease and abundance, but not of inactivity, for he was to cultivate his garden; of great liberty, and independence of every thing around him, but not without a strong mark of subjection to God. For the prohibition laid upon him was positive; no rea

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son was assigned for it; but death was to be the punishment of disobedience.

In this situation he was at first solitary, for he could find no companion among the animals, his inferiors. He was suffered, it should seem, to be so long, and no longer alone, as to feel by experience, that even in his paradise of plenty and delight he could not be happy without society: but he no sooner understood that he wanted a companion, than a companion was provided for him, in a woman formed out of the substance of his own body, and presented to him by the Creator,

Many, both among Jews and Christians, have so little understood the importance of a true history of the beginning of the world, and of the human race, as the only sure foundation of the true religion, and have so little relished the simplicity of this narrative, or have found it so contrary to preconceived opinions of their own borrowed chiefly from the Greek philosophy, that they would have it considered as history in the disguise of allegory, and not to be taken in its literal meaning. It is a sufficient confutation of this notion, that if the Mosaic history be an allegory, it is allegory without a key, which no man can interpret; and delivering his history in this dis

guise, the inspired teacher of the chosen race has in truth given no information, and might as well have left his tale untold, as have told it in so obscure a riddle; which is neither calculated to convey any moral truth, or to serve any political purpose the author might be supposed to have in view. If Paradise was not literally such a garden as Moses has described, but the condition of the first man represented under that image; what then was the reality which that image represents? What were the particulars of the first man's first condition? If the prohibition imposed upon him was not simply that of tasting the fruit of a particular tree, but of something else; what was that something else really forbidden? If the woman was not formed out of a portion of the body of the man; what was the actual manner of her formation, which is enigmatically so described?

We may add another consideration. The narrative of this chapter must be either all plain matter of fact, or all allegory. It cannot be matter of fact in one part, and allegory in another. For no writer of true history would mix plain matter of fact with allegory in one continued narrative, without any intimation of a transition from the one to the other. If therefore, any part of this narrative be matter of