assert Paradise to have been where they place it upon their credit or authority But we have something else to offer which will reach both the Particulars at once The Best Antiquity in the whole World is Scripture And if we appeal to that we shall find it most probable that the seat of Paradise was Mesopotamia or some Region thereabouts by the several broad Signs which it gives us thereof in the Second Chapter of Genesis For First That is Eastward of the place where Moses wrote And it is said Gen. 2.8 that the LORD GOD planted a Garden Eastward Eng. Theor. p. 251. And whereas our Author would have Mikkedhem there to signify in the beginning Moses teaches us plainly that it signifies in the East by using the word in that sense himself in the very next Chapter For in the last Verse of it he says that GOD placed Cherubim and a flaming Sword 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in the East of the Garden of Eden But to have rendred it thus he placed in the Beginning of the Garden of Eden Cherubim and a flaming Sword would have been a very improper and ill Reddition And as often as 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 do occur in the Pentateuch which I think is at least thirty times besides Gen. 2.8 I do not find that they can in any one place be rendred otherwise than East Eastward of the East or in the East Which if they cannot it is enough to convince us that Mikkedhem Gen. 2.8 must be rendred in the East not in the Beginning Secondly Eden is there the Country wherein Paradise was planted So we read again Gen. 2.8 that the LORD GOD planted a Garden Eastward in EDEN And tho He would have Eden signify Ibid. pleasure and so read the Text thus the LORD GOD planted a Garden in pleasure that cannot be the true meaning For the word is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and so it must be read the LORD GOD planted a Garden in pleasure which would sound but harshly And in the next Verie but one it is said that a River went out of Eden to water the Garden But to say a River went out of pleasure to water the Garden would be no good sense And in the fourth of Genesis we meet with a Passage which shows that Moses by Mikkedhem must mean the East and not the Beginning and by Eden a Country and not pleasure For telling us there at the 16th Verse which way the Land of Nod lay where Cain dwelt he says it was on the East of Eden But for him to have said it was in the beginning of Pleasure would have been an odd account of its Situation After all which if it will not seem superfluous may be added the words spoken by Rabshakeh in the person of his Master and recorded by the Prophet Jer. 37.12 Have the GODS of the Nations delivered them which my Fathers have destroyed as Gozan and Haran and Rezeph and the Children of Eden which were in Talassar Ch. 27. v. 23. Ezekiel also puts Haran and Canneh and Eden together Whence it plainly appears that Eden was as much the proper name of a place as Rezeph or Canneh or any of those mention'd And also that that place was in the Eastern part of our Continent because the other places or Regions here joined with it lay about it or bordered upon it And so it might be in Mesopotamia too tho it could not be in the Southern Hemisphere And it is observable that when Jacob journied to Haran in Mesopotamia he is said to come into the land of the Children of the East Gen. 29.1 And Balaam who was brought out of the Mountains of the East Numb 23.7 is said to be of Mesopotamia Deut. 23.4 Thirdly the Land of Havilah is there about which the River Pison is said to fetch a compass Gen. 2.11 Not the Indian Havilah as some have greatly mistaken and by that mistake have been led into another that Pison was Ganges but that Havilah which was so called from the Son of Cush Whereas the other Havilah took its denomination from the Son of Joctan Strabo also placeth the Havilah that relates to Paradise in the Confines of Arabia and Mesopotamia Fourthly the Land of Cush is there so denominated from Cush the Son of Ham who settled himself and his Family in it It is said to be compassed with the River Gihon Gen. 2.13 and it is the Asiatic Aethiopia Tho some presuming that the African Aethiopia was there meant concluded that Gihon must be the Nile Fifthly Hiddekel or Tigris is there which is said to run towards the East of Assyria Gen. 2.14 Upon whose Stream rising from the Gordian Mountains in the greater Armenia and flowing Southwards to the dividing of Mesopotamia from Assyria stands the Principal City of that Country the famous Ninive built by Assur Sixthly Euphrates that Celebrated River of Asia is there also Gen. 2.14 I mean in that Eastern part of our Continent Now are not all these Regions and Rivers in or about Eden or Mesopotamia And are they not Marks of the Earthly Paradise And were they not made so by Moses himself And was not he directed by the H. GHOST And might it not be in Mesopotamia then or must it not be near it For had it been out of it and remote from it what wise man inspired by GOD would have described it by such Rivers and describ'd it by such Regions as lay about Mesopotamia and were conterminous with it or bordering upon it and if some of these Rivers and some of these Regions be very much chang'd in their Names and Postures since Moses wrote that 's no marvel It would rather be a wonder considering * Certum est insignes variationes in terrae partibus continuo evenire propter bellorum incurpiones aquarum inundationes Marium praeruptiones ac recessus imperiorum regnorum dominiorum instabilitates Etenim non solum regiones urbes oppida flumina alia hujusmodi sua nomina pro tempore mutant amissis prorsus prioribus verum etiam sines ipsarum regionum variantur urbes oppidaque senectute deleâ—tur bellorum calamitate evertuntur aliaque de novo conduntur mare uno in leâ—o continentem terrae dilatat in alio coarctat flumina quandoque augescunt quandoque minuuntur quandeque cursus variant quandoque etiam prorsus deficiunt Sic quoque fontes stagna paludes alibi exiccantur alibi vero procreantur c. Magin in praef ad Geogr. the Mutability of Nature here below if in so long a time they were not greatly altered Tho these Alterations do not argue in the least that Paradise was not situate in Mesopotamia or some adjacent Region Where after so many thousands of years we are no more to look for the same Features in the Earth's Face than for the same Fruitfulness in its Soil Tho if we will believe Herodotus Clia. l. 1. Geog. l. 16. Strabo
and Q. Curtius the Babylonian Soil does still retain a strange and happy Fertility For they assure us that it yields Corn at the rate of two hundred fold and that it bears Palm Trees of its own accord which afford Bread Wine Honey c. And as Pliny informs us Nat. Hist l. 18. c. 17. their Corn grows so rank that men are fain to cut it twice and after that turn Sheep into it to eat it down And then Crops are so plentiful that one year they sow themselves against the next and sponte restibilis fit seges Corn grows of its own accord and yields an harvest without Tillage And if this Soil be so fertile now what was it before the Curse when it was newly created and in its prime Perfection So that upon the whole Matter let Rabbies and Fathers and Poets and Theorists say what they please yet so long as Moses wrote the second Chapter of Genesis and his hand was guided by the most HOLY and unerring SPIRIT we cannot but think that men in reason ought to conclude and that in duty they ought to believe that Paradise was seated in Mesopotamia or thereabouts And we hope it is as intelligible that it should be there seated as that it was situate in the Southern Hemisphere For who ever yet understood or who can understand That Eden and Havilah and Cush and Assyria were Countries and that Pison and Gihon and Hiddekel and Euphrates were Rivers in that Southern Hemisphere In case they were so how came they from thence hither I remember Sir Richard Baker tells it as a great Wonder amongst the Casualties that hapned in our Queen Elizabeth's Reign that a certain hill in Herefordshire beginning to remove out of its place on Saturday Evening continued walking till Munday noon But if such large Countries as these could take so long a Journey the ambulatory Mount may stand by for a diminutive Prodigy Tho we must observe withal that the Fathers never seated Paradise in the other Hemisphere neither They only seem to incline to that by the Theorists due interpretation of them as was noted above And as to the Seat of Paradise as he says they expressed themselves in various ways That is their Notions of it were incertain and in plain terms they knew not where to fix it But so far were they from believing it to be in the Southern Hemisphere that they did not believe that Hemisphere was ever inhabited for they did not believe that there were Antipodes And when some of them would have Paradise to be Mystical only and others would have it to be the whole Earth and others place it under the Aequinoctial and others under the Globe or Circle of the Moon and others in the exterior part of a flat or plain Earth round the inward part of which they supposed the Ocean to stand like a Ring Which of them set it in the Southern Hemisphere Tho if they had we need not have been much surpriz'd at it neither For being but men they might have done as men have erred that is in their Opinion And truly ever since Adam through desire of Knowledge first planted error in Paradise that poysonous Weed has been apt to Spring up and spread unhappily in other places and the best Gardens of Antiquity have been stained with it Witness the Millenium the Rebaptizing of Haeretics the Limbus Patrum the Communicating of Infants and the like And if we 'll take in Errors of a lower Strain we shall find the false Notions entertained by the Ancients of the Form of the Earth of the Figure and Situation of the Sea of the non-existence of Antipodes c. ready to confirm and corroborate the Testimony And what does the famous Aristotelian Hypothesis seem to be now in this present Age Aristotle believed the Milky Way to be a Meteor He also allowed but Eight Heavenly Sphaeres which Timocaris above three hundred years before the Incarnation improved to Nine and Alphonsus in the thirteeneth Century after it into Ten and afterward they were commonly reckoned Eleven And not only Egyptians Graecians and Arabians but even Hebrew and Christian Doctors took the Stars to be living Bodies actuated with Souls as Espencaeus informs us in his Treatise de Cal. animat but a Mass of Errors Where such a Systeme was contrived for the Heavens and such a situation assigned to the Earth as neither Reason can approve nor Nature allow Yet so prosperous and prevailing was this Hypothesis that it was generally received and successfully propagated for many Ages And when the Heavens were so misconceived and the Earth so misplaced and the Errors touching both were spread so far and continued so long why might not the same happen as to Paradise Why might not the Ancients and the choicest of the Ancients mistake concerning it particularly concerning the place of it Were an Account to be given of the Original or Occasion of this their Mistake it might seem methinks to have risen thus or proceeded from hence They thought and spake too Great things of Paradise and supposed such Properties and Excellencies in it as it never had nor was capable of And having rais'd their Phantsies to so high a Pitch they could not tell how to let them fall again and stoop so low as Mesopotamia And so they conceited that Paradise was in some remote unknown inaccessible Region or as it were in another World because they could find out no place in this which answered the gay Notions that they had and their fine but false Idea's of it Just as the Jews overlookt the Person of the true Messiah because it came not up to that vain and extravagant Character of Him unhappily imprinted on their Minds So these pious learned and incomparable men took no notice of the real Place of Paradise as being prepossest with misapprehensions of it The lofty Opinions which they had concerning it lifted up their Thoughts far above it and carry'd them away quite beyond it They imagin'd that it was they knew not well what and so they placed it they knew not well where believing they should wrong it if they fixt it any where in this ordinary World The Excepter having done with the Place of Paradise he objected next against the Longaevity of men before the flood as a Property of it But this p. 55. says the Answerer he handles so loosely that in the conclusion of his Discourse one cannot tell whether he affirms it or denies it The Excepter begins his discourse of this matter Disc p. 273. with these very words As for the Longaevity of the Antediluvians that could be no Property or Adjunct of Paradise And did he not deny then and positively deny the Longaevity of the Antediluvians as a Property of Paradise which is his notion of it And because the Answerer does affirm the thing by dividing the Doctrine of the local Paradise into two parts Answer p. 55. the Place and the Properties
Penelope unravelling by night what it weav'd by day Thus he pulls down his own Censure upon himself Methinks they make very bold with the Deity Eng. The. p. 20. when they make Him do and undo go forward and backwards by such countermarches and retractions as we do not willingly impute to the Wisdom of GOD ALMIGHTY CHAP. XIV HEre another Vital Assertion of the Theory's is excepted against and Reasons are given why the Deluge cannot be rightly explicated by the Dissolution of the Earth or its Disruption and fall into the Abyss The first is Disc p. 285. because it would be inconsistent with Moses 's Description of Paradise which he has made according to proper Rules of Topography But says the Answerer this Objection I 'm afraid will fall heavier upon Moses Answ p. 60. or upon the Excepter himself than upon the Theorist And why so Why Ib. because that place of Paradise cannot be understood or determin'd by the Mosaical Topography one of these two things must be allowed either that the description was insufficient and ineffectual or that there has been some great change in the Earth whereby the Marks of it are destroy'd If he take the second of these Answers he joins with the Theorist If the first he reflects upon the honour of Moses or confutes himself Moses's Topography of Paradise as it was done by proper Rules so it was sufficient and effectual enough for marking it out as it once stood And that it is not so now is because as the second Answer intimates there has been a great change in the Earth in that part of the Earth where the Paradisiacal Region was And such a change may be allowed without joining with the Theorist as he Himself assures us For he tells us in the same page that good interpreters suppose that the Chanels of Rivers were very much changed by the Flood And a great change in the Chanels of Rivers must make a great change in a Country Especially where that Country is describ'd by those Rivers which is the case of Paradise And this change is the very thing which makes the place of Paradise so hard to be found Yet this I say is very far from joining with the Theorist For according to him the Chanels of Rivers were not only changed Eng. Theor. p. 252. but all broke up and so quite put by by that Fraction of the Earth which made the Flood And not only the Chanels of Rivers were destroyed but even the Sources of them too by his Hypothesis For whereas the general Sources of all Rivers in the primitive World were the Rainy Regions about the Poles Those Polar Regions fell in together with the rest and so Rivers which were before could not afterward continue Let him please to say therefore whether Tygris and Euphrates were before the Flood or not If they were not how could Moses describe Paradise by them If they were had the Flood come in by the Earth's Dissolution they must inevitably have been destroyed But instead of that they are still in being and this is an evidence that the Earth was not delug'd by being dissolv'd Nor is this the only difficulty upon the Theorist here For as to the place of Paradise he refers himself wholly as we have heard to the Ancients and they incline to seat it in the South or South-East Land in the other World And can it enter into the mind of man to think that Havilah and Aethiopia and Assyria and Hiddekel and Euphrates which Moses takes into the description of Paradise could ever be situate in the other Hemisphere when they are now found in this If the Earth fell in without question it gave a deadly jounce But could it make these Countries and Rivers rebound with such force as to leap quite beyond the torrid Zone and settle some degrees on this side of our Tropic There are a sort of Divinity Theorists * Annus ipse nonagesimus primus ejus seculi erat quod eodem anno ac pene mense natalis Deiparae Virginis domus deficiente cultu ex Asia in Europam coelestium ministerio transit Quae primo in Dalmatia inde quadrienno post in Piceno consedit Hor. Tursel Epit. Hist lib. 9. pag. mihi 302. who would fain perswade us that the Lady of Loretto's Chamber went thither a Pilgrimage out of Nazareth This is strangely marvellous but the wonder of it will be much abated if we can find the Regions and Rivers we speak of going on procession out of the South-East Land into this Northern Continent I confess we are taught strange things of Paradise but this its translation would surpass all And how good soever its Soil was at first certainly it grew very light at last to hop thus far Were this an effect of the Earth's fall believe it here is either a very fair tumbling Cast or else our Author is in a foul mistake And so indeed he must be and the Objection which he was afraid would fall on Moses or the Excepter lights heavy on the Theorist But out of this fear he quickly rises into another Passion if we may guess by his expressions in the next Paragraph Tho I cannot but say his Passion is as causeless as his fear was groundless For speaking truth in a controversy should never move choler And did the Excepter do more than so when he said that to affirm Moses's Description of Paradise to be false Disc p. 286. must be horrid Blasphemy it being Dictated by the H. GHOST Yet this is the word which he takes so ill And truly so far as he has said any thing that implies Mose's Topography of Paradise to be false So far he ought to resent what was spoken tho not with anger And pray how can he allowing own Hypothesis to be true defend Moses's description of Paradise from being false seeing he describes it by Rivers and those Rivers according to the Theory could not be before the Flood He attempts the Defence thus The Theorist supposes Rivers before the Flood Answer p. 60. in great plenty and why not like to these He himself has given Reasons why they could not be like them Eng. The. p. 252. 'T is true if you admit our Hypothesis concerning the fraction and disruption of the Earth at the Deluge then we cannot expect to find rivers as they were before their general source is changed and their Chanels are all broke up And if Rivers after the Flood are not as they were before it how can they be alike And when their source was changed at the Deluge and their Chanels all broke up how is it possible but that they must differ greatly from what they were in their situations Courses c Which must utterly spoil them for being topographical marks I mean the same true topographical marks to any Country to which they formerly were so And can they then be alike That Person who can think that the Earth was
dissolved and by that dissolution fell a Mile or two downward and by that fall was broken to pieces and by that fraction was thrown into wildest disorders so that whereas before it had one entire smooth level uniform Surface it was thus made into Mountains Hills Valleys Islands Rocks Seas Gulphs Lakes c. And yet can think again that those Rivers which were before this happened should in their situations and chanels the principal circumstances we are now concern'd in be just like these after it he must be one of a very strong Phantsy but withal of as weak a Judgment And farther Moses does not describe Paradise by Rivers like to Tygris and Euphrates and Pison and Gihon but by those very same Rivers as originally flowing there And every like we know is far from being the very same Men and Animals now upon Earth are like to them before the Deluge yet I hope they are not the same revived And then lastly the Theorist yields Paradise was in the Southern Hemisphere and so the Rivers of it before the Flood must be there too and so they must rise from the rainy Region at the Antarctic Pole and so they must be very remote from the Land of Havilah and Assyria Whereas since the Flood Moses describes Paradise by Tygris and Euphrates and these are Rivers in this Northern Hemisphere and they spring up from the Mountains of Armenia and they run by or through the aforesaid Countries And is it to be thought then that those Rivers before the Flood and these Rivers since the Flood could be alike Especially alike in showing the Situation and the bounds of Paradise from Moses's Description or Topography of which was the first Reason borrow'd against the Earth's Dissolution Concerning which he expostulates Answ p. 61. Is it not a strange thing that the Dissolution of the Earth should be made Blasphemy Yes very strange and let them that make it so be blamed for it But still to affirm that Moses's Description of Paradise is false would be horrid Blasphemy it being dictated by the H. GHOST And this was the thing which the Excepter made Blasphemy which the Answerer if he thinks fit may contradict And now the Replicant says farther that to assert such a Dissolution of the Earth as destroys Moses's Description of Paradise or implies it to be false will indirectly consequentially and reductively at least be of Blasphemous importance But the Answerer alledges that very Expression Ibid. the Earth is dissolved is a Scripture Expression Psalm 75.3 Isai 24.19 Amos 9.5 which methinks might have been enough to have protected it from the imputation of Blasphemy How well this Allegation will protect him or what he has said in any capacity or respect I know not I only ask what dissolution of the Earth do the Psalmist and Prophets mean in the Places cited Do they mean a figurative tropological Dissolution or a literal and such a real one as the Theorist has invented and which according to him did drown the World If the first their notion is nothing to the Answerer's purpose if the Second the Earth must have been delug'd as often as they say it has been dissolv'd I cannot think that our Answerer believes that Palestine was literally or really dissolv'd in the prophet Esay's time Yet 't is plain it was so according to Scripture-expression Thou whole Palestina are dissolved Isai 14.31 Which shows him clearly what Dissolution of the Earth Scripture means in the places cited and what kind of protection that Scripture expression will afford him and consequently how weak the Sanctuary is that he here flies to In this Paragraph he insinuates odious things of the Excepter As if he were guilty of a rude and injudicious defending of Scripture by railing and ill language such as tends to the diminution and disparagement of it As if he made his own Consequences to be of the same authority with the word of GOD and so whatsoever is against them must be charg'd with Blasphemy against the H. GHOST And as if there were nothing safe against his blind zeal and opinionative ignorance How easy were it here to retort and retaliate But we must not render 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Yet he having observed that weak reasons commonly produce strong passions we may without offence Answ p. 11. measure his Arguments by his own Rule and judge of their weakness by the sentence proceeding out of his own mouth and conclude that his Reasons are like to be invalid because his Passions are so violent By them one would think he had taken a turn in his Torrid Zone and was just now come piping hot out of it Secondly the Dissolution of the Earth could not be the cause of the general flood because it would have utterly destroyed Noah 's Ark and all that was in it Disc p. 288. said the Excepter But this was prevented by the Theorist's putting the Ark under the Conduct of its Guardian Angels and a miraculous Providence says the Answerer p. 61. And in proof that he did thus put the Ark under the Conduct of Angels he cites these words out of the English Theory Ib. I think it had been impossible for the Ark to have liv'd upon the raging Abyss or for Noah and his Family to have been preserved if there had not been a miraculous hand of Providence to take care of them And then again he must needs fall pell-mell on the Excepter tho he comes off as he uses to do Ib. p. 62. Now either the Excepter did not take notice of this passage in the Theory or he does not allow that a miraculous hand was sufficient to preserve the Ark or thirdly that he made an objection which he knew himself to be impertinent And I confess I am inclinable to think the last is true But by his leave none of these three things are true and the real truth is this Tho he put the Ark under the conduct of Angels in the extremity of the Flood and when it was upon the raging Abyss yet he lest it without a miraculous hand to take care of it in its fall Yea instead of that it is evident that he only put it into a River or Dock Ib. or Cistern that it might be afloat there before the Abyss was broken open as if that could have sav'd it from being dasht to pieces And because the Excepter did not take notice of this Contrivance of this River or Dock he tells him of it in both ears p. 31. In the eighth Chapter of his Answer and here in the fourteenth p. 62 But was there so great an injury done him and had he such mighty cause to complain that that Thing was omitted which himself now looks upon as unnecessary For he says after all there is no necessity that the Ark should be afloat Ib. before the Earth broke And for what reason Why ordinary providence being thus laid aside what