diverse in Scripture that I think it is not fair to clap that particular sense only upon it which it may but bare possibly signify Sometimes it signifies only the Wind as Is 40.7 The Ruach or Spirit of the Lord blew upon him that is a very dry and fatal wind Sometime it signifies the Soul as Job 47.3 The Ruach the Spirit or Breath of God is in my nostrils Sometimes it signifies Life as Ezech. 37.14 I will give my Spirit to you and you shall live That is I will recover you and give you Life or Spirit again Other times it signifies Mercy as Mich. 2.7 is the Ruach the Spirit i. e. the mercy of God straitened And the word Spirit it self singly is noted to signify a Temper of mind as Caleb was of another Spirit i. e. a better temper than the murmuring Jews Numb 14.24 And in other places of Scripture the Spirit of Jealousy the Spirit of Meekness the Spirit of Holiness c. all which signify Tempers and Dispositions of Mind From all which I conclude that when in Scripture the Prophets are said to have the Spirit of God the meaning is only that they have great Minds or Spirits or extraordinary holy dispositions above the rest of the People Which expression signifies no more in Hebrew than what the Greeks mean when they say the same of a brave Poet or Orator that he has in his Writings 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 some thing divine and admirable and far above the rate of common Authors So that when by these Passages of Scripture it will appear That the Prophets were good solid Writers and Excellent Preachers why should you go about to spoil their Character and make them only Enthusiastical Dreamers And now let my Infidelity be as great as you would make it you see I am a better Friend to your old Prophets than you your self Cred. You have given us here a great deal of learned Banter and it is great Pity that Men should study Scripture so much to make such ill use of it But to give an answer to this wild sort of Arguing which I can hardly perswade my self you urge in earnest Natural Knowledge not Revelation 1. You assert That Natural Knowledge is the Revelation of God and that the Scriptures have not any more reason to be called so than that But this is a great mistake For Natural Knowledge cann't be said properly to be the Revelation but only the Gift of God Indeed what ever we know we should never come to the Knowledge of unless it had pleased God's goodness to endow us with these intelligent faculties but then no body says that God reveals these natural Truths to us but only he gives us the faculties of discerning them Nay let us be as Platonical as we please and assert that all the notions of the Soul are but so many Intuitions on the Deity and our viewing some of those Infinity of Truths which he is pleased to exhibit to us by communicating himself to us I say although we explain natural Knowledge this way yet this is far from being the same which we generally understand by divine Revelation For this first is a general way of God's communicating himself indifferently to all Men for all Men do indifferently partake of a considerable measure of Natural Knowledge But this latter way of God's revealing himself which in particular we call Divine Revelation is a favour which God has vouchsafed but to a very few of all Mankind that they might communicate what was so revealed to them to the rest By the first Men only have a power of perceiving the Ideas and Impressions of outward Objects of compounding and dividing thoughts of affirming and denying concerning them of fitting premisses and deducing Consequences which every ones own experience tells him he has by nature But the latter is a supernatural Impulse of the Divine Power which instills into Mens Minds Thoughts not attainable by human Reason or else gives them an Authority as coming from God which they had not before And therefore it is an idle Fallacy to call those natural Deductions of Reason and Common Ideas of Things by the name of Revelation from which they do as widely differ as Light and Darkness This is only a ludicrous Artifice which your sort of Men have got of making use of Religious Terms when you believe nothing of the Thing and exposing Religion by leaving nothing in it but a few empty names And besides they have another end to serve by it which is this That then their Infidelity does not appear so barefac'd when they make use of the old Terms in an Infidel sense for otherways such Writers as Hobbs Spinosa and the Author of the five Letters would appear so horrid to all Ears that had the least spark of Christianity left that Men would be scar'd from them at the first reading and so all hopes of making Proselytes for the Devil would be over But by this bantering and mincing the matter Readers are cajoled into Infidelity unawares and the Authors escape the punishment likewise which would otherwise attend an open and barefac'd Blasphemy 2. And it is much such another kind of Argumentation Prophets not only extraordinary Men. when you would have the Prophets which are sometimes in Scripture called the Men of God to be only Men of good Parts and very considerable Men because forsooth great things in Scripture are sometimes called by the name of God For what though the Mountain of God be a great mountain and Nimrod a Hunter of God be a mighty Hunter may not therefore Moses and Isaiah and Jeremy be inspired Prophets I pray where lies the consequence of this Indeed if they were only in general said to be Men of God and had no other Title nor no other demonstration of their Prophetick Spirit there would be then something tolerable in this Argument But the name of Men of God is an expression which is but rarely but once or twice in Scripture made use of to signify a Prophet 1 Kings Chap. 13. there are other names which are generally used for that purpose Such as Nabi which signifies one that has particular converse and familiarity with God Gen. 20.7 and Roeh 1 Chron. 9.22 and 16.28 and Choseh 2 Sam. 24.11 1 Chr. 21.9 both which words signify Seers as denoting Men that are accustomed to divine Visions or supernatural Revelations But besides there are such innumerable expressions in Scripture which demonstrate a particular Revelation from God Almighty and a peculiar intercourse of these holy Men the Prophets with him that no reasonable Man can deny it unless at the same time he denies the Authority of the holy Scripture and makes it altogether an Imposture Gen. 15.1 The word of the Lord came to Abram in a Vision saying Fear not Abram c. Now what tolerable sense can be put upon these words but only that this was a particular Revelation of God to Abraham You cann't
say that this is only some remarkable saying of Abraham and is therefore in the Jewish Phrase called the word of the Lord. For here is no room for any such kind of Metaphor Here is a particular Dialogue of God and Abraham God said Fear not Abram I am thy shield and thy exceeding great Reward And Abram said Lord God what wilt thou give me seeing I go childless and the Steward of my House is this Eliezer of Damascus Then v. 4. is related the reply of God Almighty And behold the word of the Lord came unto him saying This shall not be thy Heir but he that shall come forth out of thine own Bowels c. Now what can be more positive and express of Abraham's immediate Revelation and Intercourse with God than this Relation So again Exod. 2.5 The Revelation made to Moses is related as expresly God called unto him out of the midst of the bush and said Moses Moses Then follows the answer of Moses and Moses said here am I. And the Lord said I have surely seen the affliction of my people c. Come now therefore and I will send thee unto Paraoh And Moses said unto God Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh and that I should bring the Children of Israel out of Aegypt And God said Certainly I will be with thee c. And after this rate the Dialogue continues the full length of the Chapter Now if this be not a relation of an Intercourse with God and a Revelation from him there is no sense to be put upon any words though never so plain there must be no assent given to the literal narrations of Thucydides or Livy but the credit of both those Histories may as well be criticized away as this So again as for the other Prophets when we are particularly told that the word of the Lord came unto them at such a time in such a manner in such a particular Year of such a King's Reign what can possibly be meant less than that God revealed this to them When they are commanded to take rolls and to write as Is 8 1. and Jer. 36.2 and the Prophecies so commanded to be written are there recorded when every Prophecy begins with the word of the Lord or thus saith the Lord when in some of them are particular Interlocutions between God and the Prophet if this be not Revelation the Prophets who wrote these Writings must be the greatest Cheats and Impostours in the World in so often pretending to it when they had not the least share of it But it vexes one to spend time to answer so simple an Objection which is worth no ones notice but that the great Spinosa has taken so much pains in it and other retailing Infidels after him would seem to do some great matter with it 3. Nor are your Criticisms upon the Hebrew Ruach or Spirit more solid Spirit of God in Scripture signifies Revelation by which you would pretend that word does not signify Revelation or Inspiration but only Wind Life temper of Mind and the like But what an unreasonable mistake is this I do not deny but that word in Hebrew has many significations as several other words have in that narrow Language But then on the other side there are a great many places in the Bible in which it can signify only Inspiration or Revelation what think you of Gen. 41.38 Where Pharaoh says of Joseph after he had interpreted his Dream and prophesied of the Years of Plenty and Famine Can we find such an one as this is a man in whom the Spirit of God is Certainly by the Spirit of God here is meant the Inspiration of God or there is no sense at all in it And so again Numb 27.18 The Lord said unto Moses Take thee Joshua the Son of Nun a Man in whom is the Spirit and lay thy hand upon him where by Spirit the Chaldee Paraphrase interprets Prophecy And what else can be meant by that Spirit of the Lord 1 Kings 18.12 which carried Eliah from place to place by which he did such mighty Miracles and so undauntedly uttered his Prophecies but only a supernatural power of God which did continually attend him And so Isa 59.21 God tells the Prophet that it was his Spirit that inspired him with the words that he spoke Saith the Lord My Spirit which is upon thee and the words which I have put into thy mouth c. And so several times in Ezechiel The Spirit of the Lord fell upon me Ezek. 11.5 and the Spirit entered into me Chap. 3.24 And often in the Book of Daniel the Spirit of the holy Gods is said to be in him Dan. 4.8 and 9 5.11 and 14. In short divine Revelation is all over the Old Testament called by the name of Spirit and even that extraordinary Inspiration which was foretold by the Prophet Joel to prevail under the Gospel is called so likewise I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh and your Sons and your Daughters shall prophesie your Old Men shall dream dreams and your Young Men shall see Visions Joel 2.28 Where you may particularly observe that the word Spirit is joyned with Prophecy and Revelation And upon this account the Holy Ghost which was the giver of these Prophetick Gifts is in the New Testament called 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the Holy Spirit And so is divine Revelation among the Heathens called by the same name As Dii coeptis inspirate meis and Inspirante Deo It is plain therefore that by the word Spirit in Scripture is frequently understood Divine Revelation which is the effect of the Operation of God's Holy Spirit conveying to the minds of several Prophetical Men whom God has been pleased to choose many extraordinary Truths conducible to the good of his Church Which is a thing so frequent and so plain in Scripture as is not to be bantered away by a little foolish Criticism and is a Truth never to be shaken unless the Infidels have force enough to overthrow the whole Body of the Scriptures Phil. Well we will see Credentius what we can do as to that matter some time or other But in the mean time methinks you outshoot your selves a little in your Notions of Revelation For you generally assert that Revelation is caused by a more immediate and supernatural Application of the divine Spirit to the mind of Man and so does make known to it those extraordinary Truths which indeed is only a Cast of the Jewish Unphilosophical Ignorance For when they poor Wretches could not understand the Natural Causes of Inspiration they were presently for a 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 for calling in God to help out their sorry Philosophy Every thing which was a little surprizing to them they must needs attribute to the immediate Act of God they were every moment making Mountains as well as Men of God and according to their Philosophy an equal degree of the divine power was requisite as well to
How does the old Levitical Law plainly appear to be but the Sciography or rough draught of the Gospel and the Characters and Lines of one exactly visible in the other For my part I think it impossible for so many though judicious and wise Men without assistance from God to carry any one design with that exactness that the Penmen of the Holy Scripture have but I am sure it is the greatest of Absurdities to assert that such a noble and uniform Design should be carried on through so many Ages by a parcel of wild Enthusiasts So that let the Writers of the Bible be what you please to style them either Inspired Men or Impostors I shall not dispute that now they must needs be Men well in their Wits and what is more Men of good sense Prophets had the Inspiration of the Holy Ghost 2. It is very evident from Scripture That Prophecy proceeded from another Cause viz. the Influence of God's Holy Spirit The innumerable Instances in Scripture of the Prophets and Apostles being in the Spirit of the Spirit 's coming upon them of their speaking things by command and of the Lord of their being caught up into heaven c. are undeniable Proofs of the cause of their Revelation viz. the Holy Ghost or the Spirit of God Indeed it is not easy to give a Philosophical and Notional account of this supernatural Influence or by what means it was conveyed or by what criterion or marks they could distinguish it from a Delusion because we who are not honoured with these supernatural Gifts and therefore can have no Idea of these things as having never been the Objects of our Understandings but it is not to be doubted but these Holy Men had as absolute certainty of the Truth of them as we have of things that do immediately strike our senses and did as perfectly know them to be the word of God as that those things are which we see to be and that they could as little question their Inspiration as we do our Senses For as the Senses are only the ordinary way of God's conveying Ideas to us and these are so clear to us by their familiarity and repeated Trials of their faithfulness that we cannot but rely upon them and cannot but give assent to them so the Inspiration of God to the Prophets by their clear Evidence continually and by their wonted Experience of it left no more doubt in them of the Truth of it than the Appearance of the Sun does leave in us that it is Day or that what we see is really seen by us and is not the Delusion of a Dream To say we ordinary Persons can have no notion of this Extraordinary Influx of God and therefore it cannot be is only to expose our own Ignorance and a Blind Man might with as much Modesty pretend to demonstrate against the Existence of Colours or a Clown laugh at Mathematical Theorems as we pretend to dispute against the certainty of this supernatural Influence which God Almighty has been pleased to give us no notices of Might not God Almighty as well have given us Ten Senses as Five And if he has been pleased to make an extraordinary Impression upon some Mens Minds which his does not on all must we therefore assert this as impossible because we who do not experience it do not perceive it Must all Men be blind because we are so Or must every Man be Mad and Enthusiastical that hath better Eyes than we I am sure this is a very mad way of Arguing and yet there is no more reason for Men to question the Truth of the Revelation of the Prophets than blind Men have to question our sight Nay the miraculous power which did usually attend Prophecy was more undeniable Evidence to the Beholders of their Divine Influence than the joint assertion of the generality of Mankind can be that there is such a Thing as Sight or Colours to a Blind Man Because Sensation is a greater degree of Evidence than Testimony and because a Man will sooner believe his senses than a Thousand Witnesses A Blind Man cannot believe there are Colours but only by being told so but when I see a Prophet doing Miracles I am sure he is influenced by God because I see he does works above the power of Nature 3. You are very much mistaken Prophecy not inconsistent with Wisdom when you assert that prophecy is inconsistent with Wisdom and that Men of good sense such as Solomon Kalcol Heman c. were no Prophets but only poor Shepherds Women and other Persons of mean parts were endowed with that Gift One would wonder how Men could lay down an Assertion which is so easy to be confuted as this is Pray what must be thought of Moses to whom there arose not since in Israel a Prophet like unto Does his noble Genius his invincible Courage his sagacious Prudence his vast Depth in Philosophy argue him a Man of mean parts Methinks the Heathen Longinus his Character of him that he was 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 No mean Man should be enough to free him at least from his share in this Calumny What do you think of Nathan Israel and Daniel who were bred up Courtiers and made a great figure in the Ages when they lived and the Writings of two of them shew them to be Men of fine parts But I think you have a little outshot your self in the instance of Solomon in denying him to be a Prophet For it is recorded in Scripture that God revealed himself twice unto Solomon First at his Entrance upon his Kingdom when he asked Wisdom of God 2 Chron. 1.8 Secondly upon his finishing the Temple 2 Chron. 7.12 Nay what do you think of David who was a Prophet as well as a King And as for your Instances of Kalkol and Heman those great Masters of Musick as if they were Men of too good sense to be Prophets if you please to turn to 1 Chron. 25.5 you shall there find that one of them viz. Heman is there expresly called the King 's Seâ—â— or Prophet Prophecies noâ— variable according to the Prophets Passions 4. You lay down also another very false Supposition that the Prophecies variâ—d always according to the different Passions and Dispositions of the Prophets and therefore would hence conclude that their Prophecy was only Imagination But this is very false and very Illogical First it is false For Moses who is Characterized to be the meekest of all Men did Prophecy as dreadful judgments against the Israelites as any of the Prophets Vid. Lev. 26.14 Isaiah his Prophecy is in the several places very different sometimes he Prophesies joyful at other times very dismal things And even Jeremiah the most mournful Prophet of all does foretel the Jews joyful deliverance from their Captivity as well as the Captivity it self And Daniel at that very time when he was mourning and fasting in Sackcloth and Ashes had revealed to him by the Angel
Jewish and says they use Oil in their Consecration And Strabo says it is a great crime there as among the Jews to offer a maimed Victim Str. Lib. 15. that they have a Lex Talionis and that there is a Law that no Indian should be a Slave The Brachmans the Indian Priests wear Bells about them like the Jewish High-Priest Slaves there have their Ears bor'd through and a perpetual Light is kept in their Temples Women and New-Born Children are unclean till they are purified with Lustrations They punish Incest and Adultery with death Only the Brachmans like the Levites must go into the inward Parts of the Temple They are defiled by a dead Body and have Cakes before their Idols like the shew Bread and the Brachmans like the Jewish High-Priests must marry Virgins Vid. Thevenot Huet Dem. Prop. 4. Cap. 6. And the Inhabitants of the Country of Tangath redeem their first-born with a Ram. Now when the Jewish and the Indian Rites are so very like why might not I assert that Moses had them from India as well as you from Aegypt Nay even the Barbarous Tartars have many things not unlike the Jews Vid. Conring Thes Rerump They celebrate the New-Moons with Songs and Compotations they bewail their Dead Thirty Days they breed no Hogs and punish Adultery with Death And so as to the new World the Children of the People of Mexico and Jucatan are Circumcised and the Mexicans keep in a perpetual Fire The Charibeans celebrate the New-Moon with the sound of a Trumpet and abstain from Swines Flesh Those of Mechoacana are defiled by dead Bodies and those of Peru and new Spain marry their Brothers Wives And in Nicaragua Women after Child-Birth are unclean Besides the Attick and Roman Laws and Rites are in many things as like the Jewish as the Aegyptian The Attick Laws establish that no 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or Heiress should marry out of her own Tribe their 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or Cakes answer to the shew-Bread Plut. Sol. and the Law of Solon that Women in grief should not tear their Cheeks is not unlike that of Moses Lev. 19.28 Their Priests were to marry Virgins and Citizens and no Lamb was to be a Sacrifice less than a Year old And we may say the same of the Roman Their Sacrifices bore a great correspondence with the Jewish the burning the Holocausta their Moâ—a Sâ—lsa Lustrations c. Their Nudipâ—dales seem very like the Eastern Devotion of â—ulling off the shooes Their Puerâ—â—ae abstaining Forty Days from the Templâ— the Frondeae Casae in the Feasts of Anna â—erenna and the Neptunalia so like the Feast of Tabernacles the unhallowing of a Priest that touched a dead Body or who â—ssociated with his Wife before Sacrifice all look as like the Jewish Laws as any Custom in Aegypt From all which I conclude that since so many Nations in so different parts of the World have the same Rites with the Jews either by chance or Tradition or it may be by the mimikry of the Devil I am sure it is very great Boldness to say that all these came to the Jews from the Aegyptians Phil. Well Credentius you have made a fine learned Harangue upon the matter if we Infidels were to be convinced by that But I have a notable Objection which lies both against Moses and all the Sons of the Prophets And that is they appear to be like the rest of the Jews miserable ignorant People and after all their mighty pretences to the Knowledge of the Divine Nature are scandalously ignorant concerning it They every where seem to be gross Anthropomorphites representing God as having Eyes and Hands and Feet Adam to whom God made his first Revelation knew nothing of God's Omnipresence or Omniscience but pretended to hide himself from him and to make a simple Excuse to him And Moses who relates the story brings in God like a Man walking in the Garden The same Moses was so silly as to fancy God visible and to desire to see him Exod. 33. And some of the Prophets endow God with humane Passion and make him to repent to be sorry and to be glad But above all the contrivance of the Prophet Jonah is the wisest who thought to run away to Tarshish out of God Almighty's reach as if God had no power out of the Country of Judea Now who can expect Revelation to come from those Heads which were not furnished with the common notions of natural Religion Cred. You do a great injury to the holy Scriptures and to the memory of the Holy Men recorded there to conceive such an extravagant Opinion of them especially when it is taught there that God is a Spirit that he beholds all things is present every where that he is not a Man Jews far from being Anthropomorphites and the like And therefore you ought in all candor to suppose that these expressions which attribute Hands Eyes c. to God are only to be taken metaphorically and are spoke only 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 after the manner as Men speak And to this the Jewish Writers who are supposed to understand their own Language best do unanimously agree This Maimonides spends several Chapters in his first Book of his More Nevochim to prove So the Targum when the Scripture seems to impute any corporeal Action to the Deity interprets it in a way more agreeable to the Divine Nature As Gen. 28. And behold the Lord stood above it Onkelos paraphrases the glory of the Lord stood afore it So Gen. 31.49 The Lord watch between me and thee The Targum says the Word of the Lord watch between me and thee And this is the constant use of that Interpreter says Maimonides More Nev. Lib. 1. Author Halic Ol. c. 1. quoted by Hottinger in his Dissertat Theolog. Philolog Cap. 46. And a Jewish Rabbin writes that when they meet with any expression or Metaphor concerning the Deity of this Nature they are used to interpose Cabiacol if I may so speak Vid. Buxtorf Lexicon Talm. Rad. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Now the true reason why the Scripture does express the Attributes of God by Bodily actions and properties is not that those Writers thought God of a bodily shape but by the reason of the narrowness of the Hebrew Tongue they wanted abstracted Terms to express them by And when these Corporeal Terms were applied to God the People of that Nation knew as well what was meant by them as the Schools do by all their Quiddities Thus the Eye of God is the same as the Providence of God So Jer. 39.12 Cast thine eye upon him i. e. take care of him And 2 Chr. 16.9 The Eyes of the Lord run to and fro through the whole Earth i. e. God takes care of all People in it So the Heart of God was as well understood to the Jews as if it had in more Scholastick Language been called his Decree or his Will.
Fotoques and Games as the Mexicans for the rites paid to their Virachoca Nor does my conjecture stand singly alone but I have your own sacred Writings to back me in it For there are many Texts of Scripture which seem plainly to affirm that God-Almighty has revealed his Will by a Positive Institution to the Gentile World whom you look down with so much contempt upon under pretence of your superabundant privileges For Gen. 14.18 c. it is said that Melchisedeck was King of Jerusalem and Priest of the most high God and that he blessed Abraham which was a principal Office of the Mosaical Priesthood Numb 6.23 and that Abraham pay'd Tithes to him of his Spoils From whence it is plain That God had a revealed Institution before the Jews or their Forefather Abraham's time and that when Abraham is commended for keeping God's commandments and statutes and Laws Gen. 26.5 it is only these positive injunctions in the Land of Canaan which Melchisedeck was the Priest or Prophet or Dispenser of So Malachi 1.10 Who is there among you that would shut the doors of my Temple that fire should not be kindled upon mine Altar For from the rising of the Sun unto the going down thereof my name shall be great among the gentiles and in every place Incense shall be offered unto my name and a pure offering for my name shall be great among the heathen saith the Lord of Hosts By which words it is plain That at that time the Prophet did not think the Jews dearer to God than other People and that the Heathens worship was as acceptable to him as theirs So Psal 145.18 The Lord is nigh to all them that call upon him to all that call upon him in Truth And in the same Psalm v. 9. it is said God is good to all and his tender mercies are over all his works So God himself gives a Testimony of Job a Gentile that there was none like him in the Earth a perfect and an upright Man Job 1.8 So Jonas said he determined to flee to Tarsus because he knew God to be a gracious and merciful God Jon. 4.2 and who would therefore pardon even the Gentile Ninevites Besides we read in Scripture that several uncircumcised Gentiles had the gift even of Prophecy as Enoch Noah Abimelech and Balaam Nay several of the Jewish Prophets prophesy for the use of the Gentiles Ezechiel prophesies to all the Nations then known Obadiah prophesies only for the Children of Edom and Jonas principally for the Ninevites Isaias foretells the calamities and deliverance of the Aegyptians Is 19.19 and the Prophet Jeremy is call'd expresly a Prophet of the Nations or Gentiles Before thou camest out of the Womb I sanctified thee and I ordained thee a Prophet unto the Nations Jer. 1.5 and Chap. 48.31 he says he will howl for Moab he will cry out for Moab and v. 36. My heart shall sound for Moab like Pipes c. which pathetick expressions shew that he was sent by God a Prophet as well for the Gentile Moabites as the Jews But as for the Prophecy of Balaam that is so express that all the major and minor Prophets cannot pretend more to the Spirit of Prophecy than this one Gentile Seer So that Credentius you may make what brags you please of the Jewish and Christian Revelations but if you do not own old Balaam as much a Heathen as he was to be a very good Prophet you will want one of the most considerable proofs of Christianity Nay the Scripture gives this Man all the Characters of a Prophetick spirit He hath said who heard the words of God who saw the Vision of the Almighty falling into a Trance but having his Eyes open Numb 24.4 Now methinks it is a little unfair for you to make such an outcry about God's particular Favour to you by Revelation when those very revealed Scriptures themselves which you make such brags of allow it to the Heathen as well as you Cred. One can hardly think you Theists are in earnest when you object against the Scriptures and our Religion that God has revealed himself to other Nations as well as us No Revelation to the Gentiles for their Religions I always take you to have a mind only to be pleasant and to put a banter upon us Christians rather than to defend your own Tenents which do not seem much to be furthered by it And when Spinosa contends so mightily for it I fancy it must be only an humorsom Paradox of that odd Man and not his setled Opinion or at least the effect of a Pique he had conceived against the Jews and so was resolved to set them upon the same foot with other Mortals But that the rest of the World have no Revelation for the diverse Religions they profess will appear by considering Because Idolatrous 1. That most of the Religions in the World are Idolatrous Now it is impossible to suppose that God by a Revelation should command Men to do that which all wise Men would be ashamed to do to fall down before Stocks and stones to worship the Sun and the Moon senseless inanimate Creatures and to adore dead Men and Tyrannical Princes or even Herbs or Beasts Now though we should suppose that God was in no ways jealous of his honour and that it was indifferent to him whatsoever Thing we worshipped yet as he is the God of Truth 't is impossible he should command a false worship or instruct People in paying devotion to things as Gods which are only mean and perhaps wicked Creatures Now the far greatest part of the Unchristian World are and have been such Idolaters and therefore to make God to have revealed to them their superstitions is to make God to represent himself such as it is impossible for him to be to be delighted in a worship which is false and wicked and to be himself the Chief Author of the Imposture which is so horrid as no body will contend for 2. Other Unchristian Nations that are not Idolaters as chiefly the Mahometans profess a Religion which allows Immorality Immoral the Founder whereof was rather possessed by the Devil than inspired by God A Lewd debauched Fanatical Wretch that lived by Rapine and Murder and spent his days in Whoredom Adulteries and Sodomies Now his Religion allows its followers to propagate it by the blood of the opposers and by all manner of cruelty and barbarity against Men of other perswasions It allows Concubinacy and Whoredom and even Sodomy it self and the very rewards it proposes in another World are such infamous Lust as a good Man would be ashamed to think of in this 3. As for your Instances out of Scripture Melchisedeck because you should not too much insult over us as having wounded us with our own Weapons will you be pleased to accept this answer to the first That Melchisedeck is no proof of a Revelation among the Gentiles more than of that Universal
a Heathen should come at a sight of that Book or at least a Relation out of it For Trogus Pompeius who wrot the History which Justin Epitomized was a Retainer in the Family of the Great Pompey who Conquered Judea and therefore in the Expedition of his Master there without doubt he picked up this imperfect Relation of the Jews either by reading their Books and afterwards forgetting or mistaking them or by mixing the True History with the Fabulous reports of some Neighbouring Gentiles So that in short the Scripture-History must regulate his report And then see how finely This does agree with it He makes the Jewish Original to be from Damascus and that Abraham was King of that place where Arathes the Wife of Syrus one of their ancient Kings was worshipped That after Damascus who gave name to the City succeeded Azelus and then Adores and then Abraham and Israel which Israel divided his Kingdom among his Ten Sons but made them all to be called Jews from his Son Judah That Joseph was Israel's Youngest Soâ— and that Moses was Son to him That the Jews were drove out of Aegypt for being Scabby that they were followed after by the Aegyptians because they had stolen some of their Sacra and that the Aegyptians were forced to return home by a Tempest That they were forced to fast seven days in the deserts of Arabia which occasioned the Institution of the Sabbath That the Memory of their being drove out of Aegypt for their scabbiness made it a part of their Religion not to converse with strangers lest the Knowledge of their Infirmity should render them contemptible That Moses his Son's name was Arvas i. e. Aaron who was an Aegyptian Priest who afterwards succeeded Moses in the Kingdom and from hence came the custom that the Jewish Kings were always Priests Now what a foolish and contradictious account of the Jewish History is this Report of Justin Who ever heard of the names of Azelus and Adores in the Jewish story When was such a Goddess as Arathes worshipped generally by the Jews who were always fam'd for the worship of one God where by the way this is only a simple mistake of the Author to say Arathe for the Astarte or Astaroth of the Sidonians Here is again Abraham mistaken for the Father who was the Grand-Father of Israel Here are Israel's Ten Sons set down for his Twelve his little Estate mistaken for an Empire and the Twelve Tribes for Ten Kingdoms Here is Joseph taken for Jacob's Youngest Son who was his eldest by another Venter and Moses passes for Joseph's Son who lived Three or Four Hundred Years after him Here is the name of Jews said to be imposed by Jacob which was not known till the time of the Captivity a Thousand Years afterwards Here are the Plagues which Moses inflicted upon Aegypt altered for the scabbiness of the Jews as if those heavy judgments came only by infection and the spoiling of the Aegyptians of their Bracelets Ear-rings c. turned into the running away with their Sacra Here is the History of the Manna and Quails confounded with the Institution of the Sabbath and their Injunction of not communicating with the Nations attributed to the foolish Fable about their Itch or Leprosy And besides here is again Aaron Moses his Brother mistaken into his Son and turned from a Jewish into an Aegyptian Priest here is the same Aaron made King of the Jews who was never otherways than Priest and that said to be the original of the Custom of the Jews having their Kings their Priests when never any such Custom obtained amongst them but only the Author has blundered the History of the Maccabees Government into this Fable So that Philologus I would have your Gentlemen for shame leave of to abuse the Jewish Nation with false stories out of Heathen Historians that knew so very little of their Country and are guilty of so many mistakes about it For in this short account of Justin you see there are almost as many mistakes as words whether they are willful and malicious or no I shall not determine but I am sure the account we find in Scripture to all reasonable Men must be ten times less liable to exception Phil. These are but small things Credentius for us to make many words about but I am afraid you Inspiration Men are guilty of a very great fundamental Errour in taking that for some supernatural Revelation of God which is only Natural Reason For I cannot be brought to think that the Prophets or other Writers of the Bible which are said to be inspired had the Mind of God revealed to them any other way than by the common natural way of reasoning and Knowledge For Natural Knowledge is but the Revelation of God wherein God reveals to our minds the natures of things which were unknown to us before so that God may he as well said to speak to us by our reason as by the Scriptures and Natural Knowledge may be allowed to be divine as proceeding from God as well as they And I doubt not but that it was the Hebrew way of using the word God that has betrayed both Jews and Christians into the fancy of Inspiration and Revelation in the modern sense when formerly nothing but pure natural Knowledge was meant by it For the Hebrews had always a very Religious and Devout way of talking and attributed almost all Natural Actions to God if they had gotten Money by their industry they would say it was given them by God if they had a good thought they would say God put it into their Hearts and the like So a great many other things were said to be divine or to come from God which were only natural but wonderful or extraordinary Thus the mountains of God is only another name for great mountains they Sleep of God for a deep sleep and the Sons of God Gen. 6. are but great Sons or Giants Now it would be a mad way of Interpretation to say all these things were inspired because they have God's name added to them Therefore why should we suppose that those Men who are called Prophets in Scripture had any divine and supernatural Revelation only because they are called the Men of God or are said to have the Spirit of God For this is only an usual Hyperbole to denote that they were extraordinary Men Men of sound Reasoning and notable parts and exquisitely gifted to move and perswade the People And this is no more than what the Greeks and Latins mean by Divine or Godlike i. e. extraordinary only because the Hebrews made use of Genitives instead of Adjectives they called him the Man of God which the Heathens would have called a divine or extraordinary Man So when the Prophets are said to have the Spirit of God what needs I pray of coyning an Inspiration or Revelation of divine Truth to explain this by For the Spirit of God has so many senses and those so very
obscure to us we should consult the Gods by Divination for they make known those things to them to whom they are propitious Indeed I think it but a vain attempt to go prove to you That Imagination is not the Cause of Inspiration for I do not suppose that in reality you do believe it only by this odd sort of disputing you endeavour to make our Religion stand upon as loose a bottom as you can that you may be able to overthrow it at your leasure For I dare say you do not believe a word of Revelation at all and therefore why should you trouble your self about the causes of it All that you and your Master Spinosa mean when you talk of Prophecies consisting in lively Imagination is that the inspired Prophets were only a parcel of Melancholy crack-brain'd Enthusiastical Folks that preached to the People of Judea a number of Phanatical Dreams and Visions But because there is so much pains taken in this Argument I will shew you that the Prophets or inspired Men of Scripture were not Men of this complexion as you contend for and that the Instances which you have alledged make nothing for this Opinion 1. For it does not appear that the Prophets were more Melancholy or Fanciful than other Men are Prophets not Melancholy And it is but a fancy of Mounsieur Petit de Sibyllis Lib. 1. to assert that Melancholy was the chief Disposition to make a Prophet and that Moses was an extraordinary Melancholy Man because he chose to live a solitary Life in the Wilderness feeding his Father-in-law Jethro's Sheep and because he is noted in Scripture to be slow of Speech Exod. 4.10 For these do not appear to be any Arguments at all of Melancholy For a Pastoral Life does by no means denote a Man to be of a Melancholick Complexion but contrariwise more debonair and pleasant and therefore the Shepherds in polite Nations as among the Greeks and Romans are always described as Men of great Mirth and Jollity and spending their whole Time in Pleasure and Gayety Neither did Moses leave the Aegyptian Court for a Melancholy Retirement in the Country but was forced to fly from Aegypt to avoid the Anger of the King after it was known that he had slain the Aegyptian Neither whilst he so absconded did he shew any sign of Melancholy there but only according to the Custom of his Nation and generally of those Ages chose to make his Employ the Keeping of Sheep So that David who is described in Scripture to be of a sanguine Complexion and famed for sprightful Singing and Playing may be as well taxed for Melancholy when he kept his Father's Sheep as Moses might Neither is the slowness of his Speech any Argument of his Melancholy because very sanguine Men are often troubled with that infirmity which does generally arise from some defect of the Vocal Organs in the Mouth and not from Mens Complexion and Temper of Mind And besides what is commonly translated slow of Speech is in the original Heavy or Difficult of Mouth which may be any defect of speaking which does render Men less easy to be understood by stammering or fast speaking as well as slow speaking And therefore Ezekiel 3.5 People of another Nation are said to be heavy of Language because they could not be easily understood by the Jews And Moses might as well have been very quick in his Talk and upon that account mightily given to Hesitation and then this would rather argue him to be of an eager and volatile Temper than any ways given to Melancholy But as for all the rest of the Prophets it is plain that they were no Melancholy Enthusiasts because their Discourses and Writings are perfectly different from what is usually said by that sort of Men. There is nothing comes from them but what is grave and sedate and agreeable to good sense and Reason and a well-composed mind Do we find any thing in them that is like the mad Transports of James Naylor Read but the lives of Sancta Teresa Vid. Dr. Stillingfleet's Fanaticism of the Church of Rome Dr. William's 1 Sermon 1696. and Maria Magdalena de Pazzi and see if the Prophetick Writings bear any manner of Correspondence with their foolish talk Did ever any one of the Prophets spend three Years before his Death in nothing but repeating such an odd Ejaculation as thy Will be done in Time and in Eternity as Molinos reports of Gregory of Lopez Besides their Writings are full of just reasoning and serious unaffected Relations which do by no wise agree to Enthusiastical Men. Read but the History of the Pentateuch and other Historical parts of the Bible and see if they look like the Compositions of wild Enthusiasts If Naylor had been to write the Book of Genesis he would have made an otherguise spot of work of it than Moses has He would have clogged every Relation with odd Parentheses Great is the Lord of Host Judgment Horror Desolation Damnation c. he would never have kept his brains close to the order of a just Narration but would have jumbled the Creation and the Flood Noah and Abraham and Pharaoh all together Do you think that any one of those Popish Dreamers could have made use of such solid Reasoning and such Critical Remarks upon the Old Law as are to be found in the Writings of St. Paul and the Author of the Book of the Hebrews Could they have made such wise observations upon humane Life and given such Rules of Piety and Conversation as the Books of Solomon are full of Could they have framed such admirable Forms of Devotion as the Book of Psalms All that they were able to do would be to write some mad stuff which no Man of sense would have Patience to read three Leaves of Had the Scriptures no other inspiration than the imagination of fanciful Brains there would no one part of it be coherent with another History would be clashing with History and Prophecy with Prophecy and nothing suit together with that order and symetry as now we find it Ask two craz'd Men in Bedlam to tell a story out of the Bible and then see how these Men of Imagination will correspond together talk singly with two Enthusiastical Quakers till they be warm upon the Book of the Revelations and see then how finely their Prophecies will agree I am sure they will fall infinitely short of being so uniformly of a piece as the holy Scriptures are Let the greatest Infidel of you all consider that wonderful correspondence there is between the four Evangelists among themselves where there is no difference to be found but what among Writers which had not confederated together should be and observe the same in the Books of Kings and Chronicles See how the same great Design is visible throughout the Mosaical Writings the Prophets and the Gospel How exactly does the lapse of Mankind by Adam agree with the Reparation made by Jesus Christ
might guess them to be of Jewish Original For probably when the first Jews saw the Neighbouring Gentiles worshiping the Natural Gods as Sun Moon Earth Water c. they to shew these constant mutable and visible Gods to be under the dominion of their Jehovah or Invisible one began to brag of the Miracles which they pretended Jevovah had done by triumphing over poor Nature for their dear sake for whom they were fond to believe all things were made Thus this notion got from the Jews to other Nations and so they have been coining Miracles ever since But really Sir a Miracle in your sense is Non-sense For you suppose something above the power of nature which is the greatest and highest power in the World For the power of Nature is the power of God Nature is one eternal fixt immutable Chain which is infinitely drawing out and expanding it self and not capable of the least alteration now if it was possible as you suppose by a Miracle that one Link of this should be disturbed or broken the whole frame of nature would be confounded and the whole Scheme of future Beings would be infinitely irregular Nature is the Eternal Will and Decree of God executing it self and the Will of God is his very Essence however it is firm and immutable nay impossible to be changed by the contrary Will of God himself and therefore we may be sure it is not to be interrupted by the Hocus Pocus of every Capricious Prophet And indeed Miracles are nothing else but the Dreams of blockheaded brains or a ready solution of what the uneducated Mob are wont to gape at and can give no account of so that I doubt not but that a common Almanack-maker that could calculate an Eclipse or write it out of an Ephemeris would be a most wonderful Prophet among the Indians but when these People by liberal Education come to understand the exact motions of the Heavenly Bodies the Miracle would be at an end Nay any thing that is unusual is by the vulgar reputed a Miracle because forsooth they admire it though it be never so natural but it ceases to be a Miracle when their Admiration is wrought of Thus a Comet is to them a most wonderful Miracle because it appears but now and then in a great many Years but the Sun is no Miracle at all because they see it every day not that they understand the nature of the Sun better than that of a Comet but by continually beholding it it does not make so great impression upon their fancies and therefore they cease to admire it And I doubt not but this is the true reason of most of the reputed Miracles of Scripture which are but the unusual works of nature which would necessarily have been for all any Inspired Person but only they being uncommon works of nature the vulgar wondred at them and deemed them Miracles O! but we must have a care of exploding Miracles because they do demonstrate the being of a God and very lamely too For the necessary Laws of Nature and the frame of the World are a thousand times more demonstrative of it For Miracles or Interruptions in Nature make wise Men rather doubt of it and seem rather fortuitous Blunders than the wise works or Efflux of the Deity Nay what proof is there by Miracles of any thing else or that any Doctrine came from God For the Jewish Law allows that Miracles might be done by false Prophets as appears by Deut. 13.1 If there arise among you a Prophet and giveth thee a sign or wonder and the sign or wonder come to pass whereof he spake unto thee saying Let us go after other gods c. you shall not hearken unto the Prophet for the Lord your God proveth you Nay what were the Jews the better for all the Miracles they had among them supposing they were true Moses with all his Miracles was not gone from them but a few days but they were turned as arrant Heathens as any in the World and fancying the Image of God into the figure of a Calf Nay for all Miracles and Inspirations the great Solomon himself was a down-right Epicurean and imagined all things to come by chance Eccl. 3.19 20. Cred. By your leave good Philologus You have heaped here together so many Falsities or Mistakes that I am forced to interrupt you before you go any further First notion of Miracles not from the Jews 1. I pray what reason have you to think that the notion of Miracles had its origin from among the Jews Had not the Greeks and Romans in the earliest time before they ever consorted with the Jews the same notions What more common in Homer and Virgil than strange Prodigies which are wont to amaze whole Armies till they be unridled and rendered favourable by some Augur What more usual in Greek and Latin Authors than 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Ostenta Portenta Miracula And you may see a whole Chapter of several of these Miracles collected together in Valerius Maximus and a great deal of the same in Plutarch Inquire of any Barbarous Nations in the World and you shall find that they have the same notion of Miracles though they never heard of the Jews For our notion of Miracles that it is the extraordinary power of God or a power above Nature is natural and easy to the minds of all Mankind but that a Miracle should be the necessary power of unwonted nature is only a Dream of the Hobbian Philosophy that few People who are awake think of 2. No Immutable Chain of Nature Neither is it any good Argument against Miracles that they would break your fixt and immutable Chain of Nature which you contend for For there is no proof that there is any such fixt immutable Chain for if there was there would be no such thing as Freedom either in God or Man but all things would be bound up by a rigid Fate of which every word we speak or action which we do is a sufficient Confutation Now either this fixt immutable Chain of Causes is God himself or the Creature or Work of God That it is not God himself I think I have sufficiently evinced Conference with a Theist Part I. in a former Discourse with you from the Absurdities which would follow by allowing in God all the Imbecillities Vices and Irregularities in Nature which are inconsistent with his Infinite Perfection And the Freedom of Man the Spontaneous Actions of Brutes and the Alterations and Changes in the inanimate parts of the World are sufficient Arguments against the latter Now if the World be the Creature of God as we have proved it to be then it must be subject to his Power and Providence For God's Creation supposes it subject to his power for what is not subject to the Power of God must have a greater Power of its own to resist his Power But this is impossible for the World or nature to have because all the
power which they can possibly have they had from God in their Creation Therefore God still keeps the power over them either to annihilate them to continue them in their being or to alter them To say that God has alienated this power or given them a greater is more absurd For this is in effect to say God has divested himself of his Deity and made the World God instead of himself All that can with any probability be said is That God by the frame and constitution of the World has been pleased to make it immutable and therefore this power being passed out of his hands he cannot recal it without violation to his Wisdom and a perfect Confusion to the present Scheme of Beings But to consider this a little As God by his Omnipotent Power created all things so by his Providence he governs them and takes care of them And it is equally absurd to say any thing should not be governed by Infinite Providence as to assert any thing might be created without Omnipotent Power Both these are God's Attributes and to do Violence to either of these is injurious to God Now how can it be said that God by his Providence takes care of the World when he has made such a fatal unalterable World that it is out of his power to take care of For whatsoever is governable or the subject of Government must be in ones power and alterable but God can no more govern a fatal World than a Man can govern the Winds and the Sea But to govern and take care of his Creatures is the necessary Attribute of a Wise and a Good God and therefore the World which he takes care of must be governable and consequently not Fatal Phil. But by the way Sir is it not more agreeable to the Divine Wisdom to create a World fixt and immutable than such a one whose Laws should be weak and shatter'd that they must need his Assistance every moment to preserve them and make them go according to his Will Cred. I do not deny but that the Laws of Nature are in themselves sufficiently firm and immutable God's Providence betâ—er than Fatality and that they will unchangeably preserve their Course when it does not please God they should be interrupted by his superior power But it is no reflection upon God's Wisdom that he did not make the World so immutable that his Providence could not interpose in it Nay it would have been a greater Reflection upon his Wisdom to have made such a World which it was out of his power to controul Let any one judge if a Prince does not act more prudently by granting a limited Commission to a General and Deputy to be superseded at his pleasure than by granting an absolute and unlimited one which it is our of his power to restrain Phil. This is true among Princes because they have a finite understanding and can have no knowledge of futures and so may undo themselves by not reserving a power to themselves upon some extraordinary emergency but God Almighty knows all things because he eternally decrees them and therefore nothing can happen afterwards unexpected or contrary to his foresight and therefore he might very well compose a fixt and immutable World without any prejudice to himself or reflection upon his Wisdom Cred. Though we must not consider God as a finite Prince God a wise Governour without Fatal Laws yet must consider him as a wise Governour and he cannot be a wise Governour by fatal Laws For the Laws of Virtue which are certainly God's Laws suppose Liberty but to command a thing to be freely done which cannot but be done or is impossible to be done does argue a foolish Governour and therefore God cannot do so God must therefore reserve to himself the continual management of the affairs of nature to maintain the Freedom of Man's Will and to adjust matters so as becomes a good Governour But to go on where we left of 3. Miracles not Occurrences which the Vulgar do not understand It is another of your great mistakes to assert That Miracles are only such occurrences in Nature as the vulgar do not understand For generally the Miracles which are recorded in Scripture are such as the vulgar are as proper Judges of as the greatest Philosophers Indeed if the Miracles were only some extraordinary performances in recondit Arts and Sciences then they would afford some reason for Learned Men to question their sincerity If they were the Resolution of some very difficult questions in Algebra some curious Tables of the motions of the Heavenly Bodies for many Years some wonderful performance by Mechanick Philosophy which had amuzed the common People into the Opinion that they were Miracles then something of this nature might be pretended But when all the Miracles in Scripture are such as the meanest Men might be Judges of and which they cannot be deceived in the case is quite different Any ordinary Man might be Judge whether it were not by a Miraculous power that Bitter Waters by a word of the Prophet were made sweet that an Iron Hatchet was made to swim that a Dead Child was raised to life Every ordinary Man was as good a Judge of Tast of the Heaviness of Iron and when the Soul was departed from the Body as the greatest Philosopher When our Saviour by a word spoke turned Water into Wine Cured the Blind and the Lame and raised Men from the Dead in these cases the relieved Persons and every beholder could tell that this was above the power of nature as well as those that had continually applied themselves to the study of it There is no need for an Insight in Philosophy or the Mathematicks for Men to know when they are sick or when they are well to know that though Physick does often cure diseased Men yet words naturally do not that Medicinal Operations are slow and gradual and therefore when they see Men instantaneously cured of a Disease which for a long while has baffled the power of Medicine that this must needs be by a supernatural power when they see all natural means have failed 4. And your Assertion is equally false Miracles not make Men doubt of a God wherein you lay down That Miracles do rather make Men doubt of a God than prove his being to them Now we do not say that Miracles are the best Argument to prove the Being of a God for the most excellent frame and contrivance of the World are the most obvious proof of it But Miracles are far from making any wise Man doubt of the being of a God For the wise and constant Ends and Regularities in nature are so forcible a Proof upon Men of his Being that every little disorder cannot make a wise Man doubt of it For if I behold in any work a thousand Wise Ends that I am able to discover I may very well conclude that a few other things were as wisely design'd whose ends I
of Seasons which is one of the greatest Beauties of the World and leaving the greater part of it uninhabitable is a matter which one cannot so easily comply with especially when the first Chap. of Genesis says that the Stars shall be for times and for seasons and for Days and for years And so is his exclusion from thence of the Seas Hills and Great Rivers allowing only some trilling streams from the Poles For the World without the Sea would be but a Prison where Men would be lock'd up from one another without intercourse would have no communication in Commerce Arts Invention but People must be content to live uncomfortably at home upon their own Stocks and their own Improvements Without Hills Men would be bereaved of the Ornament and Convenience of Metals of the usefulness of Minerals and Stones and Men would have wanted Money Domestick Utensils Physick and Buildings Nay without Hills to drain off the Mist and Rains and Seas to evaporate the Mist and Rains from it is unaccountable to me how there should be such a thing as a River in the World and I fancy the easy descent upon the declivity of an Oval as big as the Earth is not agreeable to the Laws of Hydrostaticks and the usual current of Waters Nor is it less difficult to me to imagine how a Crust of so vast a Thickness as that of the Earth must be should be broken by any natural force especially being supported equally by the subterraneous Waters or as for any fissures or cracks by the Heat of the Sun they are demonstrated in the hottest Countries not to go many Yards into the Ground and as for any Earth-quakes raised by evaporation of the Abyss below every Ditcher can tell that the Heat of the Sun-beams does not go so many inches under Ground as this Hypothesis must suppose Leagues and besides Earth-quakes and subterraneous Eruptions are not caused by rarefied Vapours but by the accension of sulphureous Damps which like Gun-powder rend tear and carry all before them and are often wont to break out in visible Flame Nay further those vast Fissures and ugly Gaps would have been more inconvenient and unsightful in the Antediluvian Earth than the most barren Mountains and roughest Seas are with us Neither does the usual depth of the Channels of the Sea seem to answer to the Depth of the Abyss nor the regularity of the Mountains to the accidental Fragments of such a Crust There would then appear frequently prodigious Wells and Gaps where the fragments did not exactly meet and such horrid and naked Apices which could not by this time have been any thing smoothed by Rains or covered with Grass or Herbs Nay even in the very situation of the Mountains and greatest Hills there appears wise contrivance and not accidental Fracture for to go no further than our own Country all our great Ridges of Hills in England run East and West so do the Alps in Italy and in some measure the Pyrenees so do the Mountains of the Moon in Africk and so does Mount Tauras and Caucasus And further there appears a prudent foresight in not making the ridges of Hills continued but by breaking them off into Tumuli or Heads parts of each of which lies obliquely behind another and generally admits a skew passage between For unless there was such a Ridge of Hills frequent from East to West the Vapours would all run Northward and there would be no rains in the Mediterranean Countries but the Rivers dried up and the Sea it self in time evaporated and frozen into Polar Ice And unless the Hills were divided into these oblique Breaks so as to keep back the Vapours and let in the Northern Air the World would be far more liable to Pestilences and Putrefaction than now they are and all Places as unhealthy as Scanderoon These things with the Deduction of the Americans from another race than Noah and some other matters of less consequence are my reasons why I cannot subscribe to that learned Doctor 's Solution of the Noachical Deluge and therefore must beg his leave to cast about and see if I can find a better elsewhere that I can more easily acquiesce in Dr. Woodward to whom the World is forever indebted for his curious and diligent Observations of Shells and Minerals and other subterraneous Phaenomenas has promised in his Essay a more natural Hypothesis but one of the Grounds which he designs to build his Theory upon does seem to me so precarious and impossible that I must see a great deal of good proof before I can assent to it For it does not appear to me how it is possible that the waters continuance a few months upon the face of the Earth should dissolve the Compages of the most rigid Fossils and suspend the particles of them all in the circumfused water except only conchous substances and that when the waters were withdrawn they should be let down to fix and be compacted again For if it was possible that water in so short a space could dissolve Marbles and Adamants yet methinks the same should more easily dissolve Oister-shells and Cockles which are of a more tenuous composition and more easy of Dissolution Mr. Whiston in his Theory has avoided most of the Difficulties which were chargeable upon the First and has given the World a Tast of the extraordinary Mathematical and Philological Learning he stands possest of The chief fault I find in him is that he has stuck more to Mr. Newton's than Moses his Philosophy and seems too too fond and credulous of his Ingenious Hypothesis of the Comet Nay the imputing this great Catastrophe to the necessary Laws of a Comets Trajection which the Scriptures tell us was sent by God for the Sin of Mankind seems to give too great a scope for the scoffs of Libertines and the Atheistical Fatality His Turning Days into Years and denying the Diurnal Revolution of the Earth at first is methinks a little too bold when it does not seem at all to favour his Hypothesis but only to give God six Years time to work in when the Infidels already grudge him so much at six days His fancying two Courses of Rain from the Scripture which only seems to repeat the Relation of one is not to me so satisfactory nor his Exclusion of Clouds and Mists which is agreeable indeed to the Burnettian Theory but I think not to his Neither can I conceive that the bare passing through the Tail or Atmosphere of a Comet could afford the thousand part of the Water that Theory has occasion for and he himself is forced to fetch a great part of it from the Abyss Nor is it credible that the Earth a cold Planet should go off with 750,000 Miles of the Comets Tail which could not be supported by the Comet it self but only by reason of the burning heat of the Body of it And it is a mistake I suppose to think that the round Circle about the Body of
give an account of the old Chaldean Idolaters in Abraham's and Moses his time and to be wrote as long ago as that Vid. Maimon More Nevoch Part. III. Cap. 29. Now if these Zabian Books which Maimonides and his Followers so much rely upon prove to be Forgeries then all this Zabian Hypothesis fall to the ground Now these Zabian Books which Maimonides saw were one called Haistamchus another Hattel eshmaoth or of speaking Images another called Tamtam another named Hasscharabh another of the Degrees of the Celestial Orbs and of the Ascendant Figures in each degree another Book of speaking Images a certain Book attributed to Hermes a Book wrote by Isaack the Zabian which disputes for the Law of the Zabians and his great Book of the Customs and Particularities of the Zabians Besides another Book of Agriculture Now is not this a pretty Library of Books for the Abrahamical and Mosaical Times But if they are so ancient as is pretended how came they never to be heard of but among the Jews in Aegypt or Spain about four or five hundred years ago One would have thought that some of the Writers of the Old or New Testament should have spoke of some of them or some of the Learned Fathers who understood the Orientals as St. Jerom and Origen who were so inquisitive this way methinks they should have somewhere mentioned them But to go no further some of these Books carry forgery in their very Titles The Book of speaking Images looks like the stories of the Talismans which the Arabian talks so much of about that time The Book of Celestial Orbs and Ascendants looks like a forgery about Rambam's time when the Follies of Judicial Astrology among the Arabians were at the height But Isaack the Zabian was infatuated to give himself that name pretending to be older than Abraham and yet take his Son's Name Or however his Jewish Name must needs tell all the World he was no Zabian And besides Isaack in his great Book treats of the Temples dedicated by the Zabii to Intellectual Forms whence any body would know the Book to be wrote by some one who had been bred in a School of the Peripatetick Philosophy And the Disputes in those Books about the Eternity of the World shew they were compiled by some one who had been where Aristotle's Arguments upon that subject had been bandied about I should weary you to tell you all the simple Tales which Maimonides quotes of these Books which are all composed in the very strain of the Talmud from whence any body may guess their Original They make Abraham very doughtily disputing with a great King of the Zabians That there is another God besides the Sun and that the Sun is but the Hatchet in the hand of God For which the King claps Abraham up into Prison but notwithstanding that Abraham disputes there still so that the King at last fearing lest Abraham should do mischief among his People by his subtile Disputations seizes all his Goods and banishes him to the further part of the East Now does this look like a Zabian or rather not like a Jew who had a mind to aggrandize the great Parts of his Progenitor Besides the foolishness of that Writer is betrayed by making such great Monarchies in those Ages of the World when Kingdoms were generally confined to Cities or small Provinces as appears by Abraham's fighting half a score of such Kings with 318 Men. The same Books tell you strange Tales of Adam and Seth and Noah c. which plainly shew them to be wrote by one who was acquainted with the Mosaick Genealogy That Adam was the Apostle of the Moon and exhorted Men to her Worship that Seth was a Renegado to his Father's Worship and so was Noah who condemned Image-worship That Adam went into a far Country nigh India and brought home a Tree with Flowers Leaves and Branches of Gold and likewise a Tree of Stone with the Leaves of another green Tree whose Leaves would not burn in the Fire that was so large that ten thousand Men of the bigness of Adam might shelter themselves under it and that the two Leaves which he brought with him were so large that each of them would cloath two Men. But I will tire you no longer with these insipid Talmudical Lies which methinks any body might guess a Jew to be the Author of But however what rare stuff is this to explain Scripture by One would wonder how it should come into the heads of Learned Men to think that God in framing his Sacred Laws should have any regard to such idle Tales For my part I pity them when I see them so sweating themselves in such a silly Enterprise and throwing away so much Labour and Learning to no manner of Purpose and besides the great Advantage they give to the Infidels to expose the Laws of God when they see that Christians settle them upon so slender a foundation Phil. It behoves you to be as zealous for your Religion as you can for you find we get ground upon you every day We live in a very prying Generation and 't is not laying your hand over a sore place in your Religion that will secure it now you must maintain your cause by pure dint of Argument or lose it But what say you now to your great Legislator when we shall prove that all his Celebrated Religion which he pretended to give the Jews from Heaven was only pinched from the Worship of the Heathen Aegyptians And this your own Divines are sensible of at last and by reason of the plain Evidence of the Case have given over the Cause to us For some of them have proved the Christian Religion to be all Jewish and others the Jewish Religion to be derived from the Heathen and therefore for my part I am for taking my Religion at the Fountain head and so will continue a Primitive Heathen in defiance to all innovation I have nothing to say to Christianity for the Judaical Laws are the matter now in hand and these I say were most of them the Ceremonial especially nothing but Aegyptian Rites which Moses brought over with him thence which is a considerable Argument against the Divinity of them for to be sure God Almighty would never have copied his Laws from a parcel of simple Idolaters To begin with Circumcision which is pretended to be the Characteristick of the Jews that to be sure was taken from the Aegyptians or some other Nation that Ceremony being used not only in Aegypt but in Aethiopia by the Colchi and Arabians Thus the Vrim and Thummim was enjoyned in imitation of that Locket of Jewels which hung from the Neck of the Aegyptian High-Priest mentioned by * Hist Fab. Lib. 1. c. 37. Diodorus Siculus The Linnen-Garments which the Jewish High-Priest and other inferiour ones wore were copied from the Aegyptian Priest who wore the like as Herodotus †Herod Hist Lib. 2. c. 37. and Plutarch
give Blessings to the City and themselves But then I can never assent that Mose◠took this from the Heathens It rathe◠seems to me to be a practice of the Tru◠Worshipers of God through all Age◠down from the earliest Times and f◠descended both to the Jews and Gentile◠from their common Progenitor Noah◠And it is yet more probable to assig◠these Feasts an Original in those ancien◠Times when perhaps the Lunar wa◠the only Year the Solar Motion being not yet sufficiently adjusted and then the New-Moon must with them have all the Solemnity of a New-Years Day Which Opinion will be yet more satisfactory if we consider the observation which a learned Man has made Jo. Cler. in Numb 28. That God does not bid the Jews remember to keep holy the New-Moons as he does the Sabbath but only gives them such rites to observe them with supposing they knew that they were to be observed before 7. Nor washings And as for Washings and Lustrations I cannot assent that they had by any means their Original from the Gentiles Lustration but were probably brought into use by the first Sacrificers in the Eastern Countries and might be as old as Noah or Adam For washing the Hands and the Feet was a part of the Ancient Cultus or Neatness which was a preparation which was never omitted when they enterprized any thing which required Neatness or Reverence Thus we find it used always before Meals in Abraham's time Gen. 18.3 19 2. And without doubt natural Reason would suggest that the same respect was owing to God Almighty by all who approached his Altar at a Sacrifice and was as easy and natural a Token of their Reverence they owed to him as putting off the shoes and bowing down And I doubt not but the sprinkling the People with Water mixed with the Ashes of the Sacrifice was as ancient It being used not only in the Jewish but in the Roman Sacrifices Ovid. Fast Lib. 4. For it was thought requisite that all who were present should in some measure partake of the Sacrifice therefore as I shewed you before in the beginning of this Discourse some eat of it there and others carried pieces of it home with them But in expiatory Sacrifices for the whole People where the Sacrifice would not suffice for all to eat of it it was thought sufficient to mix the Ashes of it with Water and so to sprinkle them all with it that so all might receive something of the Expiation Nor the Temple 8. After so many Ages from the first use of Temples it is a very difficult matter exactly to ascertain the Original of them 'T is true Herodotus says the Aegyptians first invented them because the Greeks derived most of their Customs from that Nation and therefore the Greek Writers seldom fetch the Original of any thing any further I am apt to think that there was not a general use of Temples till such time as Idolatry spread over the World and had dedicated the Tombs of Heroes to a superstitious use But yet long before this and as ancient as the Noachinal Times there were not wanting Temples or Houses dedicated to a Religious use For good Men in all Ages have used a Religious Worship in Publick even in Enos his time when men began to call upon the name of the Lord in publick Congregations after Mankind was considerably increased and therefore in great Cities and setled Polities the Convenience of Temples for appointed places to meet together in and to defend from the Injuries of the Weather could not be long wanting The ancientest places of Religious Worship I take to be Groves which were used by the Patriarchs and were Lawful places of Worship till such time as by reason of the Idolatrous superstition they were applied to they were taken away by the Mosaical Law So Lucian says that Woods and Mountains were first consecrated to the Gods Lib de Sacrif And Pliny speaking of Trees says Haec fuere Numinum Templa priscoque ritu simplicia rura etiam nunc Deo praecellentem arborem dicant These were formerly the Temples of the Gods and those rural places which maintain the ancient and simple Rites are wont to dedicate an extraordinary Tree to some God Thus Gen. 21.33 Abraham planted a Grove in Bersheba and called there on the name of the Lord the Everlasting God And it probably was in a Grove where Abraham designed to Sacrifice Isaac and where the Ram was caught in a Thicket by his Horns Gen. 22.13 And so probably was the place where Jacob slept Gen. 28.22 which he says shall be called the house of God Not that from hence can be concluded that there were no Temples at that time because the Patriarchs did not use them For they living a Pastoral unsettled Life could not have convenience to build them and were therefore contented with the more ancient Custom but this very last Text implies there were at that time Temples or Houses of God because Jacob Metaphorically calls that stone or Place so which is an undoubted Allusion to the Temples of those Times And in all probability Noah built a Temple presently after the Flood for the Convenience of Religious worship He is in Scripture expresly said to have built an Altar Gen. 8.20 which is directly contradictory to Herodotus who make the Aegyptians Inventors of Altars too And why he might not build a Temple as well as an Altar I see no reason Nay prophane History gives a great deal of incouragement to the Conjecture that he did For Lucian in his description of the famous Syrian Temple before mentioned says 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. Most Men say that this Temple was built by Deucalion namely that Deucalion in whose time the Deluge happened So that this ancient Tradition makes Temples as old as the Flood and does confirm that Noah was the first builder of Temples And Janus whom learned Men will have to be another name for Noah too is said by Macrobius out of Zeno primum in Italiâ templa fecisse ritus instituisse Sacrorum Lib. 1. Sat. cap. 9. He first built Temples in Italy and instituted Sacred Rites So that upon the whole I think there is vastly more reason to think that the use of a Temple among the Jews came rather down to them by Patriarchal Tradition than that it was copied from the Aegyptian Idolatry And I doubt not Other Nations have Customs as like the Jewish but that a great many usages in the Jewish Law came the same way and were taken up both by the Heathens and them from their common Progenitours and sometimes it may be by chance and ordinary convenience And I dare say a learned Man might as easily prove that the Jewish Ceremonies were derived from any other Nation where the like are to be found as the Aegyptians Vid. Ap. Lib. 3. Cap. 4. Philostratus describes the Vestment of the ancient Indian Priests just like the
upon account of our Sins by the name of Satisfaction For this is no bloody revengeful satisfaction which impotent and passionate Minds are wont to call for but only such a just debt as ought to be pay'd to the Justice of God considered as the Governour of the World I am not insensible that some Calvinistical Writers have carried this matter a little too far by leaving no room at all for the Mercy of God to exert it self in this wonderful dispensation and making the divine Justice to require a satisfaction to be made by the same specifick Infinite Punishments which we had deserved in the Sufferings of our Saviour so as to think that no satisfaction could be unless Christ actually suffered upon the Cross all the Eternal Torments of the Damned intensivè as they speak though not extensivè so that our Saviour in his Agony and Crucifixion must suffer Torments as much infinitely greater than Damned Souls as their Eternity of Suffering is longer than the hours of our Saviour's Passion But this has no foundation in Scripture and seems horrid to Christian Ears It is enough to say That the Mercy of God disposed him to accept of the Temporal Sufferings of Christ for our Sins in lieu of the Eternal punishments which we had deserved And so the infinite dignity of the person suffering was a sufficient satisfaction to the Divine Justice offended and unspeakable mercy was shewn to offending Mankind by being free from that punishment which otherways they must have undergone themselves So that Infidel and Socinian scoffers do very ill to arraign the Mercy of God and to tax him with Revenge and Implacability in demanding such a Legal satisfaction for by the same Rules they might expose all the Legislative Authority in the World when Criminals suffer by their sanctions For there is no other way to maintain the Lâ—gislatours honour and to engage Men to observe his Laws but by inflicting an Exemplary punishment on offenders for otherways their Laws would be but Cobwebs and their Authority the May-game of Licencious Transgressours But in this vicarious punishment of Christ for us God is far from shewing himself an Angry or Implacable Governour but does rather manifest the greatest Tenderness and Compassion in being willing that all the World should escape their deserved punishment and Christ only suffer for them all and in accepting the Temporal Pains of his Cross for those of Eternal Death which they had deserved AVicarious punishment not unjust Gen. 9.25 2 Sam. 21.8 2 Sam. 24.15 Jos 7.14 1 King 21.29 2. Neither is it unjust that Christ should undergo a vicarious punishment for us For that vicarious punishments are not in themselves absolutely unjust may be proved not only from Scripture Instances where Children are punished for their Parents and Subjects for their Princes but by the notion which the most civilized Nations have always had of the lawfulness of punishing sureties for the Parties they were engaged for by their denying the publick honours to the Children of notorious Offenders by Decimations in their Armies and by killing the innocent Hostages when the Articles were not performed Now if the Greeks and Romans who of all other Nations pretend to the exactest Rules of the aequum bonumque could see no obliquity in these vicarious punishments there is certainly a far less pretence of injustice to be laid to God's charge in ordering Christ to suffer for the Sins of the World Now it is impossible here that there should be any injustice or injury Here was no injustice done to Christ for he was pleased voluntarily to lay down his Life for us Neither was it any injustice done to God for God Authorized him to do it by a mutual stipulation betwixt the Father and the Son And our Saviour says expresly Joh. 10.18 I have Power or Authority 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to lay down my Life So that there is no more injustice committed in our Saviour's laying down his Life in a voluntary Suffering for us than there is in his laying it down according to Socinus his Notion for a Testimony of his Doctrine And I am sure I could prove it as equally unjust for God to put him upon preaching a Doctrine that would cost him his Life as to let him lay down his Life to save a World 3. Christ tho' God might suffer And as for your Tragical Exclamations against the Orthodox Doctrines which makes the Eternal Son of God who is himself God blessed for ever to be incarnate and to suffer for the Sins of the World this does by no means render the Deity passible a Notion which all Christians abhor But by reason of the Union of the Deity with Flesh or Humanity which was Patible Christ was then in a possibility of suffering and those sufferings which were proper only to one Nature are attributed to the whole person by reason of the intimate Union of the two Natures Nay the Scripture it self attributes the properties of the inferiour Nature viz. the Humanity to the Divinity the superior one As when it is said that we are redeemed by the blood of God we must not think as if God could bleed or die but that That Person who was both God and Man who by vertue of his Humanity was capable of suffering laid down his Life for us to redeem us Now here is nothing in this of Absurdity but only adorable mystery and admirable Wisdom which the Thoughts of Man could never have reached to and no human Counsel could ever have contrived To find out such a way to save the Souls of Lost Mankind and to secure God's honour and the Authority of his Laws Phil. I have one thing more to objects to you upon this head and that is the Christian Doctrine which you teach about Christ's Intercession and that is so odd and gross a notion as no rational Man can assent to For you make Christ continually at his Prayers in Heaven to God the Father to pardon the Sins of Mankind upon their Repentance and to bestow his Benefits upon them which God in his own nature is inclined to do without this bustle of Intercession Besides it looks like a piece of Pageantry as your Doctors explain it to have Christ continually exhibiting the wounds of his Crucified Body to the Father to move him to compassion and to put him in mind of the Sacrifice he was made for Mans Sins which it is impossible that an Omnipotent Knowledge could be unmindful of Methinks this looks like a Piece of Homerick Divinity when the Poet describes Heaven acording to all the formalities and sillinesses which are seen in human nature Cred. There is nothing in the Christian Doctrine of Intercession but what is agreeable to good sense and reason No Incongruity in the Dostrine of Christ's Intercession and all expressions which do seem to imply any such grossness in them as you imagine must only be understood Figuratively To what state of Bliss the Glorified Body of our Blessed Saviour is exalted whilst we poor Christians live in this Vale of Misery and Tears we are not able to imagine or with what divine actions his humanity is employ'd All that we can be certain of is what the Scripture tells us that we have an Advocate with the Father Jesus Christ the righteous 1 Joh. 2.1 that he is said to intercede for us at the right hand of God Rom. 8.34 that he is entered into Heaven it self now to appear in the presence of God for us Heb. 9.24 that he is a Priest continually and his blood speaks better things than that of Abel that he offers his own Sacrifice for sin for ever Heb. 9.25 and the like Now there is no need to assert that all these Expressions are taken literally when it is plain that many of them are Metaphors taken from the Levitical Law from the Piacular Sacrifices from the Intercession of the High-Priest foâ— the People from his entring into the Sanctum Sanctorum c. Now St. Paâ— makes use of these ritual Phrases the better to explain to the Jewish Converts thâ— Nature and Efficacy of Christ's Death from those outward Ceremonies of the Mosaical Law which they were well acquainted with And I doubt not but the Unbelievers themselves do think these Expressions are Metaphorical but only they have a mind to be picking up something to be flinging at Religion though they are at the same time sure 〈◊〉 will do no harm Phil. Pardon me Sir for tâ—is and I will not at present trouble you with any more Infidel Objections and fâ—â— the rest of the Time that you will honour me with your Company I will endeavour to entertain you with more inoffensive Discourse Though I caâ— not but acknowledge that I wish I waâ— fully perswaded of the Truth of youâ— Religion which seems indeed upo further consideration to be a Rational Institution and well laid together which lays down the Laws of Morality more exactly and fully than the ordinary Reason of Mankind which gives an account of the grand Periods and Revoluâ—ions of the World and God's Providential Dispensations beyond common â—hilosophy and the light of Nature and 〈◊〉 I could get rid of some other doubts which I beg you will at your leasure satisfy then I hope you will make a thorough Convert of me THE END NOta Bene That the Internal Solid which is engraved in the Plate Fig. 〈◊〉 and is supposed to move round the â—orthern part of the Globe in a Circum-Polar Line does not belong to the present Hypothesis but is a supposition â—hereby in Time may possibly be â—ade out two great Difficulties in Natural Philosophy viz. The Cause of the direction and alteration of the Magnet â—nd the Constant Parallelism of the Earths â—xis to the Poles of the World
the Comet is a watry Atmosphere much grosser than the Tail so as to afford nine times as much Water to the Earth passing through that as through the Tail for the Ring is by some curious observers thought to be only the curling and winding round of the smoke rising at first to a determinate height from all parts of the Comet and then making off to the part opposite to the Sun as you may see Fig. III. Neither do I fancy that the Earth passing even through the Atmosphere of a Comet could gain any more Water by that than any thing can do by passing through the smoke of a Chimney for both of them are but smoke only the former is the thinner as being the Fume arising from the Terreous part of the Comet by its Parelion almost vitrified and calcined the aqueous parts being first evaporated and sent off farther in the extremity of the Tail And besides I cannot conceive how the Earth should not almost have been fired and Noah and his Ark burnt to powder by the glowing heat of the melted Planet for according to my little Philosophy I should imagine it as comfortable living in a red hot Oven for an hour or two as in such a sultry Atmosphere as this And it is hard to think that this Comet should give no more disturbance in this part of the Universe but only to turn the Earths Annual Orbit from a Circle to an Ellipsis for according to Mr. Newton's Principles if the Comet had been bigger than the Earth it had carried it away to rights in its Parabola through the vast extra-Saturnine spaces and if it had been less it had been stopt by the Earth and so we had been troubled with its smoaky Tail about us ever since Or if it had been of the same bigness with the Earth and if it had well nigh the same celerity with the Earth we should have had the same troublesom Companion nevertheless or however it is ten thousand to one but it would have run away with our Moon if it had happened to have come nigher to That than the Earth does Nor does it ly easy upon my mind how such a prodigious quantity of Water that he supposes to have come from the Comet could be disposed of it is impossible it could be one quarter of it suspended in the Air or lodged in the Channels of the Seas for the Channels could bear no proportion to it Nor can I think the Seas were so much as inlarged by the Deluge but that they both before and since have been growing less and less by the prodigious quantities of Water employ'd in the production of Trees and Plants which are reduced afterward into Mold and always retain the species of Earth or ly buried in the Ground and never return to the Sea again To say nothing of how much more is employed in the concretion of Stones and conchous substances how much is licked up by the Aether out of the Atmosphere as the Earth is swiming through it how much more flies over in vapours to the Poles notwithstanding the Barricado of the Hills is frozen there and never returns again unless some few Particles it may be of them at some seasons of the Year in Winds and to pass over the observations of the Channels of great Rivers near the Sea which seem formerly to have been far broader than they are now and the many great Countries which the Sea has deserted And besides lastly in my mind it is impossible that the swelling of the Abyss should alter the figure of the Earths Crust from a Circle or Oval to a Sphaeroide that the Water had force enough to do it or that this effect could happen without shattering the whole Compages being of a brittle saxeous substance into pieces These are my reasons why I cannot acquiesce in the Hypothesis of that ingenious and learned Gentleman as exactly True Yet I think it a curious Essay to shew the Infidels not only the possibility of the Mosaick History but how finely it may be made to correspond with Philosophy and after all that 't is easier to find faults with this Theory than to compose another so good Phil. Well! Now you see how these great Wits are miserably at a loss to explain this unaccountable History and therefore it is in vain to try any further to explain that which will admit of no solution So that you had better ingenuously give up the Cause and own that it is an impossible Relation calculated only for the Illiterateness of those times to make the Jews stand in fear of the Deity when they were told that such a Tragical Punishment was inflicted by him upon Mankind for their Sins Cred. If God was the cause of the Deluge as our Religion supposes and not Natural and Mechanical Causes of their own proper Tendency then God might bring it to pass a thousand ways that we know nothing of for his Omnipotence will be able to bear up against all the pretended Impossibilities that you are able to raise against the History of the Deluge Tradition in all Nations of a Deluge 1. But if this History of the Deluge be such an impossible unaccountable History how come all the Nations of the World to have such an impossible Notion got into their Heads Though several Men might have the same unaccountable fancies yet it is hard to think that all Men should be troubled with the same Dreams And it seems to me to have more impossibility that all Nations should have Traditions of a Deluge if there had been no such thing as a Deluge than any you can shew me in the Deluge it self The Babylonians Phoenicians Assyrians in their Histories make mention of a Deluge as you may see in Eusebius and Josephus Deucalion's Flood was so famous in all the Greek and Latin Mythologists and Poets that nothing more need be said of it Martinius in his History of China relates the same of the Chinese and so does Josephus Acosta Herera and De Laet of the Americans And Lucian * De Deâ Syriâ relates the ancient Tradition they had of the Deluge at Hierapolis in Syria which is almost as exact as the Mosaick relation of it The account though it be something long is not unpleasant and deserves consideration This Race of Men which now is was not the first but that Race was quite destroyed But these are of a second Generation and from their first Progenitor Deucalion have increased to so great a Multitude as we see Now of those former Men they tell this story They being contentious did very unrighteous things they neither kept their Oaths nor were hospitable to strangers for which this great misfortune befel them All of a sudden the Earth gave out of her self a great quantity of Water there were mighty showers the Rivers overflowed the Sea was much higher by which all things became Water and all Men perished Only Deucalion was left unto the second
Generation * 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 This is agreeable to what the Scripture says of Noah his being a Preacher of Righteousness to the ungodly Antediluvians upon account of his good Counsel and Piety Now he was saved after this manner He had a great 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 i. e. an Ark or Chest into which he came with the Children and Women of his House and then entered Hogs and Horses and Lions and Serpents and all other Animals which live upon the Earth 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 all of them with their Mates And he received them all and they did him no harm for by assistance from Heaven there was a great amity between them So all sailed in this one Chest as long as the Water did predominate But these things are told in the Greek Histories of Deucalion But of those things which happened after one thing worthy of great admiration is told by the Inhabitants of Hierapolis That in their Country there was a great Gap into which all this Water sunk Vpon which Deucalion built Altars and a Temple over the Gap and consecrated it to Juno I my self saw the Gap It is very little at the bottom of the Temple as I told you Whether it was formerly bigger or no and grown narrower by Age I cannot tell but this I can tell that That which I saw was but little Now they make this the sign of the History Twice in a year Water is brought into the Temple and not only the Priests bring it but all Syria and Arabia Nay Men come even from Euphrates to the Sea all carrying Water which they first pour into the Temple Then the Water descends into the Gap and though the Gap be small yet it receives a prodigious quantity of Water And when they do this they tell that Deucalion first instituted this Custom to be a Memorial of the Calamity and his Deliverance from it This is the ancient Tradition which those about the Temple tell From which Relation it is remarkable that it was the Opinion of the People of Syria that there had been an universal Deluge that a certain Man and his Family were saved in an Ark and a Male and Female of every kind of Animals to restore again the drowned Creation and that all this vast quantity of water sunk into an Hiatus of the Earth and made the World habitable again Now I hope that Moses his Relation is not so incredible when it has the joynt Testimony of so many Nations and particularly the Heathen Syrians so exactly corresponding with it Indeed this story in Lucian is told after his way drollingly as if he did not believe it but yet there is no question to be made but that it was the relation of those People though he has a mind to expose it But I need not trouble my self to prove the Being of a Deluge by Tradition of Nations when late observations have given Demonstration of it The Beds of Shells which are often found on the Tops of the highest Mountains and petrified Bones and Teeth of Fishes which are dug up hundreds of Miles from the Sea Trees and Shrubs buried many fathoms under ground are the clearest Evidence in the World that the Waters have some time or other overflow'd the highest parts of the Earth which was the Deluge which we contend for The truth of these matters is not to be contested now by any that have but the least Insight in Experimental Philosophy Nor can it be with any degree of probability said that all these subterraneous Bodies are but only the Mimical and mock Productions of Nature for that these are real Shells the nicest Examination both of the Eye and the Microscope do attest and that they are true Bones may be experimented by burning them and then they will first turn into a Cole and afterwards into a Calx as other Bones do How far Nature may sport her self in the subterraneous World in the impression of the Images of Terrestrial Plants upon Slate and Coles I will not dispute but that it should produce True Bones and Shells which answer in all respects to those of the Genuine Animals is incredible and next to the boldness of an Epicurean Concourse for the Frame of the World 2. That the Deluge was possible I shall therefore only set my self to prove that there is Water enough in or about the Earth to drown it and to rise up to that height which Moses did report it did I confess I do no think that the Waters of the Sea are one quarter enough for such a Deluge and therefore it must be sought for elsewhere That there is a vast quantity of Waters under ground Vid. Dr. Burnet's Theor. p. 1. and an Abyss within the outward Crust of the Earth is I think evident to any who considers that in many places the Sea disgorges it self into the bowels of the Earth and does not pass off by any Out-Current The single Mediterranean Sea is a sufficient Instance of this for considering how many and some vast Rivers run into it and it having no visible outlet what should become of the Waters Nay considering that there are two Currents of the Sea set into it one at the Straits of Gibralter and another vastly strong one of the Pontus which the Ships do with difficulty bear up against it must necessarily be allowed that this Sea does empty it self by subterraneous passages into some great receptacle of Waters underneath For otherways many Ages ago the Mediterranean had over-flow'd and drowned several Countries on the adjacent Shores Nay the fathomless bottoms there which some have tried in vain with so much Cordage to reach Vid. Dr. Smith's Account to the Royal Society in the Philosophical Transactions is the most evident proof which can be of the Truth of this Assertion And the same holds likewise in the Caspian-Sea And I think there is little doubt to be made but those dangerous Gulfs and Eddies which the Sailors shun in many parts of the Ocean are but only great Holes or subterraneous Passages through which the upper Sea is gulping down into the Abyss beneath Now if there be such a great Receptacle of Waters beneath the Earth as there is no question to be made of it so many mighty Seas continually running into it then the Earth must be hollow and only a superiour Crust concluding within it an Abyss of Waters as is represented Fig. I. and Fig. II. If there be the same Quantity of Water remaining as there was at the Creation then the total Hollow of the Earth will be filled up with Water but if any part of it be lost or consolidated upon the outward superficies of the Earths Crust then by the Laws of Attraction if the Water does not exceed in Gravity the Circumambient Earth it will lye round it in the Ring P S R Q and there will be a Hollow in the Central Part u w x z. But if the Body