Rib superfluous in him For to use Thomas Aquinas his comparison this Rib was like the seed of Animals and Vegetables superfluous for the Perfection of the Individuum but necessary for the Generation of the Off-spring The Rib was superfluous to Adam as a private person but necessary as the Origin from which the Woman and all Mankind was to be produced As for the Absurdity you would infer from the smallness of the quantity of matter in a Rib to make a Woman of if you will be pleased to think but of an Acorn or a Mustard-seed you will never use that Argument more Phil. But supposing Credentius we grant you all you require as to the supernatural formation of this Couple yet methinks it does not appear from your Mosaical History that these two were the primogenial Parents of the whole World I am rather apt to think they were but only the first of the Holy Race forsooth the Original Parents of the Jews who could not daign to proceed from that stock which the common herd of Mankind came from and therefore they must have an Origin more immediately from the Deity to imprint a more peculiar 〈…〉 of Dignity and Holiness up 〈…〉 Just like sâ—me of thâ— Anciâ—â—◠〈…〉 would pretend to be Bastards to soâ—â—â—â—od or other that they might ride top gallant upon the necks of other people Praadamitae Lib. 3. Cap. 4. O. R. And for my part I cannot see that the Jewish Legislator had any other design in this relation for he intimates that there were more Men in the World than the two that were thus miraculously created For he perfectly relates two Creations of Mankind one of the common Race of men within the six days Gen. 1.27 and another of the sacred Race of the Jews Gen. 2.9 Before God created Eve he said there was not a Meet help for him that is none of the wicked Ante-Adamical race were fit Wives for that Holy Man When Moses said Cain was a Tiller of the Ground he must needs suppose there were at that time all the Artificers which have relation to Tillage not only Smiths and Carpenters but Millers and Bakers So when Cain murthers his Brother Abel he entices him into the field for fear any body should see him which supposes that they dwelt in some Town where there were too many Eyes to watch him where note the word field does plainly answer to Town or City When Cain says every one that findeth me shall slay me he supposes a great number of men in the World And when God set a mark upon this Parricide for fear any one should slay him it supposes there were many men in the World which might accidentally do it Besides Moses says Cain went into the Land of Nod and married a Wife and builded a City where it must be thought there were Women for him to marry and Men to inhabit his City But Josephus is more plain for he says he struck in with a pack of rascally Robbers and became their Head Now it is plain from all this that Moses would not have it presumed that he wrote here of the primitive Parents of all the World seeing that within a few lines he le ts fall so many Expressions which denote the contrary He designed only to give an account of the Origin of the Jews as other Legislators have given out of other Countries but the later Jews out of partiality to their Country mistook his meaning as if he had delivered the History of the Universal Creation and they have lead the Christians by the Nose ever since Cred. Well I see there is nothing so plain and literal but men of a Paradoxical humour will strain to an odd meaning No Race of Men before Adam One would think the Mosaical Writings were so plain in making Adam and Eve the first of Mankind that no one could either mistake or pervert their meaning till the contrary was maintained from them by the Author of the Praeadamitae or Men before Adam And yet all that that Author could do with the assistance of a great deal of Wit and a considerable degree of Learning was only to put some odd glosses upon a few Texts of Scripture to make them look to his purpose which though they may seem a little surprising as he has dressed them out make nothing at all for him when seriously attended to nay he is so far from proving Praeadamites from Moses that not only the express Assertion of that holy Writer but the whole Tenour of his Book contradicts it It is needless to cast about for Arguments and Passages of Scripture to confute such a wild Paradox for that one passage Gen. 3.20 Must for ever overthrow it And Adam called his Wife's name Eve because she was the Mother of all Living Now if this be Scripture the Hypothesis of the Praeadamites as grounded upon Scripture is necessarily false unless the Scripture can be at the same time false and true So that I strangely wonder at the ingenious Author of that odd Book that he should take no notice of this Text that confutes his whole Hypothesis for he was a Man of too much Scripture learning to be ignorant of the place and one would think of too much sense to be guilty of so palpable a disingenuity The Arguments for the Praeadamites answered But to speak to the Arguments you have urged out of him As for the two several Creations which is pretended in the first and second of Genesis there is nothing like it Not that we need have recourse to Father Simon his Whim of the Scribe-Offices Simon Crit. His V. T. Lib. 1. Cap. 8. as if this was as he pretends a Repetition occasioned by the scatter'd or mixed Copies out of these Repositories But Moses having given an account of the six days Creation in geneâ—â—â—â—â—y in the second Chapter he reasâ—… the Argument and treats of the 〈…〉 in particular Now to conâ—… 〈…〉 of Man whom God design'd 〈…〉 of the Creation the more particular concern we must needs have to be informed of our own rise and the great importance this bears in order to a holy Life and a Religious gratitude I think this is no more than might well be expected in this Case But however to deferr a remarkable passage in History and to reassume it to speak more largely of it in another place is a thing common to all Historians But they that ground a new Creation upon that Re-assumption or Repetition may as well make as many Creations as they find the old one mentioned in the Psalms or Prophets or New Testament As for the next Argument of Adam's not finding a help meet for him that does not in the least imply that there were a number of other Men and Women in the World but it only denotes that there was as yet no Woman in the World Which is an expression not unlike that of Ovid. Sanctius his Animal mentisque capacius altae c.
it was their business to amuse the People with these dark riddles to wrap up common and ordinary Truths in this mystick dress that the People might the more admire them which otherwise they would have despised had they been delivered in the usual way and so the Priests have lost a great part of their veneration But just on the contrary Moses endeavoured to reveal all his Doctrines to the People he ordered his Books to be read in the Ears of all the People and commanded Parents to teach them to their Children so that 't is plain he did not design by Mystical senses to keep them from the commonalty but by all imaginable plainness to suit them to their Capacities Had no design like the Heathen Philosophers to serve by an Allegory Again it was the design of the Heathen Philosophers who affected Allegories most to impart their Notions only to their own Scholars who were let into the meaning of that Philosophical Cant by which means they excluded the vulgar from understanding their Tenets and kept their learning within the bounds of their own School But Moses had no such design he was not afraid of any other Philosophers setting up against him and running away with his Notions he had not a School but a whole Nation to instruct for the greatest part consisting of unlearned and ignorant People and therefore he can never be supposed to make use of such mystical Doctrines which were impossible to be understood by the illiterate Jews Nor the same design with the Allegorical Fathers And lastly for the Allegorizing Fathers they cannot be brought in to countenance this opinion for tho' they Allegorize many Historical parts of the Bible yet they leave the literal sense entire still they allow the matter of fact was true but they will have this matter of fact to have another Allegorical meaning and to be a Type of something else Now the ancient Fathers were the more inclined to this way of Interpreting Scripture not only from the practice of the Jews themselves and the Writers of the New Testament but to shew the peculiar Excellence of the Christian Religion against their Adversaries the Jews by making all the History of the Jewish Religion to be only a Type of ours Now Moses having no such reason to put a mystical meaning upon his words he must be supposed to have used them in the literal sense unless those which the Holy Ghost did design should be also Typical and those actions which were to prefigure others under the Kingdom of the Messias Phil. I find it grows late Credentius and therefore before I take my leave of you let me hear what you have to say in Defence of the Mosaick Relation of the Fall which you promised just now to do Cred. The reason why I so much admire the excellence of this Relation is because it gives an easy solution to many difficulties in nature and morality which are otherways impossible to be accounted for Moses in a few lines of this short History has made a many things plain which have racked the Brains of many Ages and which the greatest Philosophers in the World have blundered at 1. The first of these is the natural account Moses gives the best account of the Depravation of Mans Will which he gives of The Depravation of Man's Will or its Inclinableness to Evil. It will amaze one to consider what horrible work the Heathen Philosophers made in their accounts of it Some of them made this Inclinableness to Sin and all the Evil which is found in the World to come from an Infinitely-Evil Principle a sort of Anti-God eternally co-existing with the good one which was not only the Opinion of the Persian Magi and the Manichees but as Plutarch says was the Opinion of the most and wisest of the Philosophers Now this is such a foolish account of Sin that no one will presume to compare the Mosaical account with it For to assert a God or Principle infinitely Evil is contradiction in terms For as all the attributes of one God are good so the other must be Evil or just contrary or privative to the first The Miscarriages of the Philosophers in this As one is infinitely just and merciful so the other must be infinitely unrighteous and cruel as the one is infinite in Power so the other must be infinite in no Power that is must have no power at all as the one is Eternal and Necessary in his being the other must be infinite in non-existence and be impossible to be All which includes a Troop of Contradictions and Absurdities Another set of Philosophers imputed this Obliquity of the Soul to its mixture with matter But it is unintelligible how a meer mixture with matter which is neither good nor evil should make a thing originally good to be bad If they say matter was Evil in it self originally they then make God which was the Author of matter to be the Author of the Evil in it which is injurious to the Divine Holiness If they say Matter is Eternal as Plutarch and some others of them do and withal Evil in it self this is to make such another Eternal Evil Principle which includes the Absurdities likewise of the Manichean Principle A third sort attributed this Depravation to a pre-existent state of sinfulness and that the Inclinableness to Sin in this World was but an ill habit of the Soul contracted in another by a voluntary deviation from God This the later Philosophers call generally 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the moulting of the Wings of the Soul and its alienation or flight from the Deity This last Opinion I say the latter Moralists generally took up with after they had been beat off from their other accounts by the Arguments of the Christians Not that they learned this from the Mosaical account of the Lapse as some will have it in the School of Ammonius for the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 of Plato is much older but afterwards they stuck only to this Account because the Christians had made the others so apparently ridiculous But I pray what evidence had those Philosophers of such a pre-existent State They ought solidly to have proved first the State in which this pretended Lapse happened before they asserted the Lapse it self which after all is but their pure Assertion Besides these Philosophers generally make this Immersion into gross matter to be the punishment of the Soul for her Offences in her pre existing State but then such an Immersion is not a proper way of Punishment of the Soul and seems inconsistent with the Wisdom and Justice of God For all Punishments inflicted by God especially in probatory states are in order to amendment now the Soul not having Reminiscence of her former state it is impossible for her to amend the Errours of that state she cannot remember These are the accounts which the Philosophers give of the Depravation of the Soul
The difficulties of Original Sin removed This Original Sin is not any vitious Habit infused into our Souls by God for that was to make God the Author of it It is only an Obliquity of our nature and a tendency to Evil as being descended from a corrupt stock which cannot produce a pure Off-spring so that God is not to be blamed any more for suffering such an impure Progeny to be born from our first Parents than he is for letting sour Fruit arise from a Tree degenerated by our ill Husbandry or diseased Children from vitious Parents Indeed in all Ages Divines have troubled themselves to explain how this obliquity should be conveyed to all Mankind and the generality of them agree that it comes from the defect of Original Righteousness or the withdrawing of that supernatural Grace which was so plentifully bestowed upon the Primaeval Parents and they have forfeited for us so that that Bar which was to hinder us from Sin is now taken away and so we rush with precipitancy upon it that Fraenum which they call it that Bridle which was to restrain our Animal Faculties is lost by their Sin and so now like an unruly Horse they over-power and run away with our Reason The Cartesians explain its traduction by the Imagination of the Mother who as by her frights desires aversions c. imprints the same passions upon the Child she is pregnant with and makes it lyable to them afterwards so by her aversions to Good and Proneness to Evil she transmits the same Tendencies to her Foetus and by this means they will have Original Sin traduced from Eve down to us Neither of which Explications are inconsistent with the Divine Justice for God was neither obliged to continue this supernatural Grace to all Adam's Posterity nor bound to frame the nature of Mankind anew or to raise up a purer breed from the first corrupted stock 2. The Off-spring of Adam had no Title to that Immortality and other blessings which he forfeited for them God-Almighty might if he pleased have made Mankind at first mortal and subject to all the Diseases and Disorders which are the Preliminaries of Death and the Punishments of Sin for we had no right to demand from him to be created more happy than the Brutes Therefore we have no reason to repine at God's goodness for not giving us that happiness after Adam's Sin which we never had a right to before but only a possibility of having It is our Duty to thank God for what we do enjoy and not to Murmur at his goodness and tax his Justice for what we do not 3ly Our first Parents might forfeit these Blessings for us and God might justly deny them to us by reason of their Sin I do not see any great force in that Notion of Divines which makes the first Parents our Representatives and so makes us to Sin in them Interpretative as the Schools speak and therefore to deserve their Punishment For I cannot apprehend how any one should be my Representative without being delegated to personate me by my own proper and voluntary Act and I can less apprehend why God should punish me for what they did in my name which I never agreed to But it is very agreeable to the Divine Justice for God to promise several blessings to Adam and his Posterity upon his Obedience which neither he nor his Posterity should enjoy upon his Disobedience And this seems very just to us by our often doing the like in our humane affairs without being taxed with the least injustice as if I leave a Thousand Pounds a Year to such a Man and his Heirs forever conditionally that he performs such things as my Will directs but neither he nor his Posterity has a right to the Estate if that Person neglects to perform them And this vindicates sufficiently the Divine Justice in not contributing the supernatural Grace to keep Men from Sinning and in inflicting Death i. e. not conferring immortality both which were to be conferred upon Adam and his Posterity only upon condition of his Obedience 4ly Men justly deserve all the Punishments of Sin by their own proper Transgression If Men were to undergo Sickness Afflictions in this World and Eternal Damnation in the next purely upon account of Adam's Sin there would be something in your Argument but when all men commit Sin by their own proper act they can have no reason to complain for suffering that which by their actual disobedience they have merited 5ly But then lastly as for Children who die before they commit actual Sin and are not baptized It is no part of our Christian Faith to believe that they are damned For though the Scripture says expresly except one be born again of water and the Spirit he cannot enter into the Kingdom of God Joh. 3.5 yet charitable Christians in all Ages have understood this necessity to be where the Sacrament might conveniently be had and where there was no contempt of it And therefore many of the Fathers have assigned a middle place for such unbaptized Infants which was a place neither of joy nor pleasure And to this Opinion St. Austin himself was inclined Lib. 3. de Lib. Arbit Cap. 23. who was the severest of the Ancients to unbaptized Children before his Disputes with Pelagius who asserted that all Children were undoubtedly saved But however uncharitable the Papists may be to unbaptized Infants it is the charitable Opinion of most Protestants that such Children are left to the goodness of a merciful God who is not tied up to his own Ordinances who it is hoped will save them though not by an ordinary yet he may do it by an uncovenanted Grace Phil. There is another thing Credentius in this Curse which does not go down glibly with us and that is the Curse of the ground For this seems to be an action unbecoming the Deity it looks like the frantick Passion of an angry Man who when he is displeased revenges himself upon every thing that is nigh him So here Moses who had not the Philosophy to divest the Deity of Passion brings him in raving upon the loss of his two Apples and cursing them all round and that nothing might escape his fury the poor Earth too is made barren in the midst of the angry fit Such an action as this Credentius looks unbecoming a wise Man who takes care not only to avoid Passion but to distribute the punishments to the Parties offending and therefore this History must be very injurious to the supreme Wisdom of the Deity to make the Earth suffer for the Sin of Man or because God was angry with Adam to represent him wreeking his fury upon the Innocent Earth Cred. I suppose Philologus The Cursing the ground on reflection upon the Deity you do not lay much stress upon the Innocency of the Earth or the Injustice of the Curse being laid upon it For Innocency and Injustice have place only among rational or at least
sensible Creatures the ground can neither be innocent nor guilty it is neither capable of receiving a kindness nor an injury because it wants sense to perceive them Neither does it imply any absurdity that the Earth should be cursed for the Sin of Man for this is consonant to the general Opinion of Mankind in things of the like nature For the Ancient Heathen had not only their Piacula things accursed by way of transmutation of punishment and their Dies nefandi accursed times but even their Campi scelerati accursed Fields But your principal mistake is that you fancy this Curse of the Earth by God Almighty to be an effect of his Anger or a weak human-like Passion when it is only the result of a wise and equable Justice For we can never suppose so wise a Man as Moses to have such a silly notion of a Deity as this comes to to make him curse the Earth in an angry mood because Man had vexed him For his Cursing the ground was only a predent punishment of Man that had offended for it was Man that was to suffer by this Curse of it and not the ground it self The ground felt no harm by bringing forth Thorns and Thistles but Man was a sufficient sufferer by it when he by the sweat of his Brows was forced to keep it in an ordinary fertility and much inferior to its Paradisiacal Fruitfulness Phil. Such another odd kind of undecent Passion does your Jewish Legislator attribute to the Deity when he in the same fit of Anger Metamorphizes the poor Serpent because the Devil made use of his Body Besides I cannot imagine how that should be a punishment to the Serpent which seems to be natural to it O. R. p. for 't is as natural for a Serpent to creep as for a Man to walk And he might as well have made it a punishment for Man to stand bolt upright as for the Serpent to creep upon the ground But be this as it will and grant it a punishment for the Serpent to creep how did the poor Beast deserve such a Punishment How could it help or hinder the Possession of the Devil Or why should God be more angry at the Serpent so possessed than he was at the Demoniacks in the Gospel Cred. I find you are mightily concerned that no injustice should be offered to Brute Beasts when you do not care how much you do to this divine Writer and Prophet of God by exposing his Writings without any ground But I pray Nor the Curse of the Serpent what injustice was it to the Serpent to have his Form something altered from what it was before I am confident he was not able to distinguish whether it was altered or no for that would imply an intelligent nature to have contemplated his former state and to have compared it with his latter which it was impossible for the Serpent to have done But to receive a new shape which he did not know whether it was better or worse without any sensible pain or alteration to him and this too done by an Almighty Power to whom he ow'd his whole being and could claim nothing at his hands this is so far from being Injustice that it is Bounty still Besides Man being Lord of the Creation had a natural right over the Serpent and this change being design'd by God for Man's good and Instruction there was no more injustice in changing the Form of the Serpent for his sake than in suffering other Creatures to be slain for his food Nor lastly must we suppose that God Almighty was any ways offended at the Serpent because the Devil had possessed his Organs but the reason he worked this change in his Body was because it should remain as a Monument of the Unhappy Fall of God's Aversation to Sin and to deter men from the Commission of that which brought such Vengeance with it This was no proper punishment of the Serpent but only an Instructive Emblem to Mankind such as our Saviour's cursing of the Fig-Tree not to punish the Wood but to read the Disciples an Emblematical Lecture what they were to expect if they did not bring forth Fruits meet for Repentance Neither is it disagreeable to the reason of Mankind to have a proper punishment inflicted upon the Serpent for being the Instrument of this unhappy Miscarriage any more than it is when we destroy Knives and Swords and Beasts that have been Instrumental in any Man's murder As for the natural Reptility of the Serpent it is plain from this History it is false and we suppose the change to be from such a bright winged Saraph as was before mentioned to a mean creeping Snake Phil. Well! but what think you Credentius of the opening Adam's Eyes by the eating the Apple and his seeing himself naked which he knew not of before I protest this looks very strange For Blindness was but a very sorrowful Ingredient in the Paradisiacal state And if they could not have seen their Nakedness before O. R. yet methinks their other senses would have informed them Or if they had not I do not think they were any great losers by their Expulsion for their Loss of the Orchard was abundantly compensated by the use of their Eyes Cred. The phrase to open Eyes The meaning of their Eyes were opened among the Jews does not denote always a cure of Blindness as is frequent in the History of the Gospel but oftentimes Metaphorically does signify the sudden coming of any thing to a Man's knowledge by any way whatsoever Thus God is said to open the eyes of Balaam when the Angel represented himself in a bodily shape to him Num. 22.31 And thus the Disciples eyes were opened when they recollected that the person that had discoursed with them in the way to Emaus was the Lord. Not that these were blind before but because they came suddenly to know something which they were ignorant of before by some new surprizing illumination and clearing up as it were the Eyes of their understanding Thus our first Parents after the Fall presently came to find the irregular effects of their corrupted nature or what the Scripture here calls nakedness By which word according to the usual modesty of the Hebrew Tongue is understood all the irregular Appetites to Venereal pleasures which they were strangers to in their State of Innocence and began now at first to experience and were therefore asham'd of their foul Degeneracy and upon this account were desirous of Cloathing to hide those Irregularities from the sight of others Phil. But then this Explication Credentius makes this Pudor circa res venereas subsequent only to the Fall O.R. p. 43. whereas it is congenit to his nature and is not only implanted in Mankind but in other Animals which seem to have some kind of shame in such matters Cred. I think it can never be proved that irrational Creatures have any sense of shame in Venereal matters but the