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to the mountains in the vicinity of paradife, where they led a paftoral life, and for fome time adhered to the strictest rules of piety and virtue.

*

In procefs of time however, men, generally unmindful of death, began to abuse longevity; for most of them lived full nine hundred years. Moreover, the family of Seth, intermarrying with that of Cain, gave birth to a gigantic race of men, who degenerating into impious practices, broke through all the restraints of modefty and duty. The depravity and wickednefs of mankind, therefore, daily increafing, the fupreme Being determined to deftroy the inhabitants of the earth by a flood.

Amidft this general corruption, one man, however, was found to be virtuous and good. Noah, the fon of Lamech, zealous for the reformation of the world, became a preacher of righteousness to the degenerate race among whom he lived, employing both his counfel and authority to flop them in their mad career. When all his endeavours to reclaim them proved ineffectual," he departed from them," fays the celebrated Jewish hiftorian, "with his wife and children, to avoid the "violence with which they threatened him +".

Noah, having found favour with God, was inftructed by him how to fave himself in a certain large veffel, called an ark, with a few creatures of every fpecies, from the general deluge of waters which he intended to bring upon the earth.

The ftate of the Antediluvian world, feems to have been exceedingly different from what it is at prefent. The earth, in all probability, was then very populous. As mankind then lived ten times longer than now, they must confequently have doubled themfelves ten times fooner, fo that many generations, which with us are fucceffive, muft have then been contemporary. Thofe who have formed calculations of the immenfe numbers of the Antediluvians, have fuppofed, upon a moderate computation, that there were in the world, before the flood, at least one million of millions of fouls. To fuftain fuch a prodigious number of inhabitants, (befides the brute animals, which were probably as numerous in proportion) the earth must have been much more fruitful before that defolation than it has been fince.

*This may refer either to their ftature and ftrength, or to their enormous impiety.

+ Jofephus.

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Of all the strange matters, which occur in that period, there is nothing that looks fo like a prodigy, as the longevity of those men, who first inhabited the earth; nor is any event fo apt to infpire us with wonder as the difproportion between their lives and ours. Few now arrive at 80 or 100 years; whereas, from the joint teftimony of facred and prophane writers, men before the flood, frequently lived to near 1000. Some perfons, thinking it incredible, that the human frame fhould ever have endured to fo great a period, fuppofe that the years mentioned by Mofes, were equal only to our months But this fuppofition is replete with abfurdities. The lives of the Antediluvians would have been fhorter than our own the space betwixt the creation and the flood would not amount to 130 years; and children would have been born to perfons only fix years of age. It is therefore evident, that the Antediluvian years were folar years, of much the fame length as those we now compute by.

Various caufes are affigned for this longevity. Some think it owing to their fobriety, and the fimplicity of their diet. Others attribute it to the excellency of their fruits, herbs, and plants, and to their abftinence from flesh. A learned phyfician, however, has advanced a contrary opinion, and thinks their longevity was owing to their eating raw flesh, the moft nourishing parts of which are loft by cooking. Some think the ftrength of their ftamina, or original principles, was the cause of their longevity; but the fons of Noah, who had all the ftrength of an Antediluvian conftitution, fell far fhort of the age of their forefathers. The ingenious Dr. Burnet has therefore fuppofed, that the chief caufe of this longevity was the falubrity of the Antediluvian air, and the undisturbed tranquillity of the atmofphere, which, after the flood, becoming turbulent and unwholefome, gradually undermined the human frame, till it foon fixed in the common ftandard, which has continued ever fince.

A view of the religion, politics, arts, and fciences of the Antediluvians would be equally entertaining and inftructive; but we can only make a few conjectures about them. Their religious rites were few and fimple. They adored the great Creator, invoked him by prayer, and offered facrifices to him. They had a divine promife concerning the Saviour of mankind; and Adam was prefent among them for 900 years, to inftruct them in all he knew of the creation of the world.

There is not the leaft mention of their politics and civil conftitutions. The patriarchal form of government, per

haps,

haps, was fet afide, when tyranny and oppreffion began to take place. After the union of the two great families of Seth and Cain, it is likely there was fcarce any diftinction of civil focieties, all mankind making but one great nation, divided into feveral diforderly affociations, and living in a kind of anarchy, which probably contributed to their general corruption, as they ufed, in all probability, but one common language. For this reafon chiefly, a plurality of tongues feems afterwards to have been miraculously introduced, to divide mankind into diftinct focieties, and thereby prevent any fuch total depravation for the future.

What proficiency they made in literature, or any of the arts, is very uncertain. It is even doubtful whether letters were known before the flood; and the books attributed to Adam, Seth, or Enoch, are forgeries too grofs to deserve any confideration. Mufic and the art of working metals, feem only to have been found out by the feventh generation of Cain's line. The inventors of arts, however, not being limited by a thort life, had time enough before them to carry things to perfection.

CHA P. II,

On the probable Caufes of the Deluge. On the Difperfion of Mankind, and the Origin of Civil Society.

WH

HILE the profligate Antediluvians were living in fecurity and fenfuality, they were fuddenly deftroyed by an immenfe deluge of water, which covered the face of the whole earth, in the year of the world 1656. Every living creature perifhed, except Noah and thofe that were with him in the ark. After the waters had continued feveral months upon the earth, they began to abate, part of them being exhaled by the heat of the fun, accompanied with a drying wind, and part retiring into the cavities of the earth. When they were entirely diffipated, the earth appeared again in that form in which we now fee it; and, as foon as the land was dry and habitable, Noah turned out all kinds of creatures into the filent, wild, and defolate earth, there to propagate their fpecies; whilft himself and family the only remains of the great fhipwreck of human kind, betook themfelves to the cultivating and repeopling of the earth; to form focieties, and to establish laws and government.

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Some have imagined, from the difficulties that occur in the Mofaic account, that Noah's flood was not universal, but confined to Judea and the adjacent regions, or at most to the continent of Afia. They think, that a small part only of the primitive earth was inhabited by mankind; and therefore it would be fufficient if that part was overflowed.

The fcripture, however, exprefly tells us, "that all the "high hills under the whole heaven, were covered, and all "flesh died that moved upon the earth." Befides, if the deluge was not univerfal, there was no occafion for the ark, as Noah and his family, as well as the beafts might have removed to another country. Over the whole globe too, there are ftrong evidences of an univerfal devastation by water; for fhells and skeletons of fea-fish are found on the highest mountains. Crocodiles, natives of the Nile, have been difcovered in the heart of Germany; and the fkeletons of elephants in the midst of England.

The quantity of water required to overflow the earth, to the height mentioned by Mofes, is fo immenfe, that it is not eafy to fay, whence it came, or whither it went. Some are of opinion, that the fea and rain were rarefied. Others think that the centre of the earth was changed, and placed nearer to our continent, fo that the fubterranean abyfs, or vast collection of waters in the bowels of the earth, would be forced out by the preffure of the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, and would then cover all our hemifphere.

Dr. Burnet, in his Theory, conceives the Antediluvian world to have been of a fmooth and even furface, without mountains and without a fea; and that the waters belonging to it were wholly inclosed under its upper cruft, which formed a ftupendous vault around them. He fuppofes, that this upper cruft, by the continual heat of the fun, for several centuries, without any alleviation by a diversity of seasons, became dry and full of chinks, fo that the fun's rays, penetrating to the internal abyfs, rarefied the waters, which, by their dilation, at length broke the upper furface.

The

frame of the earth being thus broken in pieces, thofe great portions, or fragments, into which it was divided, fell down into the abyfs, in different poftures. The old world, at one fhock, being thus diffolved, a new one was formed out of its ruins, divided into fea and land, with iflands, mountains, and hills. The greatest part of the abyfs, he conjectures, conftituted our prefent ocean, and thus the reft filled up the cavities of the earth.

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This hypothefis, however, is liable to many objections. It feems difficult to conceive how the fun's heat could be fo intense as to caufe great cracks in the earth; or how the waters, were it poffible they could be rarefied, fhould have fufficient force to break through an arch of folid matter, lying upon them, feveral hundred miles thick.

According to the theory of the learned Whifton, the deluge was owing to the near approach of a Comet, which, in its defcent towards the fun, involved the earth in its tail and atmosphere for a confiderable time. He fuppofes, that by attraction, it would raise immenfe tides in the fea, and make the internal waters force their way through the earth, which, with the great quantity of its watery atmosphere, intercepted by the earth, he thinks would be fufficient to raife the water, to the perpendicular height of three miles, which would exceed the highest mountains. The greateft part of the waters, he fuppofes, afterwards defcended by the breaches and fiffures made in the earth at the eruption of the abyfs, and that another part of it formed the great ocean, there being only finall feas and lakes before the flood.

The earth, however, by paffing through the atmosphere of a comet, ran a greater rifk of a conflagration than a deluge.

It seems neceffary, therefore, on this occafion, to have recourfe to the divine affiftance. The fubterraneous abyfs, which is alluded to in many places of fcripture, may be easily fuppofed to contain water much more than fufficient to complete the deluge. But, as no natural caufe can be affigned to draw it from thence, the effect may, not unphilofophically, be attributed to the divine power. And we may obferve, that though Mofes makes mention of two natural caufes, yet he introduces the fupreme Being as fuperintending them; "Behold I, even I, do bring a flood of waters upon the "earth."

With regard to the ark, in which Noah and his family were preferved from this deftruction, we might have prefumed, if the facred writings had not informed us, that it was of more than human contrivance. The length of it was 300 cubits, the breadth 50, and the height 30. Its form was an oblong fquare, with a flat bottom and floped roof, raised a cubit in the middle. It confifted of three ftories, each of which, abating the thickness of the floors, might be about eighteen feet high. About the beginning of the laft century, Peter Janfon, a Dutch merchant, caufed a fhip to be built for himfelf, ac

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