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DISC. he fhot forth. Thus was he fair in his

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greatnefs, and in the length of his "branches: for his root was by great wa-"ters. The cedars in the Garden of God "could not hide him, nor was any tree in "the Garden of God like unto him in his

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beauty. I have made him fair by the "multitude of his branches; fo that all "the trees of Eden, that were in the Gar"den of God, envied him." After having related the fall of his towering and exten-. five empire, the prophet makes the application to the king of Egypt: "To whom "art thou thus like, in glory and great"nefs, among the trees of Eden? Yet "fhalt thou be brought down with the "trees of Eden, to the lower parts of the "earth." In another place we find the following ironical addrefs to the King of Tyre, as having attempted to rival the true God, and the glories of his Paradife. "Thou "fealeft up the fum full of wisdom, and

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perfect in beauty. Thou hast been in "Eden in, the Garden of God; every pre"cious stone was thy covering-thou wast

8 Ezek. xxxi. 3, &c.

66 upon

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upon the holy mountain of God-thou DISC. "waft perfect in thy ways, from the day "that thou waft created, until iniquity "was found in thee-Thine heart was " lifted up because of thy beauty, thou haft corrupted thy wisdom, by reafon of thy brightness: I will caft thee to the ground; "I will lay thee before kings, that they may behold thee".”

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Traditions and traces of this original Garden seem to have gone forth into all the earth, though, as an elegant writer justly observes, "they must be expected to "have grown fainter and fainter in every "transfufion from one people to another. "The Romans probably derived their no"tion of it, expreffed in the gardens of "Flora, from the Greeks, among whom "this idea feems to have been fhadowed "out under the ftories of the gardens of "Alcinous. In Africa they had the gar"dens of the Hefperides, and in the east "thofe of Adonis. The term of Horti "Adonidis was used by the ancients to fig

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DISC. " nify gardens of pleasure, which answers ftrangely to the very name of Paradise, "or the Garden of Eden." In the writings of the poets, who have lavished all the powers of genius and the charms of verfe upon the subject, these and the like counterfeit or fecondary paradifes, the copies of the true, will live and bloom, fo long as the world itself fhall endure.

It hath been already fuggefted, that a Garden is calculated no less for the improvement of the mind, than for the exercife of the body; and we cannot doubt, but that peculiar care would be taken of that most important end, in the difpofition of the Garden of Eden.

From the fituation and circumftances of Adam, it should not feem probable, that an all-wife and all-gracious Creator would leave him in that state of ignorance in which, fince the days of Fauftus Socinus, it hath been but too much the fashion to

ISPENCE'S Polymetis, cited in Letters on Mythology, P. 126. represent

represent him. For may we not argue in DISC. fome fuch manner as the following?

If fo fair a world was created for the use and fatisfaction of his terreftrial part, formed out of the duft, can we imagine, that the better part, the immortal spirit from above, the inhabitant of the fleshly tabernacle prepared for it, should be left in a ftate of deftitution and defolation, unprovided with wifdom, it's food, it's fupport, and it's delight?

If men, fince the fall, and labouring under all the disadvantages occafioned by it, have been enabled to make those attainments in knowlege which they certainly have made; and we find the understanding of a Solomon replete with every species of wisdom, human and divine; can we conceive ignorance to have been the characteristic of the first formed father of the world, created with all his powers and faculties complete and perfect, and living under the immediate tuition of God?

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DISC.

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upon the trial of Adam, as the head and representative of mankind, their fate, as well as his own, both in time and eternity, was to depend, can we ever think, his Maker would expofe him to fuch a trial, with a mind not better informed than that of a child or an idiot?

If redemption restored what was loft by the fall, and the fecond Adam was a counterpart of the first, muft we not conceive Adam to have once been what man is, when restored by grace to "the image of ." God in wisdom and holinefs?" And does not he, who degrades the character of the Son of God in Paradise, degrade in proportion the character of that other Son of God, and the redemption and restoration which are by him?

Our first father differed from all his defcendants in this particular, that he was not to attain the ufe of his understanding by a gradual procefs from infancy, but

Luke iii. 38-"Which was the fon of Adam, which "was the Son of God."

Came

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