and divide it into convenient apartments, adjusted for different purposes, and suitable to the station and allotment of the several perfons who were to inhabit it; yet fuch architects, when they produce their different and contradictory plans of forming the world, are by no means able to stand the scrutiny of common sense, and like that bold and presumptuous race, who attempted to build a tower to heaven, their language, and also their ideas, have all the appearance of confusion and distraction.

Will then, any person in his right senses, either attempt to investigate the laws of creation, or because he cannot find them out, prefume to censure them, as they are probably beyond our infinite capacities, fuch knowledge being too wonderful for us, and more than we could well bear.

SKETCH

SKETCH

Χ.

HAXAEMERON nearly explained by extracts from Heathen writers.

DISPERSED in the scattered frag

ments of ancient authors, in like manner as travellers still trace the vestiges of art in heaps of ruin, and the shattered monuments of antiquity; we can evidently trace, and clearly difcern the effects of primæval tradition in the writings of heathen poets and philosophers, especially in their different systems of cosmogony. I have therefore selected a few examples of this nature, wonderfully correfpondent with the hexaemeron of Mofes:

GENESIS, CHAP. I.

" In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth."

Many and various were the opinions of

ancient philosophers relative to the origin of

the world, some were firmly perfuaded that the world was created, whilst others remained doubtful whether it might not have co-existed with the deity, ποτερον ην αει, γένησεως αρχην εχων υδεμίαν, ἡ γεγονεν απ αρχης τινος αρξαμενου. Let us then hear the most illustrious of the gentile philosophers on this point. His hypothesis relative

to the

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and the

TO

γιγνομενον, that which might be properly faid always to have existed, that is the creator, and that which was brought into existence or the creature, he thus illustrates. ἐσιν ῶν δη καὶ εμην δοξάν πρῶτον διαιρετεον ταδε τί το ὀν μεν άνει, γενεσιν δε εκ έχον και τι το γιγνομενον μεν, ὁ δε εδέποτε το μεν δη, νοησει μετα λογες περιληπιονς αιει κατα ταυτα ον το δε αυ δοξη μετ αισθήσεως αλογου, διξαςον, γιγνομενον και απολλυμενον, οντως δε εδέποτε ον· παν δε αυτο γεγνομετον υπ' αίτίε τίνος εξ αναγκης γιγνεσθαι. Timæo, p. 28..

According to my opinion, it is first to be discussed what that is, which always existed without any generation, and what that is which has been made and has no felf-existence. The one is comprised in reason and understanding, unchangeably, and always the fame; the other endowed with opinion, with a sensibility of reason, created and perishable, and cannot properly be faid to exist. Thus Plato believed the world to have been brought into a dependent state of existence by a Supreme

Supreme Being, who, in the positive sense of the word, may alone be said to exist, as he remains for ever unalterably the same."

2. " And the earth was without form, and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep.'

" And the fpirit of God moved upon the face of the waters."

I cannot help expressing my furprize when I find learned commentators, as if they were in pain for the character of Mofes, endeavouring to prove, that he taught, that the world was made out of nothing from the words Tobu Bohu, which they translate, and the earth was without form, and void, and nothing-which is rendering the words downright nonsense, to call a world already in existence, nothing. If we acknowledge God to have been maker of all things, it follows as a natural deduction, that creation was formed out of nothing; the Hebrews, as stupid and illiterate as they were, might have been supposed capable of forming this inference, from the plain narration of Mofes taken altogether. But excuse this digression, and let us proceed to trace the opinions of Gentile writers.

Philo Biblius, whether from Sanchoniatho, or from his acquaintance with Phoenician literature, has delivered to us their genuine dogmata, almost in the fame words with Mofes, την των όλων αρκην that the beginning of all things were αερά ζοφώδη και

και

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πνευματωδη, η πνοην αερος ζοφώδες χαθ θολερον ερεβώδης. A black air agitated with wind, or, a blast of dark air, and a turbid and dark chaos, and thus it was a received opinion, "that the earth was without form and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep," and Sanchoniatho says, that all things were reduced into order by a wind called Kolpia," which word is evidently derived from the Hebrew קול ףי יה col. pi jah. that is the voice of the mouth of the Lord; and thus the spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.Grotius points out in the writings of heathens fimilar sentiments to those of Moses. In Hefiod's Theogonia are found these expref five words:

Εκ χαθ δε Ερεβος τε μελαινα τε νυξ εγενοντο,

Erebus and night from chaos rose.

3. " And God faid, let there be light, and there was light, and God faw the light that it was good, and God divided the light from the darkness."

The