FACTS

1363. [Gen. i. 1.] In reading this sacred Book, you cannot proceed immediately "to any direct perception, or simple apprehension, or (internal) consciousness, or purely spiritual ideas of things divine and supernatural." Look for them in things natural and human. Observe here below, "how our little system is an epitome of the universe, and man a remote image, and picture in miniature, of the Divine Being himself. How it is by looking into this world, and more particularly into ourselves, that we can have any conception at all of things divine and supernatural; which are there alone to be discerned, and that by reflection only aud similitude but as truly and clearly, as the substance of a human face is by a clear and lively resemblance of it in a glass. How the knowledge by that image only, is true, and real, and useful; though a man had no power to turn' about (Rev. i. 12.) and view the substance itself: And so likewise, how our knowledge of sun, moon and stars, appearing to us in the water only, would be thus far and sufficiently well grounded; though our eyes were naturally so prone and fixed to this little globe of ours, that we could not look upward for the least direct and immediate view of them. How this is a sure and solid foundation of all the divine knowledge we have; and how therefore it is here the mind begins to exert the noblest and most exalted of all its operations, in substituting its conceptions of things natural and human, for representing the correspondent, but undiscerned, substance and reality of things divine and supernatural: And in carrying on

an unerring parity of reason between them through all its own conceptions and notions, together with all its regular judgments, and positions, and deductions concerning them; without glancing at the real nature or true properties of what must be allowed entirely unknown, otherwise than by this semblance and analogy. Thus all nature within our direct view, becomes a large and spacious field of divine as well as of human knowledge, abundantly sufficient for all the purposes of religion in this life: And they who are not content with this kind and degree of it, must in effect renounce all religion as well natural as revealed.

1364.

Bp. BROWNE'S Analogy, p. 205.

It is a pious labor, says St. JEROM, but it is likewise a dangerous presumption, that he who should be judged by every one, should take upon him to be every one's judge, to change the language of the Antients, and bring back the world, already grown old, to the first lessons of children. For what person is there, whether ignorant or knowing, that, taking this Book and finding it to differ from that which he had previously learnt, will not instantly cry out,The author is guilty of forgery and sacrilege, in having dared to add to the Sacred Writings, or to change and correct them.' (Pref. in Evan. ad Damas.)—The Hebrews call the Bible, MIKRA, what is to be read.

See Essay for a New Translation, p. 36.

Mr. Psalmanczar wrote the account of the Jews, in the first volume of the Universal History. (Dr. A: CLARKE.) — Yes, but he wrote also, the History of the Celtes, and Scythians, of the Greeks at the early periods, the antient Spaniards, Gauls, and Germans. REES.

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The

1365. In the first Chapter of Genesis, we have an account of the first Creation, produced out of the Infinite Human; in which all things are good. In the Second Chapter, after man was created, we have another account of plants, trees, animals &c., of a middle nature; produced out of the combined spirit of Infinite and finite man. Tree of Life was of the first creation; the tree of knowledge was of the second of course, the former represented what was purely of God; the latter, what was of God and man, when spiritually joined. In the second creation, God infused a right spirit into man's inverted soul; and in the third, shewed man's proper nature, by creating it specifically into unclean, savage, and abominable creatures. From the spirit, so infused, arose Paradise: from man's inverted nature, Hades went up as a misty darkness. The former was to be the immediate receptacle of good souls; the latter, of evil ones. The First SHECHINAH, having effected this double work of redemption and salvation, as he stood manifested on our earth, proceeds by an emanation from Himself, to elevate a portion of the good spirit of Paradise to be a heaven in the angelic sun; and to cast down of the evil spirit of Hades to be a hell for the final reception of wicked souls, beneath the earth and the natural sun, in the lower hemisphere of the solar system. As the spirit of water, Oxygen and Hydrogen, can enter and assume water from its natural state, constituting thereby vital atmospheric air; so the INFINITE HUMAN SPIRIT, the DIVINE LOVE and WISDOM, penetrated and raised around our earth a glorified spirit from man; which being thus vivified, the males of the human race were to receive it back immediately from the Lord; and the females, mediately, through the men. But, to obtain this accommodated spirit of life, sacramentally received by eating the fruit and drinking the juice of the Palm, the tree of lives, the first-born men, the priests of the Church, were to conjoin themselves in affection and thought primarily with the Lord; whilst the chief-women and their congregations, in thought and affection, were to be subordinately conjoined with all that was good and true from the Lord in their preachers and husbands. It was thus in the First Church, that the man, Adam, by the inhaled breath of lives, becaine a living soul; aud that the interior of Eve, his wife, was actually, though spiritually, taken out of man. Man being in this way only a receiver, had indeed through Paradise, and through Hades, the knowledge of good and evil; but was not to be acknowledged, or even thought of in sacred worship, as the source of either. Among the Gentiles however, whose sacramental tree, it seems, was the vine; human teachers and rulers were set up in the Church as Gods, knowing good and evil from themselves, independently of any superior source. By adopting this idea, and its concomitant rituals, the Adamic Church fell into that idolatrous worship of man, which has continued ever since, to be more or less, the direct counterpart of all true religion.

CHRIST (who, in every degree of the Divine Glory, is the express or refracted Image of the Father's Person) as to his appearance in the first of the seven Spirits of God, is called the Beginning of the creation of God. Rev. iii. 14.

Rudiment: Eth (Hebr.) is left untranslated in the common English Bible, and in all the Antient Versions, except the Syriac, where it is rendered esse, an essential principle, or first rudiment. It would be highly absurd to suppose this important word to be here a mere particle, as the only appropriate particle ka, which could be wanted, immediately follows as prefix to the qualified term shamim, heavens ; which with the prefix ha in hashamim signifies these (visible) heavens, or the skies.

Verse 2.- Empty and void] as a mere rudimental sketch, unfilled up with minerals, and unadorned with either vegetable or animal production. See No. 25.

The word bara (Hebr.) is never used but for the simple creation or production of matter in atoms. The atoms of the heavens were created, and in the same act concreted into small grains called spirit, v. 2. (HUTCHINSON'S Principia, part ii. p. 5.) — All the atoms of matter were Ibid. p. 174.

created at first.

Verse 2.] The word tehom, as it appears by usage, expresses the condition of the primitive matter of our terraqueous globe, as being then in atoms or small grains, loose and apparently fluid. (Ibid. part ii. p. 118.) —HUTCHINSON represents what he calls the spirit as coming in at the pores of the solar orb in dark rays, and going out as light in the bright rays. The Hebrew word, he says, which is mostly used for light, and still sounds Aer, is used for what is just issuing from the fire, and is still acting in imitation of fire. This Aer, he argues, divided into atoms at the sun's centre, is called fire; further dispersed, he supposes it is flame; further removed, if not interrupted by the way, nor too far dispersed, he calls it light, and also, if it pervade opaque bodies and be not too far dispersed, heat. (Ibid. pp. 392, 393.) — How is this? and why? Spirit From Amos and Esdras (as quoted in the margin of the text) it appears this spirit (the wind or air) was created, and its place is described as upon and around the earth. Ibid. p. 12. Verse 3.] This light is afterwards described to be on the surface of the waters (or watery atmospheres). (Ibid.) — By expansion the motion of fire and light, at the orb of the sun, moves the light in all the way hither, and that here, instantaneously. Ibid. p. 223. Verse 4] Darkness was the first descriptive name of (the opaque) airs. (Ibid. p 7.) Then light will be the circumambient solar fluid above and around those airs; a distinct, but visible fluid when put in motion by the active rays of the sun. The airs without motion are

1381.

HUTCHINSON.

Vau, in Hebrew, signifies such a conjunction as the sense directs: as, so, therefore, and, that, but, or, when, yet, then, because, now, though, &c. The Hebrew has few prepositions: its verbs mostly carry in themselves the prepositions that determine the case of the noun.

Ibid. See also BOYLE, on the style of Scripture, p. 64. Verse 2.] The copulative vau is often, very often, a mere expletive, which in a translation is better omitted. Dr. GEDDES.

1382. [Gen. i. 3.] The copies of the Hebrew Bible kept in rolls in the Jewish synagogues, are to this day, without points yet the English Bible, generally speaking, is translation of the Massoretic reading. Bib. Research. Introduc. p. 88.

1383. [Gen. i. 2. Darkness.] “A dark Rembrant shade.” MACKENZIE.

Place around you at high mid-day, a tent, composed of dense and opaque materials: the temporary darkness which, by shutting yourself up in it, you will procure, may give you an idea of the darkness that now covered the earth, which did not antecedently subsist, but was the consequence of other things. See Basil. Hexqhem. homil. 2. pp. 23, 24. edit. Paris, 1618.

1384. [Gen. i. 2, 5.] SANCONIATHON, the great Phenician philosopher, supposed by some cotemporary with Gideon, gives a correspondent account of the creation. He says in the beginning there was Chaos erebodes (Grk.), which in the Phenician tongue, is Chauth Ereb, that is, night or evening darkness. From the commixture of the Spirit with Chaos, he adds, was produced Mot, which some call ilus (Grk.), that is, matter or watery moisture. Out of this, he shews, was produced the whole seed of the creation, and the generation of the whole.

1385.

SHERLEY, on the Origin of Bodies, &c. p. 113.

According to HALHED'S preface to his Code of Gentoo Laws, pp. 104, 5, there are reckoned among the Bramins seven Deeps: the first is, in length and breadth or in diameter, eight hundred thousand miles nearly; the second, twice as much; the third, four times as much; the fourth, eight times as much; the fifth, sixteen times as much; the sixth, thirty-two times as much; and the seventh sixty-four times as much.