ページの画像
PDF
ePub

and divide it into convenient apartments, adjusted for different purposes, and suitable to the station and allotment of the feveral persons who were to inhabit it; yet fuch architeas, when they produce their different and contradictory plans of forming the world, are by no means able to ftand the fcrutiny of common fenfe, and like that bold and prefumptuous race, who attempted to build a tower to heaven, their language, and also their ideas, have all the appearance of confufion and distraction.

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

SKETCH

SKETCH X.

HAXAEMERON nearly explained by extracts from Heathen writers.

DISPERSED in the scattered frag

thents of ancient authors, in like manner as travellers ftill trace the veftiges 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 philofophers, especially in their different fyftems of cofmogony. I have therefore felected a few examples of this nature, wonderfully correspondent with the hexaemeron

of Mofes:

GENESIS, CHAP. Ì.

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

Many and various were the opinions of ancient philofophers relative to the origin of

[blocks in formation]

the world, fome were firmly perfuaded that the world was created, whilft others remained doubtful whether it might not have co-existed with the deity, πότερον ην αιεί, γενήσεως αρχήν εχών εδίμναν, ή γεγονεν απ' αρχής τινος αρξαμενου. Let us then hear the most illuftrious of the gentile philofophers on this point. His hypothesis relative CL, and the To

to the To

OV

ΤΟ

γιγνόμενον, that which might be properly faid always to have exifted, that is the creator, and that which was brought into existence or the creature, he thus illuftrates. ἔσιν ἔν δη και εμην δοξάν πρῶτον διαιρετειν ταδε τί το όν μεν άναι, γενεσιν δ εκ εχον και τι τα γιγνόμενον μεν, ὁ δε εδέποτε το μεν δη, νοησει μετα λογος περιληπίου QZIEL κατα ταυτα ομ το δε αν δόξη μετ αισθησεως αλογου, δόξαζον, γιγνόμενον και απολλυμενον, οντως δε υδεποτε ον παν δε αυτο γεγνομε τον υπ' αίτίε τίνος εξ αναγκης γιγνεσθαι. Timæo, p. 28..

[ocr errors]

According to my opinion, it is first to be difcuffed 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 fenfibility of reason, created and perishable, and cannot properly be faid to exift. Thus Plato believed the world to have been brought into a dependent ftate of existence by a Supreme

Supreme Being, who, in the pofitive fenfe of the word, may alone be faid to exist, as he remains for ever unalterably the fame.”

"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 expreffing 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 nonfenfe, to call a world already in exiftence, 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 ftupid and illiterate as they were, might have been fuppofed capable of forming this inference, from the plain narration of Mofes taken altogether.—But excuse this digreffion, and let us proceed to trace the opinions of Gentile writers.

[blocks in formation]

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

και

πνευματώδη, η πνοην A black air

αερος ζοφώδες και χαθ θολερον ερεβώδης. 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

p 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 fentiments to those of Mofes. In Hefiod's Theogonia are found thefe expreffive words:

Εκ χαι δὲ Έρεβος τε μέλαινα τε νυξ εγένοντο,
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 darknefs."

The

« 前へ次へ »