THE LAW, has been hitherto esteemed too paradoxical; the argument of this last, concerning THE NATURE AND GENIUS OF THE GOSPEL, it is more than probable, may be condemned, and by the same men, as being too orthodoxical: for I have, long since, observed, that a religious notion is apt to change its nature in the estimation of certain divines, when it changes its advocate.

Were I concerned with none but UNBELIEVERS, in this present discourse, my only task, and a short one too, would be to prove the reasonableness of these which I hold to be the essential doctrines of Christianity; for unbelievers confess they are to be found in the gospel, but deny them to be of divine original, on account of the supposed absurdities which attend them; in the same manner that they have allowed the doctrine of a future state not to be found in the LAW; and therefore denied that dispensation to be given by God, because such an omission, they pretend, makes it unworthy of him. This, I say, had been a labour both short and easy, had I not to do, likewise, with a sort of BELIEVERS, who, as they held that the doctrine of a future state made part of the MOSAIC RELIGION, because they think the honour of the Law requires that it should be found there; so, with the same spirit, they deny that the doctrine of salvation in a Redeemer, by faith alone, makes a part of the CHRISTIAN RELIGION, because, they think, the honour of the GOSPEL requires that it should not be found there.

Enough hath been urged, in the course of the main argument, against the first of these perversities: the second will detain us longer than such plain truths seem to require: because the attempt to show the reasonableness of these which we call the essential doctrines of Christianity, will be deemed immature, till we have established very clear and circumstantial evidence of their real existence in the SYSTEM: for laboured discourses have been written to prove that FAITH ALONE includes WORKS; and that REDEMPTION, according to the scripture doctrine of it, excludes a REDEEMER.

I am therefore, first of all, to prove the EXISTENCE of these doctrines; and then, the REASONABLENESS of them. In doing which, I cannot but esteem it a favourable circumstance, if not a happy omen, that the very arguments employed to evince the existence of the doctrines, do at the same time, serve equally to show the reasonableness of them.

"A JOVE PRINCIPIUM" was the formulary of ancient piety and wisdom, which served to introduce what the sage had to deliver, of more than ordinary importance, for the instruction of mankind. But here, the very nature of our present argument will of necessity, lead us up to the FIRST CAUSE, the Author of all being.

For, without beginning at the CREATION, our view of these things would be narrow and obscure; and human judgment not sufficiently informed to enable it to conclude, with any degree of certainty, concerning a REVELATION, which is the completion of one great moral system, the principles of which were laid in the disobedience of our first parents.

In this inquiry, as in all that have gone before, our desire is, not to be carried up and down with the waves of uncertain arguments (to use the words of a great master of reason), but rather positively to lead on the minds of the simpler sort, by plain and easy degrees, till THE VERY NATURE OF THE THING ITSELF DO MAKE MANIFEST WHAT IS TRUTH.*

Moses, in the account he gives of the CREATION, expressly tells us, that MAN, or the human species, was the work of the SIXTH DAY.-" So God created man in his own image; in the image of God created he him; MALE AND FEMALE CREATED HE THEM. And God blessed THEM, and God said unto THEM, be fruitful and multiply and replenish the earth, and have dominion over-every living thing that moveth upon the earth. And God said, Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed which is upon the face of the earth, and every tree, in which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed, to you it shall be for meat.-And the evening and the morning were the SIXTH DAY." Yet, because the formation of WOMAN, from the side of MAN, was not circumstantially related till after the account of God's placing man in PARADISE,‡ both Jews and Christians § have generally concurred in one opinion, that EVE was not created till ADAM was put into possession of the garden of Eden; for they took it for granted, that Moses (though in a moral or religious history of the Creation and Fall of Man) had observed a chronologic order.

The very absurdity of this opinion renders the mistake so apparent, that the reader should not have been troubled with a formal confutation of it, did not the right stating of the fact (so inconsiderable, as on first sight it may be thought) serve to confirm a truth, which hath been generally overlooked, though of the utmost importance towards our obtaining a just idea of revealed religion; as will be seen in the course of this inquiry.

1. First, therefore, let it be observed, that Eve could not be created in the garden; since we are expressly told, that she was created along with Adam, some time before, namely, on the sixth day.-Male and female created he them.-A declaration so decisive, that the rabbins, who will needs have Eve completely formed in Paradise, gathered from the words-male and female, (used by the historian, where he speaks of the creation of the sixth day) that Adam was an androgune, a double animal, or man-woman, joined side to side; and that the oper

Hooker's Eccl. Polity. † Gen. i. 27-31.

Gen. ii. 8-21, 22.

Le Clerc says-l'écriture nous apprend formellement qu'Adam donna les noms aux animaux, entre lesquels, il n'en trouvoit aucun pour l'assister; après quoi Dieu CREA la femme de l'une des côtés de l'homme.-Sentimens de quelques Theol. p. 423.—Dr Z. Pearce, in his notes on Milton against Bentley, p. 233. And Hooker, in his Eccl. Pol. book v. sect. 73. Woman was even in her first estate framed by nature not only AFTER IN TIME, but inferior in excellencie.

This Jewish interpretation of the text appears to have been very ancient: and to have come early to the knowledge of the heathen world. Plato, in his Symposium, brings in one Aristophanes saying, that the ancient nature of man was not as we find it at present, but very different. He was originally ¿vdgóyvvos, a man-woman.—This fancy affords occasion to a pretty fable, perhaps of the philosopher's own invention, that these avdgoyúval were a kind of double animal, joined back to back. But that Jupiter, when he set them a-going 2Q

VOL. II.

ation of disjoining them was performed in the garden; where indeed Jesus tells us, not a separation, but a closer union commenced.

2. When Moses gives us the book of the generations of Adam,* he repeats what he had delivered before, that man was created male and female. Male and female created he them, AND CALLED THEIR NAME ADAM, IN THE DAY WHEN THEY WERE CREATED.† Adam was the common name for man and woman; and that name was given them when the male was created; consequently the female was created with him.

3. On the other hand, the same kind of reasoning which concludes, that the woman was not created till after the sixth day, will conclude, that the man himself was not created till after that day; for, if we suppose the history of the creation observes a strict chronologic order, he was not created till after the seventh day: the sacred writer, immediately after recording the WORK of the six days and the REST of the seventh, proceeds thus: "And the Lord formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul." Then follows the story of his being put into Paradise-of his deep sleep of the woman formed from his side. If, to this argument, so similar in all its parts, it be replied, that the direct assertion of man's creation on the sixth day is alone sufficient to prove that the after-mention of his formation from the dust of the ground is but a repetition of, with an addition to, the first account; by which alone the TIME of man's creation is to be determined: if, I say, this be replied, I shall take the benefit of the answer, in favour of what I have assigned for the time of Eve's creation, where I consider the account of her formation from the rib, just in the same light that the objector sees Adam's formation from the dust of the ground; that is to say, as a repetition only (with other circumstances added) of what the historian had before told us, of Eve's creation on the sixth day, in these words- -MALE and FEMALE created he them.§

4. But further, on the supposition of a chronological order in the relation, we shall be forced to conclude, not only that Eve was created in Paradise, but that she was not created till AFTER the command was given not to eat of the tree of knowledge of good and evil; for the command is found in the seventeenth verse of this chapter, and her formation from the rib, not till we come to the twenty-second verse: consequently, the prohibition did not bind or affect Eve. Yet she tells the serpent (and sure she did not pay him in his own coin) that this prohibition equally concerned both her and Adam.-"WE may eat of the fruit of the trees of the

in the world, slit every one of them, and then shuffling the separated parts well together, committed them to their fortune: and the employment of each of them being to find out its partner, the business of life was an incessant search of every one for its better half, in order to be rejoined in a more commodious manner. This, says the philosopher, is the true origin of love. * Gen. v. + Ver. 2.

Gen. ii. 7. Philo, misled by the common error, that a chronological order was observed in the history of the creation, concluded that the Adam, created in the image of God, Gen. i. 27, was a different man from him who was formed of the dust of the ground, Gen. ii, 7. § Gen. i. 27.

garden; but of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God hath said, Ye shall not eat of it."* And accordingly, sentence is pronounced by God upon her transgression, as well as upon s.t

5. But lastly, to cut the matter short, the historian expressly tells us, that God "finished the work of creation in six days, and rested the seventh day from all his work which he had made." Ere, therefore, must needs have been created with Adam on the SIXTH DAY.

Two points then, only remain to be considered. 1. Why Moses thought it expedient to give so very particular a relation of Eve's formation from the rib? 2. And why he did not choose to relate this circumstance in the place where he mentions her creation on the sixth day?

1. The account of Eve's formation from the rib was, without doubt, given, to inform us, that the UNION of the two sexes, for the propagation of their kind, was of a nature more noble and sublime than the consorting of other animals, who were all equally bid, like man, to increase and multiply. For as the poet says:

"Not man alone, but all that roam the wood,

Or wing the sky, or roll along the flood,

Each loves itself, but not itself alone,
Each sex desires alike.".

Thus far the common appetite impels; and man and beasts are equally subject to this second law of earthly beings. But, from henceforth, it becomes, in MAN, a very superior passion.

"The young dismiss'd, to wander earth or air;
There stops the instinct, and there ends the care:
A longer care MAN's helpless kind demands:
That longer care contracts more lasting bands:
REFLECTION, REASON still the ties improve;
At once extend the interest and the love."

Now, as REVELATION was given us (amongst other purposes more peculiar, indeed, and important) to support and strengthen the operations of reflection and the conclusions of reason, what could better serve the general design, while these were improving for the good of the offspring, than to instruct us in this closer relation between the parents, which arose from a personal union, prior to that of reciprocal fondness?

But the historian still more expressly instructs us in the end for which he recorded Eve's formation from the rib, where he makes Adam say, or rather says himself " "Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave to his wife; and they shall be one flesh:" alluding to what they originally were, before the separation of the rib.

But the allusions of inspired writers go farther (of which I have given many instances) than just to ornament the discourse with the elegance of the conceit. Their chief end is to support the particular truth there inculcated. Thus it is in the text we are now considering; it contains an instruction partly declarative, and partly perceptive. In mere animals, observant of the command to increase and multiply, the offspring, when Chap. iii. 13-16. Chap. ii. 2.

Gen. iii. 2, 3.

enabled to provide for itself, is dismissed from the parent's wing, by an instinctive provision, which equally disposeth both to a separation. But the REFLECTION and REASON bestowed upon man, which engaged the parent to a longer care, in protecting and providing for its offspring, impresseth on the offspring, in its turn, a tender sense of gratitude and love towards the parent, for the benefits received in that defenceless state; and naturally disposeth it to be attentive to the welfare of the parent, when flattered by the glorious duty of returning an obligation. This might somewhat impede or run counter to the first great command and blessing, which, in the infancy of the world, especially, required all possible encouragement: therefore, by the most divine address it is here directed, that we should suffer this tie to give place to one more important: Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave to his wife.

2. With regard to the second point-Why Moses did not choose to relate the story of the rib, where he mentions Eve's creation, on the sixth day-this may be easily understood. The story of the woman's formation from the rib is, as may be seen from the sequel of the story, of so much concern in domestic life, that we cannot conceive a fitter place for it than this, where we find it, in the entrance upon the fatal effects of our first parents' idle curiosity: from which posterity might draw a lesson of great importance, viz.—the mutual obligation incumbent on each sex, when united, to watch over the other's conduct, equally with its own; as nothing can affect the welfare of the one, in which the other will not be equally concerned; each being destined to bear, together with his own, the other's share, whether of good or evil. The account, therefore, of Eve's formation was, with much art and decorum, omitted in the place where the chronologist would expect to find it; and postponed, till it could be delivered with the advantage of being made an introduction to the history of the FALL.

The best historians have, in the same manner, created beauties from a well-contrived neglect of the order of time.

The next thing to be considered, after the Mosaic account of the CREATION of man, is, what we are told concerning his SPECIFIC Nature.

That he was of a nobler kind than any other of the animals brought, at the same time, into being, abundantly appears from the LIKENESS in which he was made; and from the PRE-EMINENCE which was given to him over the rest. "And God said, Let us make man IN OUR IMAGE, after our likeness; and let him have DOMINION over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth.” Now, in what did this image or likeness consist? Certainly not in man's having an IMMATERIAL PART, since he had this, as the best philosophy evinceth,† in common with the whole animal creation. And the historian makes the image, or likeness, to consist in something peculiar to man. Now, the only two things peculiar to him, are his + See note A, at the end of this book.

* Gen. i. 26.