difquifition and abftruse research. If the obfervation of Montefquieu be just, that providence preferves all things by the fame laws they were created, we may yet expect to understand how the earth rofe out of Chaos into that beautiful form and order which it poffeffes.

But this is a fond idea, the warmeft of all vain imaginations. Canft thou by fearching find out the Almighty to perfection? "Tis true that the illuftrious Newton has wonderfully discovered certain laws which nature obferves uniformly in her operations, and which feem to extend through all creation, to produce that beautiful order observed by the heavenly bodies in their revolutions; yet thefe laws will not explain the original formation of a single fly, or of an embrio seed. No, thofe laws which created worlds out of nothing, are to be refolved into that infinite power and wisdom which are inexplicable. All who have attempted to explain the laws of creation, however learned, have appeared in a ridiculous light; men, who perhaps might fhew their genius in planning and building a royal palace with elegance and convenience, for in a work of this kind, they could sketch out the line, measure the length and breadth,

and

and divide it into convenient apartments, adjusted for different purposes, and suitable to the ftation and allotment of the feverat perfors 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 ftand the fcrutiny of common sense, and like that bold and prefumptuous race, who attempted to build a tower to heaven, their language, and alfo their ideas, have all the appearance of confusion and distraction.

Will then, any person 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, fuch knowledge being too wonderful for us, and more than we could well bear.

SKETCH

X.

HAXAEMERON nearly explained by extracts from Heathen writers.

DISPER

ISPERSED in the fcattered fraga ments 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 correfpondent with the hexaemeron of Moses.

GENESIS, CHAP. Í.

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

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

the world, fome were firmly perfuaded that the world was created, whilst others remained doubtful whether it might not have co-existed with the deity, πότερον ην αιεί, γένησεως αρχήν έχων εδεμιαν, ή γεγονεν απ' αρχής τινος αρξαμενο. Let us then hear the most illuftrious of the gentile philofophers on this point. His hypothefis relative all, and the T

ον

to the To
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. τι ἂν δη και αμην δοξάν πρῶτον
διαιρετέον ταδε τί το ὂν μεν άνει, γενέσιν δ' εκ έχον και τι το
συγνόμενον μεν, ὁ δὲ εδέποτε το μεν δη, νοήσει μετα λογο περιληπίον,
αίες κατά ταύτα οι το δε αν δόξη μετ' αισθησεως αλόγου, δόξαςον,
δε αυτο γεγνομε
γιγνόμενον και απολλυμενον, οντως δε έδέποτε ον παν

τον υπ' αιτία τίνος εξ αναγκης γιγνεσθαι. Timaeo, p. 28.

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 reafon and understanding, unchangeably, and always the fame; the other endowed with opinion, with a fenfibility of reafon, 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 exift, as he remains for ever unalterably the fame."

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 expreffing my furprize when Í find learned commentators, as if they were in pain for the character of Mofes, endedvouring to prove, that he taught, that the world was made out of nothing from the words Tobu Bobu, which they tranflate, and the earth was without form, and void, and nothing-which is rendering the words downright nonfenfe, 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 ftupid and illiterate as they were, might have been fuppofed capable of forming this inference, from the plain narration of Moses taken altogether.-But excufe this digreffion, and let us proceed to trace the opinions of Gentile writers.