9 



to have been perverted, in the early part of this interval ; for 

 many of those who had seen and had been instructed by the 

 sons of Noah, must have been then alive ; and therefore 

 what happened to the Israelites after their introduction into 

 Hie land of Canaan, must have happened in this case also, 

 namely, that as long as those who had survived Joshua, and 

 known the works that God had done for Israel, lived, the 

 Israelitish nation continued faithful ; but after that generation 

 became extinct, the next forsook the religion of their fathers; 

 and worshipped Baalim, Judges ii. 10. So here, when the' 

 generation which had conversed with the sons of Noah had 

 passed away, the succeeding generation bethought themselves 

 of new objects of worship, at least in Mesopotamia, for we 

 find polytheism to have prevailed in it long before Abraham 

 was ordered to leave it ; since we read, Joshua xxiv. that 

 T/iare, the father of Abraham, and Nachor his grandfather, had 

 worshipped other Gods. Shem witnessed the flood, but died 

 twenty-eight years before the dispersion ; his son Arpha. tad 

 was born two years after the flood, and outlived the dis- 

 persion many years. Peleg, one of his descendants, was born 

 in the year in which the dispersion happened, and lived 

 with his ancestor Arphaxad, thirty-six years; from him 

 he must have learned all the antediluvian transactions, and 

 the strict unity of the Supreme Being. It is not therefore 

 probable, that during his life, that is, about 330 years 

 after the dispersion, the primitive religion suffered any alte- 

 ration. Accordingly it is to his grandson Senig, that the 



^ gUilt 



