120 On Optic Vision, 



had been communicated by the Creator to some person or per- 

 sons before the age of Moses. Mr. F. E s here calls for direct 



proof: " There is in Scripture," he says, " neither hint nor tface 

 of any revelation concerning the creation anterior to Moses." 

 Thus, by throwing the onus prolandi, in this negative shape, 

 upon the shoulders of those wiio believe a revelation to have been 

 given ante'ior to the time of Moses, he imagines that he has 

 relieved himself of some portion of the difficulties under which 

 he labours in his attempt at proving the Genesis a fiction. But, 

 in the present case, he demands a species of evidence \\-liich the 

 subject by no means requires. The question is, which of these 

 propositions is the more probable, — that different nations have 

 without a revelation obtained the notion that the world had a 

 leginning, or that they derived this notion from some common 

 source, which Moses did not think necessary to mention ? Stu- 

 pidity itself would blush to hesitate between the two proposi- 

 tions. 



I now remark that the reasoning of F. E s upon revela- 

 tion and inspiration is altogether fallacious. He argues as if 

 tlie terms really were synonymous and equivalent. Luke was 

 inspired to write the Acts of the Apostles; and, like Moses with 

 respect to the Pentateuch, he was an eye-witness to many of the 

 facts which he relates ; but there was no revelation made to him. 

 I could perhaps conceive, in one sense or another, what a per- 

 son meant, should he tell me of a circuitous revelation ; but 

 when he talks of" a circuitous inspiration," I candidly confess, 

 I do not comprehend what he intends by the terms. The sacred 

 history informs us that " Moses was learned in all the learning 

 of Egypt ;" and therefore it may fairly be supposed that he was 

 conversant with the Egyptian and other heathen Cosmogonies ; 

 and he certainly was also acquainted with the account of creation 

 current among his own people. Now whether we suppose the 

 revelation, by which this subject became vulgar, to have been 

 made to Noah, Enoch, or Adam, though the tradition might not 

 have been greatly corrupted or altered among the worshippers 

 of the true God ; yet we can scarcely suppose it to have been 

 transmitted through so many ages, to the time of Moses, entirelv 

 perfect. If Moses then, under these circumstances, had chosen 

 of his own accord to have written a Cosmogony, he was perfectly 

 at liberty to have made what use he pleased of the knowledge 

 he had acquired: — he might have related the Egyptian, or any 

 other Cosmogony, in preference to the rest ; or he might have 

 recited the Hebrew Cosmogony with its partial errors; or he 

 might have borrowed from all, and composed " a beautiful my- 

 thos," by an ingenious arrangement of truth and fable. But 

 when he was inspired by the Creator, to record the origin of the 



world 



