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THE PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION. 



existed, must have produced, are beyond the 

 power of human imagination either to conceive 

 or to delineate. Some faint idea, however, may 

 be formed of some of these spectacles, from the 

 descriptions I have already given of the effects 

 which would inevitably follow, were the princi- 

 &amp;gt;le of benevolence to be eradicated from the mind, 

 r were any one of the precepts of the divine law 

 to be universally violated (see ch. ii. sect. iv. 

 and ch. iii. throughout.) 3. The ejects pro 

 duced by this universal depravity ar forcibly ex 

 pressed in the words, &quot; The earth was filled with 

 violence.&quot; From this declaration we are neces 

 sarily led to conceive a scene in which universal 

 anarchy and disorder, devastation and wretched 

 ness, every where prevailed the strong and 

 powerful forcibly seizing upon the wealth and 

 possessions of the weak, violating the persons of 

 the female sex, oppressing the poor, the widow, 

 and the fatherless, overturning the established 

 order of families and societies, plundering cities, 

 demolishing temples and palaces, desolating 

 fields, orchards, and vineyards, setting fire to 

 towns and villages, and carrying bloodshed and 

 devastation through every land a scene in which 

 cruelty, injustice, and outrages of every kind, 

 obscenity, revelry, riot, and debauchery of every 

 description, triumphed over every principle of 

 decency and virtue a scene in which the earth 

 was strewed with smoking ruins, with the frag 

 ments of human habitations, with mangled 

 human beings in a state of wretchedness and 

 despair, and with the unburied carcasses of the 

 slain. 



Such appears to have been the state of gene 

 ral society at the time when Noah was command 

 ed to build an ark of refuge a state of society 

 which could not have long continued, but must 

 inevitably, in the course of a few generations, 

 have thinned the race of mankind, and ultimate 

 ly have extirpated the race of Adam from the 

 earth, even although the deluge had never been 

 poured upon the world. Wickedness appears to 

 have come to such a height, that no interposition 

 of Providence could be supposed available to 

 produce a reformation among mankind, without 

 destroying their freedom of will ; and, therefore, 

 it was an act of mercy, as well as of judgment, 

 to sweep them away at once by the waters of 

 the flood, after having given them warnings of 

 their danger ; in order to convince such obstinate 

 and abandoned characters, that &quot; there is a God 

 that judgeth in the earth ;&quot; and in order to pre 

 vent the misery which would otherwise have been 

 entailed on succeeding generations. 



Not only the Sacred, but also the Pagan writ 

 ers, when alluding to the antediluvians, uniformly 

 represent them as abandoned to uncleanness, 

 and all kinds o&amp;lt;* wickedness. Eutychus, in his 

 Annals, when speaking of the posterity of Cain, 

 says, &quot; that they were guilty of all manner of 

 filthy crimes with one another, and, meeting to 



gether in public places for that purpose, two at 

 three men were concerned with the same woman 

 the ancient women, if possible, being more lustfu 

 and brutish than the young. Nay, fathers lived 

 promiscuously with their daughters, and the 

 young men with their mothers, so that neither the 

 children could distinguish their own parents, nor 

 the parents know their own children.&quot; Lucian, 

 a native of Samosata, a town situated on the Eu 

 phrates, a spot where memorials of the deluge 

 were carefully preserved, gives the following ac 

 count of the antediluvians : &quot; The present race 

 of mankind,&quot; says he, &quot; are different from those 

 who first existed ; for those of the antediluvian 

 world were all destroyed. The present world is 

 peopled from the sons of Deucalion [or Noah :] 

 having increased to so great a number from one 

 person. In respect of the former brood, they 

 were men of violence, and lawless in their deal 

 ings. They were contentious, and did many 

 unrighteous things ; they regarded not oaths, nor 

 observed the rights of hospitality, nor showed 

 mercy to those who sued for it. On this account 

 they were doomed to destruction : and for this 

 purpose there was a mighty eruption of waters 

 from the earth, attended with heavy showers 

 from above ; so that the rivers swelled, and the 

 sea overflowed, till the whole earth was covered 

 with a flood, and all flesh drowned. Deucalion 

 alone was preserved to re-people the world. This 

 mercy was shown to him on account of his piety 

 and justice. His preservation was effected in 

 this manner : He put all his family, both his 

 sons and their wives, into a vast ark which he 

 had provided, and he went into it himself. At 

 the same time animals of every species boars, 

 horses, lions, serpents, whatever kind lived upon 

 the face of the earth followed him by pairs ; all 

 which he received into the ark. and experienced 

 no evil from them ; for there prevailed a wonder 

 ful harmony throughout, by the immediate in 

 fluence of the Deity. Thus were they wafted 

 with him as long as the flood endured.&quot; 



Such is the account which Lucian gives of the 

 antediluvian world, and of the preservation of the 

 human race, as he received it from the traditions 

 of the inhabitants ofHierapolis,in Syria, where 

 the natives pretended to have very particular 

 memorials of the deluge. It corroborates the 

 facts stated in the sacred history, and bears a 

 very near resemblance to the authentic account 

 which has been transmitted to us by Moses. 

 These facts, respecting the depravity of the ante 

 diluvians, present to us a striking example, and 

 a demonstrative evidence of the dreadful effects 

 to which a general violation of the divine law 

 necessarily leads ; and of the extensive confusion 

 and misery which are inevitably produced, when 

 the law of love is set aside, and when malevo 

 lence exerts, without control, its diabolical ener 

 gies. All order in society is subverted, every 

 species of rational happiness is destroyed, and 



