ANTIENT METAPHYSICS. Book III. 



CHAP. VII. 



The Slueliioti of the Origin of Evil, ftated by Plato but 7iot folved. — 

 This defeat fupplied by our Religion. — // arofe from our Pride and 

 Self-conceit. — Mofcs's account of the Fall of Man Allegorical^ and 

 fo underfood by Jofephus. — Reminifcence, as maintained by Plato, 

 agreeable to the doElrine of an Antecedent State: — Such a State 

 inferred from the imperfeSlion of Man in his Natural State, com- 

 p.ired with the Natural State of other Animals. — Ncceffary, that 

 of a whole Species with imperfeSl Intelle&s, and pojj'cjfed of free 

 \\\\\, fomefjould fall. — 1 hat the cafe of Man on this Earth. 



THE firft thing to be inquired into in the folution of this grand 

 queftion concerning the Origin of Evil, is, How this event, of 

 the Fall of Man, from his more perfedl ftate into the flate we now 

 fee him in, happened ? This is a queftion which Plato, who main- 

 tains that man fell, has not anfwered, nor attempted to anfwer. And 

 there, I think, his philofophy is fo far deficient : But this defeft is 

 fupplied by our Religion, which informs us that it was not indul- 

 gence in fenfual pleafures that made man degenerate into his prefent 

 ftate, but pride and an opinion that his intelligence was much fupe- 

 rior to what it truly was, and that it made him like to God, know- 

 ing good and evil. This account of the Fall is given by Mofes in 

 the way of allegory or parable, the moft antient way, of inftruct- 

 ing men, and indeed the only way in which fuch a people as the 

 Jews, for v*hom Mofes wrote, couid have been inftruded : For 



fuch 



