On the Mosaic account of the Creation. 39/ 



and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and 

 night, shall not cease. '** 



This passage clearly implies that the deluge was consider- 

 ed a curse by God himself, and therefore we see that a second 

 curse had been brought upon the earth for man's sake ; con- 

 sequently this second curse, and not that originally pronounc- 

 ed to Adam, was the cause of the deluge; and thus it is 

 evident that the exclamation of Lamech points to our re- 

 demption by Christ, as a means by which we were to be re- 

 lieved from the consequences of the fall of our first parents, 

 and had no reference to the destruction of the earth by the 

 deluge, as supposed by Mr. Penn, who has somewhat unfair- 

 ly assumed the passage, " I will not again curse the ground," 

 to signify that God had as yet only pronounced one curse 

 upon the earth, and that it contains a promise not to inflict 

 a second curse. The words of the text, however, do not 

 admit of such an assumption ; and we perceive again that the 

 desire to establish his theory of a change of place between 

 land and sea, has caused that author to overlook the true 

 import of the passage. 



The word " again" would have been equally applicable 

 had half a dozen curses been pronounced against the earth, 

 although Mr. Penn arbitrarily restricts its meaning to a second 

 curse only. 



Thus we perceive that two distinct curses have been pro- 

 nounced upon our earth, and that each, as a consequence, has 

 brought about a general revolution. Both of these are re- 

 corded in the pages of Holy Writ, and both are subsequent 

 to the operations of the creative week. The first was pro- 

 nounced at the fall of man, and immediately operated in 

 reducing the temperature of climates, by which the earth be- 

 came less fruitful, and by which numerous species of animals 

 and plants became extinct. The second was drawn down by 

 the utter depravity of the human race, about sixteen hundred 



* Genesis, chap 8, v. 21 and 22. 



3 F 



