484 On the Origin and 



has introduced it with a fhort view of the primitive world, and his introduc- 

 tion has been divided, perhaps improperly, into eleven chapters. After de- 

 fcribing with awful fublimity the creation of this univerfe, he afTerts, that 

 one pair of every animal fpecies was called from nothing into exiflence ; that 

 the human pair were ftrong enough to be happy, but free to be miferable 3 

 that, from delufion and temerity, they difobeyed their fupreme benefactor, 

 whofe goodnefs could not pardon them confidently with his juftice ; and that 

 they received a punifhment adequate to their difobedience, but foftened by a 

 myfterious promife to be accomplifhed in their defcendants. We cannot but 

 believe, on the fuppofition jufr. made of a hiftory uninfpired, that thefe facts 

 were delivered by tradition from the firft pair, and related by Moses in a 

 figurative ftyle ; not in that fort of allegory, which rhetoricians defcribe as a 

 - mere affemblage of metaphors, but in the fymbolical mode of writing adopt- 

 ed by eaftern fages, to embellifh and dignify historical truth ; and, if this 

 were a time for fuch illuftrations, we might produce the fame account of the 

 creation and the fall, exprefied by fymbols very nearly fimilar, from the Pu- 

 rdnas themfelves, and even from the Veda, which appears to Hand next in 

 antiquity to the five books of Moses. 



The fketch of antediluvian hiftory, in which we find many dark paffages, 

 is followed by the narrative of a deluge, which deflroyed the whole race of 

 man, except four pairs ; an hiflorical fact admitted as true by every nation, 

 to whofe literature we have accefs, and particularly by the ancient Hindus, 

 who have allotted an entire Purdna to the detail of that event, which they 

 relate, as ufual, in fymbols or allegories. I concur moil heartily with thofe, 

 who infift, that, in proportion as any fact mentioned in hiftory feems repug- 

 nant to the courfe of nature, or, in one word, miraculous, the flronger evi- 

 dence is required to induce a rational belief of it j but we hear without incre- 



