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till Adam was put in possession of the garden of Eden _ ; and 
he refers to Le Clerc and Hooker, while he refutes this doc- 
trine in favour of one of his own. He considers the represen- 
tation in the second chapter to be intended to separate man, 
even his creation, from all other beings, and to take him, it 
we may so say, (at least in that civilized state m which we 
find him in Paradise), out of the ranks of inferior beings : and 
St. Augustine says the same. Warburton affirms that we may 
gather also from the Bible representation, as a whole, that 
human beings were not, immediately on their creation, put 
into Paradise, but had a state and condition on earth preced- 
ing, what he and the Fathers generally term, that Super- 
natural establishment.” — W e are bound to no such exposi- 
tions, and by no means acquiesce in them ; neither is it easy 
to adopt St. Augustine’s words as to the first sta^e of human 
creation when he says, in the Gloss, « quamvis mu her nondum 
esset a viro divisa, sed materialiter praiseminata. (But see 
Peyreyrius, in the same sense, who wrote m lb55. bee also 
Mdhler’s Syrnbolih ; and Bellarmine, there referred to.) 
The conclusion, then, to which as Christians we are bound, 
forecloses no inquiries as to the human state previous to that 
time when our first parent was placed by God m a cultiva-ea 
home. That state, whatever it be thought,— which Warburton 
describes as “not only prior to but different from his state 
in Paradise,”— may not hinder our faith in the teachings of 
Scripture as to our descent from “ man, the image and glory o. 
God,” placed by His favour in a home of noble existence from 
which by transgression he fell. Supposing certain clam to 
extraordinary, yet human-looking, antiquity to be maX goo , 
Sey could breach his “ visible character,” not his Divinely 
breathed “Life.” But there really are no signs, -no traces 
found of a creature of our entire outward form, even in the 
newest tertiary beds (except those nearest to ^ 
face) Not that any such creature even then would be, neCe 
sarily, what we are" The great assertion of G— ™ 
vet unshaken, that our first parent was placed by his Cieator 
L Eden, with mental, moral, and physical powers amp y 
developed-able at once not only to move and breathe to 
sleep and wake, but to work, and think, and speak, and know. 
XVIII. Such, then, are the Principles of the Christian 
Philosophy, briefly stated, and vindicated agams 
J^o, oP o P u°; exceptions which might prima facie seem to 
FoSour ei e - lie against them. But we do not intend to have 
ceptions also, them sheltered from the strictest examina ion 
reason, or spared from comparison with all the facts of nature, 
