THE TWO DIVISIONS OF THE BIBLE.

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sured, that we shall not only be put in possession of truth, but of the sole truth of matters; the only object concerning which we need be solicitous will be attained. The whole duty of man, as well as the will and nature of God, as far as it is discoverable to beings of such finite faculties, will be here disclosed and made known, and here alone. Our own nature, origin, condition, and destiny, as well as the being and attributes of God; the whole compass of our duties, prospects, hopes, and expectations, and of God's gracious purposes towards us: in short, the things of heaven, and things of earth, will, in these two revelations, be rendered intelligible, just as far as our limited faculties will admit, or our present state and circumstances require.

"It is of great consequence also to consider, that of the two parts of which the Bible may be said to consist, one is undoubtedly less ancient than the other. The less ancient, however, refers us continually to the former, as that with which it is immediately connected ; on which it is as it were founded and built. JESUS, the subject of all the books in the New Testament, declared to his disciples, that Moses and the Jewish prophets wrote of him, and bade them therefore search those Scriptures, (the only ones then extant) to see if he spake true. If this connection then cannot be traced, much of the authority of the New Testament will of course fail; but since it has been concluded to be completely and entirely confirmed, by those who have duly considered the matter, and Christianity has, in consequence of this, prevailed, since its first annunciation, over a very large portion of the globe, and particularly in the parts of it most civilized and

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OF THE FIRST AND SECOND ADAM.

comprehensive view of revelation which concerns us, as rational and responsible beings, to begin with Christianity. That is, we may very properly commence the study of the SACRED VOLUME, upon Christian principles, in order the better to ascertain in our perusal of it, whether the two parts do not in every particular tend to illustrate and confirm each other.

"The Scriptures of the New Testament speak of a first and second ADAM. The one sent into the world to rectify and repair, what would else, through the fall and transgression of the other, have infallibly operated to the total loss and ruin of mankind: but the second Adam is very much nearer to our own times than the first. We may be expected, therefore, to have greater opportunities of ascertaining the facts related of the second Adam than of the first: especially, as the times in which the second appeared, were much more favourable to the due authentication of such facts, as far as human testimony can reach, than we can conceive to have been the case, at the period in which the first Adam had his abode upon earth. It is upon such grounds as these then, that we conceive it to be reasonable to make Christianity the ground-work of our researches; because, if we believe the New Testament to the extent the authors of its several parts require, we must proceed to the study of the Old Testament as of a book undoubtedly inspired and dictated by God; for as such the writers of the New Testament regard it, and refer to it. They evidently speak of the first Adam as the head and representative of the whole human race; and this, expressly as he is described to be in the writings of Moses. The writers of the New Testament, therefore, who all lived and wrote less than nineteen centuries ago, undoubtedly

LOW ERA OF THE CREATION OF MAN.

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gave credit to the account of Moses, as contained in the Book of Genesis, and which conveys to us the history of the creation of the earth and of man; that event reaching back to an extent of nearly six thousand years from the present time at the lowest computation, and to a period of four thousand years at the least, preceding the existence of the writers themselves.

"Seventeen or eighteen hundred years ago, therefore, we may be sure that certain writers, many of whom laid down their lives in testimony of the facts they related, and the doctrines they promulgated, fully and entirely believed the Mosaic account of things to be true; that Adam was the first of the human race, as Moses has described. Whatever records or monuments of remoter ages may be supposed to have perished in the course of time, of this we must be certain, that seventeen or eighteen hundred years ago, many more of such records must have been extant than is the case at present, and that it must have been proportionably the more difficult to impose upon mankind any false era for the commencement of things, but especially so low a one as that assigned by the sacred writers."

It is the low era fixed upon for the commencement of all human concerns on which I shall have principally to insist; and I consider it to be of more importance at the present time than ever it was before, because the history of our race is so interwoven with what is commonly called the Mosaic creation, contained in the first two chapters of Genesis, as well as with the catastrophe of the Deluge (chapters vii. and viii.), that any conclusions drawn with regard to ter

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GEOLOGICAL COMPUTATIONS.

sistent with, those records which have been so long accounted sacred, cannot fail to startle and alarm the minds of zealous and sincere believers, as bearing hard upon the very foundations of Christianity. For as in Christ those only are to be made alive, who died in Adam, it is natural to ask, what will become of this sublime doctrine, if the Mosaic account of Adam be not strictly true?

It cannot be doubted but that in the first two chapters of the Book of Genesis, the creation of the earth and of man appear to be represented as so nearly coincident, that any discoveries indicative of a very great disparity in this respect; any researches into the interior of the globe, that may seem to lead to a conviction, that the one is very much older than the other, must seem to shake the general credibility of the whole; and yet, it is now become quite notorious that certain geologists of great name and reputation, and not hastily to be numbered among unbelievers, think they have discovered in the body of the earth, undeniable proofs, not of any trifling difference or disparity, but of a succession of physical operations extending backwards (to use their own expression) through “countless ages," and still proceeding in such a series of decay and renovation, as to be in the way of producing continents after continents, and seas after seas, without any assignable check or terminationsurely this is enough to excite a strong desire in the breasts of all unphilosophical believers, to be informed, how far this may reasonably be judged to affect the general credibility of the author of the Pentateuch? For my own part, I very much hope it may excite such a desire, as it seems to afford us an excellent opportunity of bringing the veracity and credibility of

NECESSITY OF REFERRING TO ANCIENT WRITERS. 23

Moses, to another, and, perhaps, a much surer test: I mean the test, not of physics, but of uncontradicted history.-Physics was the test, that arch infidel Voltaire would have adopted to the exclusion of all others; and there is no doubt but that he thought Christianity could no more stand his test than Mahometanism, to which he refers. In another part of my work (if it please God that I should live to finish it), I shall have further occasion for showing, how careful we ought to be, not to allow ourselves to be induced to abandon History, as an essential part of Religion.

I shall willingly then for the present pass over what is said about the earth in the beginning of Genesis, and keep to the history of man; endeavouring to establish the truth of all that is written about the first Adam, by a reference to what we know concern. ing the second Adam. This will be to bring things nearer to our own time, and we may discuss the point with geologists afterwards.

I am sorry I cannot pursue my argument without some appearance of pedantry, in being obliged to refer to authors comparatively very ancient, whose writings never can have been very generally read, and are now every day less likely to be read at all, owing to the multiplicity of more attractive works daily issuing from the press, in all parts of Europe, and in the current languages of the day; but, as a very learned living prelate has observed, "The present age does not so much require to be set free from error, as to be reminded of the truth 1" And the truth is to be sought for in things past, and in ancient writings, as reasonably, and perhaps very much more