CHAP, III. The Flood and Noah's Ark. Noah's Family and Coverant with God. Noah's Sin, and the Curse of Canaan. S. What did God promise Noah when he declared this resolution? T. That since he and his family had walked before him in righteousness, and time holiness, he would establish his covenant with him, preserve him and his family, and a!l such creatures as were useful and necessary for the preservation of their species, and for sacrifice, from the universal destruction. S. What means the word covcnant in this place ? T. Here it means no more than a simple and gracious promise. S. How did God preserve Noah, his family, and the other creatures? T. By the means of an ark of wood, which God had ordered Noah to build for that purpose. Into which they had no sooner entered, and provisions for them all were secured with themselves, but all the fountains of the great deep were broken up, and it rained upon the earth forty days and forty nights, till at length the high hills were covered, and all flesh perished in the water; but the ark floated, and pre served Noah, and all those with him, alive. S. Was this flood universa!? T. Yes. For the expressions ef scripture are as full as possible. And had not all the earth been covere! with water, it is probable that Gol would not have ordered Noah to build an ark; but only to remo with his family into some high e part which was not to be drowned. Nay, let the mountains and the earth themselves be appealed to for the truth of an universal deluge. Examine the highest eminences of the globe, and they, with one accord, do all produce the spoils of the ocean, which could never ha; come upon them, unless on such an occasion. The shells and s'eieto s of sea-fish, and rea-monsters of all kinds, which are found upon fl. Alps, and on every momain in the known world, conspire to form one grand universal proof, that they all had the sea spread over their highest summits: in the vallics of Ireland, we have found the Moosedeer of America buried; the Elephants, who are natives of Asia and Africa, have been dug up in th midst of England; the Egyptian Crocodiles have been discovered in the bowels of the German soil; as several American shell-fish, and the entire skeletons of whales; not to mention such trees and plants of various kinds, which are not know. to grow in any region under heaven, have been found in dive.s other countries. Which should be cons sidered as an incontestible proof of the veracity of Moses's account of the universal flood. Besides, all nations have believed it: it is men tioned in those fragments, which are still preserved by credible authors of ancient histories: it makes part of the traditions of the Chinese and Americans., obey his directions in this particular. S. How could this ark hold every thing that was to be put into it? T. According to the dimensions of the ark, it contained 1,580,750 cubical feet. Now if one considers that there are not one hundred sorts of beasts, nor two hundred of S. Of what make and fashion birds; and that even out of this was this ark? T. It was not a house, neither was it made like our modern built ships; but it rather resembled a large chest, made of gopher or cedar wood, or as some probable conjecture of cypress, pitched within and without, in length 150 yards, in realth 25, and in height 15. Its oof was sloping, and it consisted of three stories or decks; of which the first and second might serve for the beasts and provisions, and the third apartment for to lodge Noah and his family, and to keep the birds; and no doubt but every one of these stories were divided into proper stalls and apartments, with a range of windows above, that went round to give light to the whole vessel, and a door in the side thereof. All which he prepared by faith, according as God had appointed him, and finished his work seven days before the rain began to fall, in the land of Chaldæa, in the territories of Babylon. S. How could Noah bring all sorts of birds and beasts into the ark? T. Doubtless God, who at first gave Adam power and authority over all other creatures, at this time by an extraordinary disposition of his providence, enabled Noah to small number, we must except all animals that are of equivocal generation, all that are accustomed to live in water, and all that by changing their climate, change their coferent creatures, when in reality lour and size, and so pass for difdifficulty to find a place for every they are the same, there can be no creature that Noah carried with him into the ark; especially when it may be observed, that all creatures of the serpentine kind, and other vermin, only took up the bottom of the ark or other spaces, without any particular cells appointed for them. S. When did the flood begin? T. In the second mouth, on the 17th day of the month. S. How did their second month compute with our months? T. The Hebrew year was either ecclesiastical or civil: the ecclesiastical, by which their feasts and fasts were regulated, began in lieve, was not known before the March, and for that reason, I beinstitution of the law of Moses: the civil, by which political affairs were ordered, and which must have been of the same standing with political secieties, began in September; that the 17th day of the 2d month falls in with the beginning f our November. And there is all the reason in the world to approve of this computation, the autumn being the best time for Noah to gather in the fruits, and to lay them up in the ark. So that the flood came in with the winter, and was by degrees dried up in the following summer. S. How old was Noah, when he entered the ark? T. He was six hundred years old. And in a few days after, the whole face of nature was changed by the heavy rains that fell from the heavens, and by the sea, that overspread the earth with a dreadful inundation; which, continuing for the space of forty days and forty nights, destroyed every living creature, as the Lord had said; and the ark floated upon the waters, which never ceased rising till they were 22 feet and an half above the tops of the highest mountains. S. How long did the flood continue, and Noah remain in the ark? T. The flood continued in its heighth 150 days: but Noah did not go out of the ark, till he was convinced by an olive-branch, which a dove, whom he had sent out, brought back in her mouth, that the waters were abated; por then, till he was commanded by God to come out of the ark, and to bring with him his family, and every living creature that had been preserved with him: The whole time of their confinement making a solar year. S. In what part of the earth did the ark rest after the waters ceased? On the mountains of Ararat, about the middle of Armenia, near the river of Araxes, or Aras. By which mountains we are to understand the highest mountains of Taurus, which overlook the plains of Ararat in Armenia. Now this mount Ararat is by the natives called Masis, and sometimes Mesesousar. It stands about 12 leagues to the S. E. of the city Erivan, 4 from Araxes, and 10 to the N. W. of Nakscivan, encompassed with cral little hills; though it is fixed in the midst of one of the greatest plains on the earth, and entirely separated from the other mountains in Armenia, it rises in the form of a sugar loaf, and is one of the highest mountains in the world. No the bottom, and towards the middle living animals are to be seen but at of the mountain. They who opcupy the lowest region, are poor shepherds and scabby flocks; the second region is possessed hy crows and tygers; the rest of it, being one half, has been covered with snow ever since the ark rested there; and these snows are covered half the year with very thick clouds, S. Were there any mountains before the deluge? T. Yes. For we have the testiclaring her own pre-existence, says, mony of divine wisdom, who de the beginning, orever the earth was I was set up from everlasting, from made; when there was no depth, I no fountains abounding with water, was brought forth; when there were before the mountains were settler, before the hills, was I brought forth.* and mountains fills the mind with And besides, the view of those hills juster notions of God's tremendous Majesty, than a plain surface com do; and they yield food for severeě animals formed by nature to live up S. Why should God rather destroy the world by this method, than by any other means? T. We are not to ask God the reasons of his actions. He is the judge of all the earth, and he always decrees righteous judgment. But we may account for this method, from a survey of his infinite mercy, which appears in the excrtions of his justice: for, suppose God had destroyed all flesh by plague or famine, such a terrible execution must have covered the towns and fields with dead bodies; and who can conceive the horror such a scene would have struck upon righteous Noah and his family? How could they have lived amongst such numbers of noisome carcasses; But God shat Noah and his family in the ark, that they should not see the terrors and consternations of sinners when the flood came; and before he would permit them to go out, he had washed the dead bodies, and the remains of their habitations, into the caverns and holes of the earth so that when Noah came forth of the ark, there was nothing left to disturb his senses, but enough to fill his imagination with a just abhorrence of the wickedness of the ungodly, and a due contemplation that God, when he enters into judgment with the wicked, will not pity, nor spare, nor have mercy, but destroy, and cause his fury to res upon them, until his anger be accomplished. S. I am not yet fully satisfied, in regard to the quantity of water that overflowed, and drowned the earth: whence could it come? T. This question has been answered several ways. Some have supposed that God created waters on purpose, and annihilated them after his vengeance was over past: some have supposed a condensation of the air, or a rarefaction of the waters: others ascribe it to a divine power, which by some natural agent, might so depress the surface of the ocean, as to force up the water of the abyss through certain channels and openings: others would have us believe that the deluge was occasioned by the dissolution of the primeval earth, dissolved by the fermentation of the inclosed waters, and the fermentation caused by the continued intense heat of the sun : another endeavours to solve the whole matter, and to supply a sufficiency of water from the trajection of a comet: and others ascribe it to subterraneous fire and water coming rarc in contact, which produced a S. Who were they of his family, that entered with Noah into the ark? T. They were his wife, his three sons, and his sons, wives, S. What were the names of his sons? and what am I to remark concerning them? T. Shem, Ham, and Japheth. Shem the second son and his elder brother Japheth, being told by Ham that their father's nakedness was uncovered within his tent, took a garment, and laying it upon both their shoulders, went backward and covered their father when drunken with wine; so that they saw not their father's nakedness. This engaged the love of their father, who being wakened out of sleep and informed of what his sons had done, blessed these two, and cursed his son Ham, in the person of his son Ca naan, to be a servant of servants Shem had five sons, of whom hereafter, who became the founder of so many nations. And Moses has been more particular and accurate in deducing his pedigree, than of the other sons; because it more properly served to introduce the history and laws of the Jewish nation. Ham, who is otherwise called Cham, the youngest son, was cursed by his father, as I told you before. He was the father of a numerous |