THE CREATION AND FALL OF M A N. A SUPPLEMENTAL DISCOURSE TO THE PREFACE of the First Volume OF THE SACRED and PROPHANE HISTORY By SAMUEL SHUCKFORD, D. D. LONDON: Printed for J. and R. TONSON and S. Draper THE PREFACE. LTHOUGH the enfuing Treatife is not of a Size or in a Form proper for a Part of any Preface; yet I call it a Supplement to the Preface of my firft Volume of The Sacred and Prophane Hiftory of the World connected, because the Subject-Matter of it ought, and was intended to have been treated in that Preface; but was deferred, as I wifhed to fee what others, who were writing after me (a), would offer upon a Subject fo varioufly (a) The Writers of the Universal Hiftory foon after began to publish their Work; and after their Account of the Creation, gave us, as I hoped they would, what they could collect of the Fall of Man. See my Preface to Vol. I. p. 36. A 2 thought thought of by divers able and valuable Writers, rather than too haftily offer to the Public, Sentiments upon it, which I had a juft Diffidence of, as many of them seemed to be more peculiarly my own. A fuppofed Impoffibility of reconciling a literal Interpretation of Mofes's Account of the Fall of Man, to any reasonable Notions of God, and to what must in Truth be his Difpenfations towards us, (b) is, I believe, what has introduced the Notion of explaining fome Parts at leaft of his Narration into Apologue and Fable: The Shadow of Allegory feems to give us fome Appearance of knowing, what we do not plainly understand; and an unexamined Hearfay of eastern Sages, their Mythology and Literature, amuses us with a Colour of being very learned, whilst perhaps we really mistake the Rife and Defign of the very Lite (b) See Middleton's allegorical and literal Interpretation. rature rature we have Recourfe to, in endeavouring to refolve into it Mofes's Narration, which moft evidently sets before us Particulars abfolutely incapable of admitting any allegorical Interpretation whatsoever. That the great Point of which Mofes informs us, is of this Sort; abfolutely incompatible with Allegory is, I think, evident beyond Contradiction (c): And I hope, the enfuing Pages, may as clearly fhew, of every Part of what he has related upon the Subject, that taken literally to be done, as he has recorded it, the whole very pertinently agreeing to the great Defign of all fubfequent Scripture, muft fhew us, that, in all that happened unto our first Parents, nothing befel them, improper for their being unto us for Enfamples(d); and that the Account we have of them, fo far from being mythic or unintelligible, is most plainly written for (c) See p. 239. (d) 1 Cor. x. 11. A 3 our |