For let us suppose that Brute, or whosoever else that first peopled this island, had arrived upon the river Thames, and calling the island after his name Britannia, it might be said that Thames or Tems was a river that watered Britannia : and when afterwards, in process of time, the same Brute had also discovered and conquered Scotland, which he also entitled by the same name of Britannia, after-agès might conclude that Scotland was no part thereof, because the river Tems is not found therein. Or let us suppose that Europa, the daughter of the king of Tyre in Phoenicia, gave the name to Europe, according to Herodotus, lib. 1. and 4, and that the first discoverers thereof arrived in the mouth of some river in Thrace, which then watered as much of Europe as he first discovered; shall we in like sort resolve, that France, Spain, and Italy, &c. are no part of Europe, because that river is not found in them, or any of them? In like manner was it said by Moses, in his description of Gehon, that it watered the whole land of Chus; but not the whole land which the Chusites should or might in future time conquer, people, and inhabit, seeing in after-ages they became lords of many nations, and they might, perchance, have been masters, in time, (as the Saracens which came of them were,) of a great part of the world. For though the Babylonian empire, which took beginning in Nimrod the son of Chus, consisted at the first but of four cities, to wit, Babel, Erech, Acad, and Chalne, yet we find, that his successors within a few years after commanded all the whole world in effect and the fame of Babel consumed the memory of Chusea. For of this tower of confusion did all that land take the name of Babylonia: and the greatness of that empire, founded by Nimrod a younger son, obscured the name and nation of his father Cush in those parts, until they crept further off, and in places not yet entitled, and further from the Babylonian empire, where the Chusites retained their names, which also they fastened to the soil and territory by themselves afterwards inhabited and held. And we may not think that Chus, or any of his, could in haste creep through those desert regions, which the length of 130 years

after the flood had, as it were, fortified with thickets, and permitted every bush and brier, reed and tree, to join themselves, as it were, into one main body and forest. For if we look with judgment and reason into the world's plantation, we shall find that every family seated themselves as near together as possibly they could; and though necessity enforced them, after they grew full of people, to spread themselves, and creep out of Shinar or Babylonia, yet did they it with this advice, as that they might at all times resort, and succour one another by river, the fields being then (without all doubt) impassable, So Nimrod, who out of wit and strength usurped dominion over the rest, sat down in the very confluence of all those rivers which watered paradise: for thither it was to which the greatest troops of Noah's children repaired; and from the same place whence mankind had his beginning, from thence had they again their increase. The first father of men, Adam, had therein his former habitation. The second father of mankind, Noah, began from thence his dispersion.

Now as Nimrod the youngest, yet strongest, made his choice of Babel, as aforesaid, which both Tigris and Euphrates cleansed and enriched; so did Havilah place himself upon Piso-Tigris; Raamah and his son Sheba further down upon the same river, on the sea-coast of Arabia; Chus himself upon Gehon, the fairest branch of Euphrates. And when they began to spread themselves further off, yet they always fastened themselves to the rivers' sides: for Nineveh, Charran, Reseph, Canneh, Ur in Chaldea, and the other first peopled cities, were all founded upon these navigable rivers, or their branches, by which the one might give succour and assistance to the other, as is already often remembered.

SECT. XV.

A conclusion by way of repetition of some things spoken of before.

BUT now to conclude this dispute, it appeareth to me by the testimonies of the scriptures, that paradise was a place created by God, and a part of this our earth and ha

bitable world, seated in the lower part of the region of Eden, afterwards called Aram Fluviorum, or Mesopotamia, which taketh into it also a portion of Shinar and Armenia: this region standing in the most excellent temper of all others, to wit, thirty-five degrees from the equinoctial, and fifty-five from the north pole: in which climate the most excellent wines, fruits, oil, grain of all sorts, are to this day found in abundance. And there is nothing that better proveth the excellency of this said soil and temper, than the abundant growing of the palm-trees without the care and labour of man. For wherein soever the earth, nature, and the sun, can most vaunt that they have excelled, yet shall this plant be the greatest wonder of all their works: this tree alone giveth unto man whatsoever his life beggeth at nature's hand. And though it may be said that these trees are found both in the East and West Indies, which countries are also blessed with a perpetual spring and summer; yet lay down by those pleasures and benefits the fearful and dangerous thunders and lightnings, the horrible and frequent earthquakes, the dangerous diseases, the mul titude of venomous beasts and worms, with other inconve niences, and then there will be found no comparison between the one and the other.

What other excellences this garden of paradise had, before God (for man's ingratitude and cruelty) cursed the earth, we cannot judge; but I may safely think that by how much Adam exceeded all living men in perfection, by being the immediate workmanship of God, by so much did that chosen and particular garden exceed all parts of the universal world in which God had planted, that is, made to grow, the trees of life, of knowledge; plants only proper, and becoming the paradise and garden of so great a lord.

The sum of all this is, that whereas the eyes of men in this scripture have been dim-sighted, (some of them finding paradise beyond our known world; some, above the middle region of the air; some, elevated near the moon; others, as far south as the line, or as far north as the pole, &c.) I

hope that the reader will be sufficiently satisfied that these were but like castles in the air, and in men's fancies vainly imagined. For it was eastward in Eden, saith Moses, eastward, in respect of Judea, that God planted this garden; which Eden we find in the prophets where it was, and whereof the name (in some part) remaineth to this day. A river went out of Eden to water this garden, and from thence divided itself into four branches; and we find that both Tigris and Euphrates swimming through Eden do join in one, and afterward taking ways apart, do water Chus and Havilah, according to Moses: the true seats of Chus and his sons then being in the valley of Shinar, in which Nimrod built Babel. That Pison was Ganges, the scripture, reason, and experience teach the contrary: for that which was never joined cannot be divided. Ganges, which inhabiteth India, cannot be a branch of the rivers of Eden; that Gehon was Nilus, the same distance maketh the same impossibility, and this river is a greater stranger to Tigris and Euphrates than Ganges is for although there are between Tigris and Ganges above four thousand miles, yet they both rise in the same quarter of the world; but Nilus is begotten in the mountains of the moon, almost as far off as the Cape of Good Hope, and falleth into the Mediterranean sea: and Euphrates distilleth out of the mountains of Armenia, and falleth into the gulf of Persia: the one riseth in the south, and travelleth north; the other riseth in the north, and runneth south, threescore and three degrees the one from the other. In this leaf following, I have added a chorographical description of this terrestrial paradise, that the reader may thereby the better conceive the preceding discourse and this is the reward I look for, that my labours may but receive an allowance suspended, until such time as this description of mine be reproved by a better.

CHAP. IV.

Of the two chief trees in the garden of paradise.

SECT. I.

That the tree of life was a material tree; and in what sense it is to be taken, that man by his eating the forbidden fruit is made subject to death.

FOR eating the forbidden fruit of the tree of knowledge was Adam driven out of paradise, in exilium vitæ temporalis," into the banishment of temporal life," saith Beda. That these trees of life and knowledge were material trees, (though figures of the law and of the gospel,) it is not doubted by the most religious and learned writers; although the wits of men, which are so volatile as nothing can fix them, and so slippery as nothing can fasten them, have in this also delivered to the world an imaginary doctrine.

The tree of life, say the Hebrews, hath a plural construction, and is to be understood, lignum vitarum," the tree "of lives," because the fruit thereof had a property to preserve both the growing, sensitive, and rational life of man; and not only (but for fAdam's transgression) had prolonged his own days, but also given a dureful continuance to all posterity; and that, so long as a body compounded of elements could last.

And although it is hard to think that flesh and blood could be immortal, but that it must once perish and rot by the unchanged law of God imposed on his creatures; man, notwithstanding, should have enjoyed thereby a long, healthful, and ungrieved life: after which (according to the opinion of most divines) he should have been translated as Enoch was. And as before the flood, the days of men had the long measure of eight hundred or nine hundred years; and soon after the flood, of two hundred years and upwards, even to five hundred: so if Adam had not disobeyed God's

f Bart. sept. 2. l. 1. 174.

RALEGH, HIST. WORLD. VOL. I.

K