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PART I.

I. Epoch. Adam, or the Creation. THE first epoch immediately presents to you a magnificent spéctacle; God creating the heavens and the earth by his word, and making man after his own image. With this Moses begins; the most ancient of historians, the most sublime of philosophers, and the wisest of legislators.

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He lays this as the foundation of his his- A. M. B. C. tory, of his doctrine, and of his laws. He then shows us all men contained in one man, and his wife herself extracted from him; matrimonial' union and the society of mankind established upon this foundation; the perfection and power of man, so far as he bears the image of God in his first estate; his dominion over animals; his innocence, together with his felicity in paradise, the memory of which is preserved in the golden age of the poets; the divine injunction given to our first parents; the malice of the tempting spirit, and his appearance under the form of a serpent; the fall of Adam and Eve, fatal to all their posterity; the first man justly punished in all his children, and the human race under the curse of God; the first promise of redemption, and the future victory of men over the devil who had undone them.

A. M. B. C.

The earth begins to be filled, and wick129 3875 edness increases*. Cain, the first child of Adam and Eve, shows the new world the first tragical action; and from that time virtue begins to be persecuted by vice. There we see the contrary manners of the two brothers; the innocence of Abel; his pastoral life, and his offerings accepted; those of Cain rejected, his avarice, his impiety, his fratricide, and jealousy-the parent of murders; the punishment of that crime, the conscience of the murderer racked with continual terrors; the first city built by this miscreant, who sought an Asylum from the hatred and horror of mankind; the invention of some of the arts by his children; the tyranny of the passions, and the prodigious depravity of man's heart, ever inclined to evil; the posterity of Seth, faith3017 ful to God, notwithstanding that depravity; the pious Enoch, miraculously taken from the world, which was not worthy of him; the distinction of the children of God from the children of men; that is, of those who lived after the spirit, from those who lived after the flesh; their intermixture, and the universal corruption of the world; the destruction of men decreed by a just judgment of God; his wrath denounced against sinners by his servant Noah; their impenitence and hardness of heart punished at last by the deluge; Noah and his family reserved for the restoration of mankind.

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This is the sum of what passed in 1656 years; and such is the beginning of all his

* Genesis 4.

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tories, wherein are displayed the omnipo- A. M. B. C. tence, wisdom and goodness of God: innocence happy under his protection; his justice in avenging crimes, and at the same time his patience in waiting for the conversion of sinners; the greatness and dignity of man in his primitive state; the temper of mankind after their corruption; the nature of jealousy, and the secret causes of violences and wars; and, in a word, all the foundations of religion and morality.

With mankind Noah preserved the arts, both those which are essential to human life, and which men knew from their original, and those which they had afterward invented. The first arts which men learned immediately, and probably from their creator, were agriculture *, the pastoral art, that of clothing, and, perhaps, of building houses. And indeed, do we not trace the commencement of these arts from those places of the East from whence mankind were first propagated?

A tradition of the universal deluge is found all over the earth. The ark, wherein the remnant of mankind was saved, has in all ages been celebrated in the East, particularly in those places where it rested after the deluge. Many other circumstances of that famous history are to be found marked in the

*Gen. ii. 15. iii. 17. 21. iv. 2.

+ Beros. Chald. Hist. Ch. Hieron. Egypt. Phoen. Hist. Mnas. Nic. Damasc. 1. xcvi. Abyd. de Med. & Assyr. Ap. Jos. Antiq. 1. i. c. 4. & l. i. cont. Apion. & Eus. 1. ix. Præp. Ev. c. 11, 12. Plut. Opusc. Plusne Solert. terr. an aquat. Lucian de D. Syr.

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A. M. B. C. annals and traditions of ancient nations; the dates agree, and every thing corresponds as much as could be expected in so remote a period of antiquity.

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II. Epoch. Noah, or the Deluge.

NEAR the deluge are to be ranged the shortening of the life of man,-the alteration of diet, and a new food substituted instead of the fruits of the earth; some oral precepts delivered to Noah; the confusion of languages at the tower of Babel,-the first monument of the pride and weakness of men; the portion of the three sons of Noah, and the first distribution of lands.

The memory of those three first fathers' of nations and people has still been preserved amongst men. Japhet, who peopled' the greatest part of the western world, has been celebrated there under the well-known name of Japetus. Ham, and his son Ca naan, have been no less noted amongst the Egyptians and Phoenicians; and the memory of Shem has always been perpetuated with the Hebrew people, who are descended from him.

A little after this first division of mankind, Nimrod, a ferocious man, through the violence of his disposition became the first conquerer: such is the origin of conquests*. He established his kingdom at Babylon, in the same place where the tower was begun, and

*Gen. x. 9, 10. 12.

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had already been raised to a great height, A M. B. C. though not so high as the vanity of man had desired. About the same time Nineveh was built, and some ancient kingdoms established. They were but small in those early times, for in Egypt alone we find four Dynasties or Principalities, those of Thebes, Thin, Memphis, and Tanis; the last was the capital of Lower Egypt. To this time we may also refer the commencement of the laws and polity of the Egyptians, that of their pyramids, which yet subsist, and that of the astronomical observations, both of this people and of the Chaldeans. We may 1771 also trace up to this time, and no higher, the observations which the Chaldeans, who. were, without dispute, the first observers of the stars, gave in Babylon to Calisthenes for Aristotle*.

Every thing has a beginning. There is no ancient history in which there do not appear, not only in those early ages, but, long after, manifest vestiges of the newness of the world. We see laws established, manners polished, and empires formed. Mankind by degrees get out of their ignorance, experience instructs them, and the arts are invented or perfected. In proportion as men multiply the earth is peopled from place to place; they pass mountains and precipices; they cross rivers, and at length seas, and establish new habitations. The earth, which at the beginning was only an immense forest, takes now another form; the woods cut

* Porphyr. ap. Simp. lib. ii. de Cœlo.

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