that we cannot but embrace it Whereas on the contrary Hierom and others censure those as Triflers and Dreamers who so addict themselves to the Allegory that they will not withal allow a plain Historical Sense in that Narration they grounding themselves on this That unless an Historical Truth be held in those things which are deliver'd in the Scriptures by way of an Historical Narration nothing would be certain in them Whereas the Author says we may observe that tho the Fathers Opinions be differently express'd they generally concenter in this that the Southern Hemisphere was the Seat of Paradise and that this seems manifestly to be the Sense of Christian Antiquity and Tradition so far as there is any thing definitive in the Remains we have upon that Subject I find not that this is made out by him for doing which he distributes the Christian Authors and Fathers that have deliver'd their Opinion concerning the Place of Paradise into three or four Ranks or Orders and endeavours to shew that tho they express'd themselves differently yet duly examin'd that all conspire and concur in the foremention'd Conclusion In the first place he reckons those who have set Paradise in another World or in another Earth which he concludes must have been beyond the Torrid Zone in the other Hemisphere In this number he places Ephrem Syrus Moses Barcephas Tatianus and of later date Jacobus de Valentia To these he adds such as say that Adam when he was turn'd out of Paradise was brought into our Earth or into our Region of the Earth for this he says is tantamount with the former and this seems to be the sense of S. Hierom and of Constantine in his Oration in Eusebius and is positively asserted by Sulpitius Severus And again those Authors that represent Paradise as remote from our World and inaccessible as S. Austin Procopius Gazaeus Beda Strabus Fuldensis Historia Scholastica for what is remote from our World he says is to be understood to be that Anticthon or Antihemisphere which the Antients oppos'd to ours I must confess I have not many of the Authors here quoted by me my poor Country Study not affording them But on a Consideration of what the Author has quoted from them and what I find quoted from them by others we may discern how far they concur in that Doctrine which he here ascribes to them and to proceed in order as the Author has set them down I find the Opinion of Ephrem quoted by Ralegh from Barcephus thus Ephrem dicit Paradisum ambire terram atque ultra oceanum ita positum esse ut totum terrarum orbem ab omni circumdet regione non aliter atque lunae orbis lunam cingit Now he that can make Sense of this may unless he will expound it according to Plato's Fable of his Aethereal Earth The Author in his Latin Copy quotes also this Passage tho exprest in somewhat different terms and explains it thus That in the Paradisiacal Earth the Ocean compass'd about the Body of the Earth and the Paradisiacal Earth compass'd about the whole Ocean as the Orb of the Moon does the Moon so that he judges that Form of the Earth to be here intimated which he has before given it where the Abysse compass'd about the Body of the Earth and the Paradisiacal Earth the Abysse or the Ocean Now if this were so it 's manifest that Ephrem in that Passage could not relate to one Hemisphere more than to the other which was the only thing the Author had to make out But to be more plain in this matter the Book which Barcephas ascribes to Ephrem and that falsly as I conceive and whence he quotes his Opinion is call'd Parva Genesis or De Ortu Rerum the foregoing Passage well suiting with others quoted from a Book of that Title which I guess to be the same and if so I should have the worse Opinion of Barcephas for quoting so frivolous and I think I may say so impious a Pamphlet Ralegh derides that Parva Genesis for the miserable Stuff thence often quoted by Cedrenus and a Man may be as well satisfi'd of it by what we find thence quoted in Glycas who in the first part of his Annals says But that little Book De Ortu Rerum tells us that Adam took of the Tree of Knowledg and eat without Circumspection no way urg'd thereto by the Words of Eve but that he found a certain Disquiet in his Mind from Tiredness and Hunger But it 's best to bury these things in silence since they deserve an eternal silence And there he cites several other ridiculous Passages from him and concludes that every Man that understands the Scriptures looks upon them as so And again he quotes this Parva Genesis in the third Part of his Annals and rejects it in like manner saying that he knows not who was the Author of it whereas when on occasion he quotes Ephrem he does it with much reverence I have given a Character of this Book because the Author instances it in several places lamenting its loss and seems chiefly to rely on it in the Point under debate Barcephas indeed in one Passage which the Author quotes from him intimates Paradise to have been in the other Hemisphere But withal he says that it was beyond the Ocean and intimates it to be still in being so that unless the Author will receive these Traditions from him I know not why he should urge the other But I shall say more of Barcephas beneath As for Tatianus tho he distinguishes the Earth of Paradise from ours saying that to be of a more excellent make unless he had been more particular in pointing forth the place where it lay I know not why it should be concluded that he thought it in the other Hemisphere When Jacobus de Valentia places Paradise in the other Hemisphere he says it 's because it lies under more noble Stars than ours Now we know this ground to be notoriously false for that all Astronomers hold the Stars of this Hemisphere more noble than those in the other And as Mr. Gregory observes in his learned Notes on some Scripture Passages our Hemisphere is the principal and far more excellent than the other we have more Earth more Men more Stars more Day and which is more than all this the North Pole is more magnetical than the South according to what the learned Ridley says he observ'd viz. That the Pole of the Magnet which seats it self North is always the most vigorous and strong Pole to all intents and purposes If Hierom opposes Paradise to our Earth I know not why it should imply more than some Excellency of that Soil more than of ours Neither do the Passages of Sulpitius Severus or Constantine seem to me to have any force As for Austin and others that held Paradise remote from our World we know their Opinion relates to a suppos'd high elevated situation of Paradise and
miraculous Effects and therefore of another nature from this here under Consideration Again it s well known that many Institutions in the Law of Moses were made directly in opposition to certain Customs among the Gentils Now whereas Iris among the Gentils was made generally the Messenger of Discord whence it was call'd Iris quasi 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 why may it not be thought that in opposition to this which might have been deriv'd down from the corrupt Antediluvian times God would have the Rainbow to be his sign of Love and Concord it signifying in its Nature indifferently Rains and fair Weather as Pliny says As to the existence of the Rainbow before the Flood certainly all the Gentils were of that Opinion Juno must have been an Antediluvian Goddess who was never without her Nymph Iris she being the most diligent Attendant she had alway standing ready at her Elbow and more officiously serviceable to her than the other thirteen Nymphs that belong'd to her among other services she is said to have made Juno's Bed and was represented with Wings and a Robe of divers Colours half tuckt up to shew her readiness to obey the Commands of her Mistris on all occasions The two predominant Colours of her Robes were blew and red denoting the two great destructions of the World the blew that which happen'd by the Waters at the Deluge and the Red the general Conflagration to succeed by Fire so that the Rainbow carries a mixt signality And indeed the antient Philosophers might properly enough make her the Messenger of Discord she carrying the Types of those two contrary Elements Fire and Water and God might make her his Messenger of Peace he controuling and directing all natural Powers and re-establishing a Concord betwixt those two contrary Elements whereof she carries the Types in those Colours she bears I may note in the last place that Father Simon censures Luther of Ignorance in the style and symbolical sense of the Scriptures for saying that there was no Rainbow before the Deluge and that God created it for those very Reasons set down Gen. 9. But though there may be a known symbolical sense contain'd under the Rainbow which may far more require our attention than the Symbol it self yet I shall not here take upon me to determine how far Luther may stand affected by that Censure As for what the Author urges from the Passage of St. Peter viz. That the Antediluvian Heav'ns had a different Constitution from ours containing only watery Meteors I do not find he makes out that there were more of those watry Meteors in the Air then than there are now so that a Deluge should be thence particularly caus'd on which account St. Peter intimates that different Disposition to have been and when the Author has said all he can of it he plainly concludes in his Latin Copy That he cannot find or discover by Reason whence that Glut of Waters rose at that time or wherefore after fifteen Ages after the World was made that Immense Glut of Waters gather'd together in the Air discharg'd itself on the Earth it might have been he says from supernatural Causes And in his Answer to Mr. Warren he says the Rains that made the Flood were extraordinary and out of the Course of Nature And what is this in effect but to own that the Deluge is not explicable by humane Reason and that Miracles are to be allow'd in it but they must be the Authors own way and not as others have said which perhaps by many may be interpreted to carry more of Humour than Reason CHAP. VI. THIS Chapter contains only a review of what the Author has said concerning the Primitive Earth with a more full survey of the state of the first World Natural and Civil and the Comparison of it with the present World so that here is little new wherefore I shall note only the following Passage where the Author says I cannot easily imagine that the sandy Desarts of the Earth were made so at first immediately from the Beginning of the World To this we may reply That if the sense of one Man may be oppos'd against that of another Lucan seems of a contrary Opinion where he says Syrtes vel primam mundo natura figuram Quum daret in medio pelagi terraeque reliquit When Nature fram'd the World at its first birth It left the Quicksands 'twixt the Sea and Earth CHAP. VII HERE the Author comes to the main Point to be consider'd in this Book viz. the Seat of Paradise and says that its Place cannot be determin'd by the Theory only nor from Scripture only and then gives us the sense of Antiquity concerning it as to the Jews the Heathens and especially the Christian Fathers shewing that they generally place it out of this Continent in the Southern Hemisphere He declares that considering the two Hemispheres according to his Theory he sees no Natural Reason or occasion to place it in one Hemisphere more than in the other and that it must rather have depended on the Will of God and the series of Providence that was to follow in this Earth than on any natural incapacity in one of those Regions more than in another for planting in it that Garden Neither do the Scriptures determine where the place was As to Antiquity he says the Jews and Hebrew Doctors place it in neither Hemisphere but under the Equinoctial because they suppos'd the Days and Nights to have been always equal in Paradise Among the ancient Heathens Poets and Philosophers he finds they had several Paradises on the Earth which they generally if not all of them place without or beyond this Continent in the Ocean or beyond it or in another Orb or Hemisphere as the Gardens of the Hesperides the fortunate Islands the Elysian Fields Ogygia Toprabane as it is describ'd by Diodorus Siculus and the like As to Christian Antiquity or the Judgment or Tradition of the Fathers in this Argument he tells us that the Grand Point disputed amongst them was Whether Paradise were Corporeal or Intellectual only and Allegorical Then of those that thought it Corporeal some plac'd it high in the Air some inaccessible by Desarts and Mountains and many beyond the Ocean or in another World but nam'd no particular Place or Country in the known parts of the Earth for the Seat of it and upon the whole he brings it to this Conclusion that tho their Opinions are differently exprest they generally concenter in this that the Southern Hemisphere beyond the Aequinoctial was the Seat of Paradise And this Notion of another World or Earth beyond the Torrid Zone he says he finds among Heathen Authors as well as Christian and that those who say Paradise was beyond the Ocean mean the same for that they suppos'd the Ocean to lie from East to West betwixt the Tropicks the Sun and Planets being there cool'd and nourisht by its moisture And having quoted many of the Fathers
avoid Cavillations in this kind I shall only set down briefly what I conceive to have been the sense of the Ancients concerning the Chaos and the Mundane Egg and let it bear as far as it may though withal to lessen that Reverence which some may have for the Cosmogonia of the ancient Gentils I shall first set down the sense of Eusebius concerning it who says That though Plato out of a seeming compliance with the Laws of his City pretends to give credit to the Poetick Theogonia which is the same with their Cosmogonia as a Tradition deliver'd down from the Sons of the Gods who must not be suppos'd to have been ignorant of their Parents yet all the while he does but slily jeer it plainly intimating the fabulosity thereof when he affirms it to have been introduc'd not only without necessary Demonstrations but also without so much as Probabilities This being premis'd I may set down what my own thoughts may be concerning it as follows The Ancient Philosophers who made it their business to search into the Reasons of Humane and Divine things could not rest in the Examination and setting forth of the Causes of particular Effects they found here on the Earth but attempted the consideration of the whole World and how all things issued at first from their divine or metaphysical Principle Now the World being anterior to Mankind after they had contemplated the proceeding of it from God when they came to set it forth they could not more plausibly do it than by similitude or Analogy to those common Generations we have before us whence came the Doctrine of the Mundane Egg and by the references which they conceiv'd were betwixt the operations of the Ideas in the Divine Mind and those they observ'd in the mind of Man They observ'd that Nature and Art proceeded from certain obscure and rough Dilineations to a more exact Form and concluding that as Art imitates Nature so Nature does the Deity from whence it flowed they thought that by observing that order which Nature holds was the only method to find out the way of the Divine Operation But as I have intimated in my Considerations on the first Book I know not how far we may look upon any of the most learned amongst the Gentils to have held any real successive Changes to have pass'd in the Chaos toward the formation of the World their design in setting forth a Chaos and Changes it underwent seeming to have been only to help our way of conceiving by reducing all things mentally to Number and Order as issuing at first from one Principle according to the Pythagorean Philosophy deriving all things à monade or as rising ab ovo Analogically which amounts to no more than what Jamblicus says of the Egyptians viz. that they made Mud and Water floating the Chaos being suppos'd such their Hieroglyphick of material and corporeal things And as Austin says when the Ancients talk of a Beginning of the World intellerunt non esse hoc temporis sed substitutionis initium De Civ Dei l. 10. c. 31. Whereas the Author will not allow Moses's Cosmopaeia to be Philosophical it not passing from one rank of Beings to another in a Physical Order and Connection according to the motions and transformations of the Chaos Moses making all things to spring from the all-powerful Word of God one after the other in that order which was fittest for furnishing an habitable World according to a popular Decorum To this I say first that many Men already pretend to have shewn and among others the Learned Vallesius a due Physical Order and Connexion in Moses's Cosmopoeia and that all things past in it according to a due priority of Nature And concerning this Cosmopoeia I could wish to have read a Book writ by Don Isaac Abravanel a Spanish Jew mention'd in Father Simon 's Catalogue of Jewish Authors annext to his Critical History entituled Miphaboth Elohim Works of God where the said Rabbin has learnedly treated of the Creation of the World and withal examin'd whence Moses had what is writ in the Book of Genesis Secondly That when the Author shall shew us in a more Philosophical way than Moses has done let him take it from whom of the Gentils he pleases how the World at first proceeded from God we may hearken to him mean while there is this to observe first that the Creation was a Metaphysical act and the Order of it is incomprehensible to Man farther than it has pleas'd God to reveal it to him by his Prophets Secondly That I have already validly refuted as I conceive those separations which the Author has suppos'd to have past in the Chaos at the formation of the World Thirdly That if the Author or any Man else shall attempt to explain what the Ancients have said of a Chaos and any successive Changes it underwent when it form'd an habitable World before they expect us to acquiesce in their Explanation or to believe that the Ancients meant more in what they said in that kind than to render our thoughts easie as to an apprehension of a beginning of things by their setting it forth by a similitude to common Generations from Eggs they ought to bring that ancient debated Point to a clear determination viz. whether the Egg or Chick were first for those who maintain a Chaos and real successive Changes to have past in it must make out the Egg to have been before the Chick whereas Plutarch Macrobius and others who have debated the Point seem more inclin'd to the other Opinion holding all things at first to have been set in their perfect state through the perfection of the first Cause Aristotle also tells us that Pherecydes Syrus the Magi and others of the Sages affirm'd that the first Principle whence all other things were generated was the best or of an absolute perfect Being so that in the Scale of Nature things did not ascend upwards from the most imperfect to the more perfect Beings as the ancient Poets represent but on the contrary descend downwards from the most perfect to the less perfect of which Opinion he also declares himself Whereas the Author sets down this as a Maxim that what the Antients have said concerning the Original of the World from a Chaos or about its Periods or Dissolution is never to be understood of the great Universe but of our Earth or of this sublunary World and thinks he can demonstrate that Moses's Cosmogonia is so to be under stood I know not whether it may be so easily done finding the greatest part of Writers to be of a contrary Opinion And those that maintain that Opinion may do well to tell us if the Heavens were for I know not what series of Ages before this Earth and sublunary Region what this place was before the time of the Creation set forth by Moses whether it were a Vacuum or a Spacium imaginarium for it would seem an odd Hole left