all probability Ham after the Curse being out of favour with his Father and Brethren would remove as far out of the way as he could Phil. This discourse of yours concerning the Origin of these Nations is fine plausible Talk but I can never be brought to believe that the Americans especially are descended from any other part of the World because their Language and Customs are so perfectly different from any thing we observe among the rest The Customs of the Europeans and Asiaticks are pretty conformable the modern Northern Languages are very nigh the same and so are the Spanish Italian and French and as for the ancient Eastern Tongues they seem to be but different Dialects as the Learned that way say of the Hebrew or Chaldee But as for the Americans they do toto coelo distare in all their Customs from us and if you do look upon an American Vocabulary as you may see several of them in De Laet's History of America you can hardly pick out one word that sounds any thing like those in any other Language ancient or modern Grotius with all his Wit was not able to pick out above three or four neither of which will hold water De Laet de Orig. Amer. which De Laet taking advantage of has horribly exposed that Learned Man for So that if the Americans had descended from any of these parts of the World they would most undoubtedly have retained some of their Customs and Words and not have stood at so vast a distance from us in every thing as we find they do Cred. It is no Argument that the Americans were not derived from the Europeans or other Inhabitants of the World because their Language does not so well agree with ours For Languages alter mightily in time even where they maintain a correspondence with those people of the first Original Tongue but must needs vary vastly more in the Americans who were perfectly cut off from all such conversation And besides it is not true that all Languages besides the American ones seem to be derived from some other and have a nigh resemblance to one another for as far as ever I was able to remark Irish and Welsh and several of the Languages of the East-Indies are as different from the learned or the other European Languages as the American Tongues are So that by this Argument the Britains and Irish and most of the Eastern Nations must be Aborigines too as well as the Americans And as for the Customs of the Americans they are not so very different as you would pretend nay they retain in many things such an uniformity of practice with us as affords an indubitable proof that they are of the same Original I will not instance in such actions which are natural and common to all men such as are the result of humane passions or are so easy of invention as they can hardly be avoided as Singing Dancing Bowing Leaping c. but in such actions as are owing to some one lucky Invention or transcribed from others by imitation which they cannot all be supposed to have lighted upon themselves but must have them communicated to them by others It would be no Argument to prove this Original because I did see an American capering an odd kind of Jigg but if I should see two Americans playing a Game at Tennis or Baggamon or writing an Italian hand I should be confident they learned this from some European And many Customs of this sort we find among them learned from other parts of the World which are an unanswerable Argument for their Descent from them To begin first with some of their Religious Rites and particularly Sacrifice Though it should be granted that natural Religion was common to all men yet what reason can be assigned that the Americans who are by you supposed to have no communication with the rest of the World should worship God with just such positive Rites as the far greatest part of the World did There are several ways of worshipping God which they might have took and a thousand Religious Rites they might have made use of but why they should just jump upon sacrifice with the rest of the World is unaccountable But granting sacrifice as an easy deduction from natural reason as it is not and that all men must think it reasonable that their sins must be expiated by the blood of Beasts which was a sort of vicarious life taken away in lieu of their own which was forfeited How came they to be acquainted with this Adamical punishment and to know that the Wages of Sin was Death This must be all grounded upon Scripture or ancient Tradition which the Heathens all over the World stuck fast to though they could give no reason for it and which the Americans could never have come to the knowledge of unless they had been derived from other Nations and had had the same universal Original But though this vicarious punishment of Beasts should be allowed to be natural how should they come to perform it just the same way as the other parts of the World did which they had no converse with One would have thought that in this case strangling or jugulation should be the most natural and proper way of dispatching the vicarious Victim and appeasing the Deity and the sacrifice should terminate here but what reason can be given why they with the rest of the World should burn the Flesh of the Victim and that they should think that God was to be reconciled by the smell of broiled Meat There is no manner of rational account to be given for this and they might as well have raised a smoak to the Deity by wet Straw or Water and Lime or any other way had they been left free to their own Invention 'T is plain therefore that they received this manner of Sacrificing from the other parts of the World who had it by Tradition delivered down to them from the first Parents Besides this there are several other Rites and Arbitrary ways of Worship which they must be supposed to have received from the Europeans or Asiaticks The Children of Mexico and Jucatan are circumcised And the Mexican Priests like the Vestals keep a constant and unextinguished Fâ—â—e They celebrate a Jubilee every fiftieth year like the Jews and as some write a Sabbath every seventh day They launce their Bodies and let out their 〈◊〉 like the Priests of Baal to shew the earnestness of their Devotion The Caribbeans observe the New-Moons as the Jews did with the sound of Trumpets and great Shouts The Peruvians observe a kind of a Mock-Passover by colouring the Threshold of their Houses with a kind of Pulse mixed with Blood I omit the Relations which some Spanish Authors have made concerning the use of Baptism amongst some of them and signations with the Cross because some have questioned these Authorities but these other Relations are indubitable and agreed to by all as may be seen in the Histories
rather than own a God who would permit any thing to cross their humour Now you make use of the Inverse of that Argument and would prove that because there is a good God therefore he would never suffer such a wicked action of the Devil But that which is the ground of both these Arguments is an unreasonable mistake viz. the opinion that a Just and Wise God cannot permit Evil. Now it is true that there are some part of natural Evils which God could not permit such as might happen to the inanimate parts of the Creation as any blundered irregular formation of their parts any defect in their nature or constitution For all such Evil as this must then needs proceed from God who gave them this irregular nature in which they could have no hand themselves Therefore we freely own that God cannot permit Evil of this kind because such permission were tantamount to the doing it All the question is whether he cannot permit moral Evil among free Agents and such natural Evils which are the punishments of them Now unless we grant that he could it is impossible there should be any such thing as a free Agent which is to act on either part For if God could not permit Evil then Man could do nothing but Good then his actions would all be determined on one side and so could be no more said to be free than a Stone is such which necessarily falls downwards Nor does this permission 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 reflect upon God's goodness for God only gives this Free-Will and Power to his Creatures which is an act of goodness but it is owing to their ill use of it that they commit Evil. But you 'll say it is not the Difficulty how to reconcile God's Holiness with the permission of Evil but how to think he should permit an Evil of so vast a consequence Now to this I answer This would have destroy'd Free-Will 1st It must be granted that Adam and Eve who together with the Devil committed this Evil were free Agents and therefore all the restraints God could lay upon them to resist the Devil's Temptations must be such as were consonant to their Free-Will For God to have given them such powerful Influxes of his Spirit as to have made it impossible for them to Sin would have been in effect to have altered their natures and to have changed them from free to necessary Agents For that would have been to have over-ruled them by as absolute an Impulse as he does Stones and Trees All that we can suppose reasonable for God to do is to dispense to them such abundantly sufficient measures of his Grace as might enable them to encounter with the strongest Temptation but yet in such a way as might be consistent with their Reason and Free-Will Now if such an Angelical Guard as you would have had to keep them from Sinning had been so continually about them as to hinder the Devil from proposing any Temptation or our first Parents from hearkning to any if they had supernaturally over-ruled the Organs of their Bodies or the Inclinations of their Minds upon the least Tendency to Evil God then would not have dealt with them as with Men but as with Brutes Besides God had then put them upon a state of Probation but to have over-ruled their actions and determined them only on one side would have been to have run counter to his own Design it would have been to have put them upon a Trial and at the same time to have rendered them impossible to be cried So â—hat let the Miscarriage be of never so great consequence we cannot suppose that God should act contrary to his Wisdom and Eternal Reason for the prevention of it Man had sufficient assistance 2ly There is no reason God should have interposed his Omnipotence to have hindered this Sin because they had Power of their own superabundantly sufficient to avoid it We alas in this lapsed condition of ours find a great deal of difficulty to encounter with our Temptations we feel a great blindness in our Understandings and a Crookedness in our Wills we experience often an inclination to do Evil even before the Temptation comes But our first Parents in their primitive rectitude of nature stood possessed of every thing as advantageous the other way they had an understanding nuturally large and capacious and fully illuminated by the Divine Spirit their Will was naturally inclined to the supreme good and could not without Violence to its nature make choice of any other Now when God had made such ample provision for Mankind to secure them from Sin we can never suppose it necessary for God to employ his Almighty Power besides for this would be in a manner actum agere to do that for them again which he had sufficiently done for them before But if notwithstanding all these mighty advantages towards a state of Impeccancy they would resolutely break through them all their unparallell'd Stubbornness and Disobedience is to be blamed and not the insufficiency of God's Grace or the defect of his Almighty assistance 3ly This Miscarriage was repared by God's mercy afterwards What God did not by his absolute Power hinder before he did by his Mercy sufficiently repair afterwards For presently after the Fall God the Father agreed to the Mediatorship propounded by God the Son and then Eternal Life through the blood of our Saviour was given upon our sincere though not unsinning Obedience after Death as it was without Death before And by this wonderfull mercy after so great a provocation the Goodness of God is more abundantly manifested than by hindring the Sin at first as men are more sensibly affected with a Pardon graciously offered after the conviction of a Disobedience than they are by a Dispensation for it or a Connivence at it Phil. As for this matter Credentius of the Mediatorship we shall talk more hereafter but let us go through the Garden first And the first thing we meet withal is the two Trees of singular qualities indeed such as silence all the strange relations in the Plinies and Theophrastus's I mean the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil and the Tree of Life Now what tolerable sense can be put upon the relation of these two Trees The Tree of the knowledge of Good and Evil Why can ever any one thing that Morality grew upon Trees This I 'll warrant you is such a kind of an Ethical Tree as Porphyry's is in Logick It is very strange Credentius that we should take so much pains for a little Science when our first Parents could get to be so knowing only by eating of Apples And I am as much perplexed too about your other Tree The Tree of Life Now I can never beat it into my dull Brains how Eternity should grow upon the Tops of Trees for my part I should as soon believe that Lobsters and Red-Herrings grew there Nor if it be asserted O.R. p. 42. that this
Tree was to make men long lived that were to eat of it and for this reason was called the Tree of Life I do not see how this one Tree had been sufficient for all the Progeny of Adam in case they had not sinned or however it would have been very inconvenient for men to have come from America to Eden for these Vivifical Apples All this looks very surprizing Credentius and is too much like a piece of the old Poetical Divinity Cred. It is true The Relation of the two Trees not ridiculous things look very strange and odd that are unusual which makes us we can hardly forbear laughing at an old Fashion after some time of disuse though we liked it well enough when it was common Now the State of Innocence and the lapsed State of Mankind being so very different we must suppose that there were some things consonant to the first State very disagreeable to our present one and this is but reasonable to imagine Now of a great number of these Moses has reckoned but a few amongst which are these Trees As for the Tree of Life I cannot imagine any thing more agreeable to such a State of Innocence Now a State of Innocence supposes Immortality for Death came by Sin and something was requisite to make men Immortal when their Bodies naturally were not so Indeed God might have done this by his immediate Almighty Power but he generally cooperates with second causes Now what fitter means can we suppose for the continual renovation of Mens Bodies without any manner of decay than the fruit of such a Tree If some Food of an extraordinary quality be requisite why not the Fruit of a Tree as well as the Flesh of an Animal as well as an Herb a Root or any thing else When God had designed that Mens Bodies should never yield to decay or Death methinks it was very reasonable for him to direct them to the eating a certain fruit of a Tree whose juice was of that spirituous nature as to impregnate their blood with an indefectible vigour and to keep them in a constant Youth without pain or disease or imbecillity 'till such time as he should translate them to a better World And this I take to be the use of the Tree of Life It is uncertain whether or no this Tree was but one single one and always to be continued in Eden if there had been no lapse it is most probable many of them would have been transplanted to other parts of the World as the innocent Off-spring had increased but when Mankind had sinned it is probable that God destroyed this species out of the World as being now grown useless and inconsistent with the Curse and Punishment of Man And this the Heathens seem to have some traditional notion of when they speak of the Nectar and Ambrosia which maintained the Immortality of their Gods and Moly which was the great Panacea celebrated by the Heathen Poets As for the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil it was I suppose called so not because it had a vertue to confer any such knowledge but because the Devil pretended in his Temptation of the Woman it had it receiving its name from that unfortunate Deception And tho' God calls it the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil before the Fall yet that is related by Moses by way of Anticipation as if I should say the Romans Encamped in Essex or Middlesex though neither of those places were then known by that name And as for that other place v. 22. Behold the Man is become as one of us to know good and evil I look upon that to be only a bitter Irony to upbraid Man with his foolish disobedience and disappointment Phil. I suppose you will hardly be able to get off so well with your four Rivers as you have done with your Two Trees I find here that your inspired Author was as bad at Geography as the Turks are at Chronology They have both a good will to their cause and therefore will garnish it out with all the fine things they ever heard of Thus the Turks when they would make King Solomon as brave a Man as they can make Alexander the Great the Master of his Horse and twenty other great Men Lacqueys and Foot-Boys to him And thus Moses when he would describe a curious Garden makes four of the greatest Rivers in the World to be in lieu of Canals in it He does not matter the great distance of place and the different sources of the Rivers but jumbles together all Asia and Africk O.R. p. 35 c. to make a pretty little Garden for Adam to dress Here is Tigris and Euphrates and Nilus and Ganges as the Interpreters explain them which have their Origin in this spot of ground so that it must reach at least from the Fountain of Nile i. e. from the Midland of Africa to India All this is very strange Credentius Cred. To this we answer Philologus Difficulties about the Rivers of Eden removed 1st It is not certain from the Mosaical Relation of what extent this Gan-Eden or Paradise was It might be for ought we know a very considerable part of the habitable Earth which the the Ante-diluvians were kept out of or at least were so for a considerable time Now if Eden was of so large a circumference it might afford an origin to several very distant Rivers So that Adam might only cultivate that part of it which he was first placed in 2ly It is likewise very uncertain what Rivers are meant by these Hebrew names As for the Interpreters they are so various in their Conjectures that it would be tedious to recount them It seems most probable to me that these Rivers are only some branches of the River Euphrates if so be the Channel of the River had a being before the Flood 3ly It can never be exactly known where these Rivers were because of the great alteration made in the World by the Deluge which has mightily altered or it may be obliterated their Course For I believe that at the Flood the mighty confluence of Waters over the Face of the Earth and the breaking open the Deep or Subterraneous Waters turned the Earth into something like its Chaotick 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or that Mud it was at the first Creation so that the Course of Rivers must be altered by the washing away their Banks and the choaking up their Channels And therefore it is in vain to seek for these Ante-diluvian Rivers in those Courses of Waters that trickle over the Earth now And therefore you do very ill to censure the Mosaical Writings because you cannot find those Rivers now a days which he speaks of before the Flood Phil. But by the way Sir if Moses describes these Rivers as they were before the Flood which you suppose to be different from what they are now this will render it a very idle and superfluous Description O.
The difficulties of Original Sin removed This Original Sin is not any vitious Habit infused into our Souls by God for that was to make God the Author of it It is only an Obliquity of our nature and a tendency to Evil as being descended from a corrupt stock which cannot produce a pure Off-spring so that God is not to be blamed any more for suffering such an impure Progeny to be born from our first Parents than he is for letting sour Fruit arise from a Tree degenerated by our ill Husbandry or diseased Children from vitious Parents Indeed in all Ages Divines have troubled themselves to explain how this obliquity should be conveyed to all Mankind and the generality of them agree that it comes from the defect of Original Righteousness or the withdrawing of that supernatural Grace which was so plentifully bestowed upon the Primaeval Parents and they have forfeited for us so that that Bar which was to hinder us from Sin is now taken away and so we rush with precipitancy upon it that Fraenum which they call it that Bridle which was to restrain our Animal Faculties is lost by their Sin and so now like an unruly Horse they over-power and run away with our Reason The Cartesians explain its traduction by the Imagination of the Mother who as by her frights desires aversions c. imprints the same passions upon the Child she is pregnant with and makes it lyable to them afterwards so by her aversions to Good and Proneness to Evil she transmits the same Tendencies to her Foetus and by this means they will have Original Sin traduced from Eve down to us Neither of which Explications are inconsistent with the Divine Justice for God was neither obliged to continue this supernatural Grace to all Adam's Posterity nor bound to frame the nature of Mankind anew or to raise up a purer breed from the first corrupted stock 2. The Off-spring of Adam had no Title to that Immortality and other blessings which he forfeited for them God-Almighty might if he pleased have made Mankind at first mortal and subject to all the Diseases and Disorders which are the Preliminaries of Death and the Punishments of Sin for we had no right to demand from him to be created more happy than the Brutes Therefore we have no reason to repine at God's goodness for not giving us that happiness after Adam's Sin which we never had a right to before but only a possibility of having It is our Duty to thank God for what we do enjoy and not to Murmur at his goodness and tax his Justice for what we do not 3ly Our first Parents might forfeit these Blessings for us and God might justly deny them to us by reason of their Sin I do not see any great force in that Notion of Divines which makes the first Parents our Representatives and so makes us to Sin in them Interpretative as the Schools speak and therefore to deserve their Punishment For I cannot apprehend how any one should be my Representative without being delegated to personate me by my own proper and voluntary Act and I can less apprehend why God should punish me for what they did in my name which I never agreed to But it is very agreeable to the Divine Justice for God to promise several blessings to Adam and his Posterity upon his Obedience which neither he nor his Posterity should enjoy upon his Disobedience And this seems very just to us by our often doing the like in our humane affairs without being taxed with the least injustice as if I leave a Thousand Pounds a Year to such a Man and his Heirs forever conditionally that he performs such things as my Will directs but neither he nor his Posterity has a right to the Estate if that Person neglects to perform them And this vindicates sufficiently the Divine Justice in not contributing the supernatural Grace to keep Men from Sinning and in inflicting Death i. e. not conferring immortality both which were to be conferred upon Adam and his Posterity only upon condition of his Obedience 4ly Men justly deserve all the Punishments of Sin by their own proper Transgression If Men were to undergo Sickness Afflictions in this World and Eternal Damnation in the next purely upon account of Adam's Sin there would be something in your Argument but when all men commit Sin by their own proper act they can have no reason to complain for suffering that which by their actual disobedience they have merited 5ly But then lastly as for Children who die before they commit actual Sin and are not baptized It is no part of our Christian Faith to believe that they are damned For though the Scripture says expresly except one be born again of water and the Spirit he cannot enter into the Kingdom of God Joh. 3.5 yet charitable Christians in all Ages have understood this necessity to be where the Sacrament might conveniently be had and where there was no contempt of it And therefore many of the Fathers have assigned a middle place for such unbaptized Infants which was a place neither of joy nor pleasure And to this Opinion St. Austin himself was inclined Lib. 3. de Lib. Arbit Cap. 23. who was the severest of the Ancients to unbaptized Children before his Disputes with Pelagius who asserted that all Children were undoubtedly saved But however uncharitable the Papists may be to unbaptized Infants it is the charitable Opinion of most Protestants that such Children are left to the goodness of a merciful God who is not tied up to his own Ordinances who it is hoped will save them though not by an ordinary yet he may do it by an uncovenanted Grace Phil. There is another thing Credentius in this Curse which does not go down glibly with us and that is the Curse of the ground For this seems to be an action unbecoming the Deity it looks like the frantick Passion of an angry Man who when he is displeased revenges himself upon every thing that is nigh him So here Moses who had not the Philosophy to divest the Deity of Passion brings him in raving upon the loss of his two Apples and cursing them all round and that nothing might escape his fury the poor Earth too is made barren in the midst of the angry fit Such an action as this Credentius looks unbecoming a wise Man who takes care not only to avoid Passion but to distribute the punishments to the Parties offending and therefore this History must be very injurious to the supreme Wisdom of the Deity to make the Earth suffer for the Sin of Man or because God was angry with Adam to represent him wreeking his fury upon the Innocent Earth Cred. I suppose Philologus The Cursing the ground on reflection upon the Deity you do not lay much stress upon the Innocency of the Earth or the Injustice of the Curse being laid upon it For Innocency and Injustice have place only among rational or at least