within herself, and over those of beings inferior to her, promising her remembrance and protection.

Should you ask me how such a mental flood could or can come upon mankind, I should answer, that among the ways of Providence, for the correction and regeneration of His creatures, we find in the Scriptures that He sends to the Israelites Moses and Aaron, armed with his word, to deliver their souls out of the Egyptian notions (Exo. 4. 12, 15); that to their posterity He sends judges, prophets, and kings, to lead them in His law; and afterwards Christ and his Apostles, to enlighten them, to bring them from the following of human and preparatory ordinances, to the very knowledge of the truth. We read also that to overthrow Ahab, the Lord puts a lying spirit in the mouth of false prophets (1 Kings, 22. 20, 22, 23); that He creates the waster to destroy (Isaiah, 54. 16); that to those that receive not the love of the truth, God sends them strong delusion that they should believe a lie (2 Thess. 2. 10, 11, Jere. 13. 13); that He sends the hour of temptation to try them that dwell upon the earth (Rev. 3. 10); that there is a time when He sends to the inhabiters of the earth and of the sea the evil spirit which deceiveth the whole world (Rev. 12. 9, 12); again, that He looseth Satan out of his prison that he may deceive the nations (20. 7, 8). From those and other passages, I conceive that the overflowing scourge (Isaiah, 28. 18), may come to men for their good, either by inspiration to every one, or by means of true or false prophets, promulgating right or wrong doctrines, that turn the human mind upside down (Acts, 17. 6); perhaps, by Noah alone, chosen

to destroy in others all abused notions, and to replace them by new and better principles; and receiving for that purpose so powerful a knowledge that no opinions, whether philosophical, whether spiritual, can stand against his mighty instructions (Isaiah, 54. 9).

I have been told that the years in the Scripture mean knowledges that seems to me to agree with Gen. 1. 5, since they are composed of days. Taking, then, for a fact that the Scriptural years are knowledges, even great knowledges, formed of days, which I understand to be spiritual knowledges partaking of the light; and of nights, which I consider as philosophical knowledges, having more or less of the obscurity that belongs to the human philosophy; the six hundred years of Noah, at the time of the flood, represent his soul, in my opinion, as having attained a great knowledge, or a great age in science, and the more able to increase and multiply, by imparting to others the philosophical life: the same I should think of his sons; the older seemingly the better for their mission: unless it be that when the soul is arrived at the highest degree of knowledge that is appointed unto her in any of the stages of her regeneration, she begins to lose, gradually, her active and generating powers, or faculties; to be more inclined to reflection and contemplation; to want rest from her labours; and verges, by degrees, towards a state of sleep, or spiritual death, wherein she remains till roused from it by fresh instructions, which give her a new life in a higher degree of regeneration (Ephe. 5. 14).

From what is said in Gal. 4. 22, &c. concerning Abraham's two wives, it seems to me possible that Noah's wife is of the same kind, not a common woman, but a

philosophical spirit or knowledge, that is, the companion, the help and comfort of his soul; and that the children that proceed from their union are likewise spirits that have a similarity in faith and an affinity with his own, and may assist his soul in the generation of others. The beasts of all kinds, clean and unclean, pure and impure, which enter into the religious system, that they may be preserved for the execution of the Almighty's purposes, seem to me to represent the inferior spirits and knowledges, good and evil, the qualities and defects, of which are formed the various spirits, minds, and characters of degenerate creatures. With that view Noah might be considered as being alone, by his own granted acquirements, quite sufficient for the generation of all in the human philosophy; the same as Christ is represented as being alone sufficient to teach and transmit the spiritual life: at the same time it does not destroy the possibility, nor the probability, which seems to me very great, that a certain number of creatures, having more or less of Noah's righteousness, and of others very inferior to him in knowledge, may be admitted by him into his religious system, that their knowledges and qualities may be preserved by it, and that they may afterwards serve and help him in the grand work of the regeneration of the soul; begetting the mentally dead in the human philosophy, by their instructions, the same as the spiritual philosophers, called the Apostles, beget by the word of God in Christ, in the very light, in truth itself: with this difference, however, that for the gendering in the knowledge of the two parts of the human philosophy, the union of two minds or of two persons, one whose chief business is to teach the good, and the other to ex

plain the evil and to guard against it, may be necessary; while that does not seem indispensable for the imparting of the spiritual life (Luke 20. 34, 35, 36). I feel, then, inclined to understand, also, by Noah's wife, a woman whose soul is like unto his, whose spirit is of the same degree of perfection as that which is the constant companion of his soul; a woman united to him by piety for a religious object; betrothed to him in righteousness, and in judgement, and in loving kindness, and in mercy (Hos. 2. 19, 20); and who may assist him in the fulfilment of his mission; by his sons, three men whose souls have received from his knowledge united with that of his wife, the principles of a religious life similar to theirs, and which partakes of their high philosophical knowledge by their wives, three women whose knowledge, qualities, and mental powers agree with their own, and who may concur with them in the teaching of the true philosophical life: by the beasts of all sorts that enter into Noah's religious system, philosophers more or less distant from him in knowledge and faculties, who can transmit to those that are inferior to them their own life in philosophy, but an imperfect one; according to their degrees in knowledge, and according to their qualities and defects. The hills and mountains spoken of in the Flood account, being parts of the earth, I take them for high human knowledges: in some verses of the Scripture I think they signify philosophers of high degrees. By the floods I understand destructive opinions -powerful instructions; and, also, philosophers whose knowledges are overwhelming.

Now I am going to make an application of those notions to most of the verses that relate to the Flood;

should my interpretations, some of which I own do not satisfy me fully, appear to you irreconcileable with the Sacred History, pay no attention to them; but do not, because you would take me to be mistaken, follow the example of those who reject the Scripture Flood altogether, because they cannot comprehend it. It is our duty to believe in it, since the Word of God speaks of it; but as it commands no where to understand it exactly as the ancient Jews have done, I think you may, without fear of being called presumptuous, use your own sense, and search for a more satisfactory intelligence of it than theirs. I hope a few words that I shall say in another place, respecting the Scripture and its time, will render my ideas on the present subject a little more intelligible than I imagine they will appear to you at first.

Genesis, 6. 1. And it came to pass when men, or when the souls that were led of the spirit of the world began to multiply, or increase, in the knowledge of the human philosophy, and had gendered (within themselves or within others) philosophical spirits or knowledges, having a similarity with their own, in the degree daughters.

2. That the souls that were led of the Spirit of God saw the knowledges or spirits gendered of or by human philosophers that they were fair, and did choose among them for companions and helpers to their own superior knowledge or spirit.

3. And the Lord said: my Spirit shall not always strive with the soul, for that she also is human yet her knowledges shall be