particular tree; had determined, that whilst they kept within this injunction, no evil spirit should get within them to hurt them; but, if they would be seduced to break through it, that neither they nor their posterity should ever after be able to be proof against the evil one---; does this look like the way of supreme understanding, according to the reason and nature of things, and therefore to be the way of God with man ?"---I have, I think, given this objection all the strength of which it is capable; at least I am sure that I have endeavoured so to do. If I could find words which would express it more advantageously, I would use them; for I take this, in reality, to be the whole hinge upon which all that is to be said against the religion of the Bible can turn. Let us now attentively consider how far we can answer it.

Here the material point to be considered is, whether the particular manner of the temptation objected to, was not, in reality, exactly suited to the œconomy, or manner and measure in which the Creator had made man? God, the divine workmaster, must have so or dered his dispensations, as to be suitable to the measure and nature of his works, for which they were designed. Such as he made man, to such he dispensed, that he

Qualis ab incepto procederet,

HOR.

might have the progress and procedure of his being exactly suited to what were his original native powers and endowments. Had God made man such a being, that a true and right intelligence of the nature of things would, at all times, instantly have occurred to his mind

to give him a right judgment concerning them, the natural way of temptation to such a being, might have been to admit a perverted spirit to try his better judgment, to draw him, if he could, from his own right sentiments into evil. But if God at first made man with lesser powers, such a permission would have subjected him to an unequal conflict indeed; for, however reasonable it may appear, that the wicked one should be permitted to attempt to catch away that which is sown in our hearts: when we need not lose that which is sown, if we be willing to preserve it; it cannot follow, that it could be fit, that he should be admitted, before any thing was sown in the heart of man, so to possess the heart, as to make it naturally impossible that any good thing should find a place in it. Had God made man, at first, such as our rationalists assert, left absolutely to the guidance of natural light, to discover thereby the duties of his life; expecting no service from him, but what his own reason would suggest; it would seem unnatural, I might say, a contradiction, to assert, that, before man had done, or even thought good or evil, God should interpose, by giving him a law, which no reason, of his own could, without God's interposing, have laid before him; and, permitting him to be tempted by the voice of a serpent to break this law, absolutely to defeat all he might otherwise have

Si tales nos natura genuisset, ut eam ipsam intueri et perspicere eâdemque optimâ Duce cursum vitæ conficere possemus. Cic. Tusc. Quæst. lib. 3.

done, in pursuing what his natural powers would have led him to see to be the reason, and reasonable conduct of his life. But if, on the contrary, we may affirm, from what is written by Moses, that God did not create man with this beam of actual understanding, but gave him only the information of his senses, and a capacity of mind, free, as not being under an over-ruling instinct, and yet not having power to be so perfect, as to want no external information; and that God designed, wherever man should want it, to give him this information, by causing him to hear his voice from heaven; requiring him to have faith in him; to believe and obey whatever he should thus hear from his Maker; it is absolutely consistent with this economy, that he might give man, thus far, but no farther, endowed, such a command as Moses mentions, to be to him both a sign of what he was to expect from God, for the direction of his life, and an inviolate standard and remembrancer, to pay unto God, in every thing he should command, the obedience of faith. The faith of man in believing God, being thus derived from hearing, it could not be meet, that the temptation to disobey should come to him otherwise than by hearing; that, unless he would choose to pervert himself, no other should have a more intimate admittance to corrupt him. Now, if the temptation was thus to come to him only by hearing; surely we must allow, that what he heard from God, and all that he heard to tempt him to disobey God, must appear, in all the circumstances of both, to be very suffi

f Rom. x. 17.

ciently distinguished, so as to leave our first parents without excuse, for not strictly adhering to obey the one and reject the other. Thus the whole apparent reasonableness, or seeming contrariety to the reason of things, in what Moses relates, taken to be historically true, depends upon whether it be fact that God did at first create man to guide his own life, as himself should devise, left absolutely to himself to find out the reason of those duties which he should investigate and practise; or, whether God made man to hear his voice, in order to be directed by it; to receive whatever God should, by external revelation, make known to him; to make this the rule and guide of his actions. This, therefore, is a point so material, and so really the whole of man, that I hope I do not digress from the intention of my undertaking, if I now and then repeatedly endeavour to prove that this ought to have been the ruling principle of our first parents in their lives.

But, it is asked, "Was the prohibition a sort of spell, that, whilst our first parents observed it, so preserved them, that the evil one, although he was a spirit, could not approach to hurt them, nor they fall into evil, to their undoing; but, that as soon as they had broken through this charm, they became so liable to all evil, both from without and within, that henceforth all men would inevitably sin, and freedom from guilt would be now no more?" I answer, the dressing up a proposition in terms of ridicule, is not a just and reasonable way to discover what is true, or detect what is false."

See Mr. Brown's very excellent Essay on Ridicule.

It is raising an inconsiderate contempt of what ought to be brought to the bar of more deliberate examination, to be there approved or rejected, as a right and well, weighed judgment of things may appear for or against it. Now, if, instead of using frivolous words upon the occasion, which prove nothing, we take the point here to be considered under due enquiry; we shall see that the prohibition given to our first parents, as Moses relates it, was no spell or charm, but what was naturally both necessary and sufficient for them. Our first parents were made living souls; they had outward perception and inward understanding, but both only in such a degree, that if, in using them, they would admit the voice of God to direct them, wherever he should see they wanted direction; hereby they would be kept in the hand of God's counsel, so as not to fall into any error to their undoing. Their knowledge of life, and experience of their being, could not yet shew them their moral situation: how suitable then was it to have some one plain inhibition to teach them that they were not to do any thing whatever, which God should think fit, by his express voice, to prohibit? And as God was pleased to add hereto his express command, enjoining them the duties of their lives; what could they have wanted now, if they would truly have made this their

h God's adding to the prohibition of not eating of the tree, his command for the relative duty of man and wife, Gen. ii. 24. shews in what manner he would have been pleased to inform them, as time and the incidents of their lives should require, in their other moral duties.

Deut. iv. 6..