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which the thing related by him, might have been done, besides the particular one he has adopted, we may have no reason to believe the particulars declared by him, exclusive of all others. But I see no point hence gained towards infidelity; because the authority of the inspired writer, not being destroyed, but only, for argument sake, put aside out of the question; the foundation of God remaineth still sure; the authority of the inspired writer, whenever we look back to it, brings its force along with it, to assure us, that what is declared by such writer must be true, and ought to be believed by us. Our disputant, therefore, seems to me contriving rather how to beguile us, than substantially to confute us. To be desired, for argument sake, to lay aside the authority of sacred writ, to examine how far the truth of what is declared, is such, that by reason alone, without other authority, we may prove it, is a specious proposal; but if, upon such examination, we find of the matter enquired after, that, had it not been authentically related to have been done in a particular manner,

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many other ways might be conceived, in which it might as reasonably have been effected; if we will not here re-assume the authority of the relation made to us, to give it its just weight to determine our belief, we cannot be said to be reasoned out of our faith; for we inconsiderately give it up, without any reason for our so doing.

For man to tell how human life began,
Is hard; for who himself beginning knew?
MILTON'S Par. Lost, b. viii.

For man to pretend further to speak of his own actual knowledge of things done and past, before he had any being, is, in the nature of the thing, impossible. But that Adam, during the space of a life of above nine hundred years," should recollect all that he had experienced from the time when he had a knowledge of his being; should conceive that he had revelations from the voice of God, of all that God thought fit to make

› Adam lived 930 years, Gen. v. 5.

VOL. IV.

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known unto men; of his creation of the heavens and the earth, and of all the host and creatures of them; that Adam should frequently inculcate to his children all he thus knew; that authentic narrations of these things should have come down from before the flood to the posterities that were afterwards; and that when Moses wrote his history, there should have been no such obsolete remains, as we now may be apt to think them; are things in themselves not at all improbable.

From Adam unto Abraham, considering the then duration of man's life, is, comparatively speaking, no greater length for even tradition, than from our father's grandfather unto us. Abraham lived to A. M. 2183,* to see Jacob, the father of Joseph, about fifteen

There might have been among the faithful, before the flood, more express revelations than have come down to our times. Bishop of London's Dissert. II. p. 237. See Jude, ver. 14. See Connect. vol. i. b. i. * Connect. b. vi.

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years old; Jacob had, from his youth up, been a diligent enquirer into, and observer of the hopes" and fear of his fathers," and had, himself, many revelations from God." He came down unto Joseph, and lived with him in Egypt seventeen years before he died.' He lived full of the hope of the promises, and died in the belief of them," and left Joseph as fully embracing them, and persuaded of them, and testifying them unto his brethren, when he also died.' Joseph lived to see his son Ephraim's children of the third generation;'. Moses was not lower than in the third generation from Levi; and the father of Moses must have been well known personally to Joseph. Put these things together, and we may reasonably admit all that had been believed from the be

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to his sons very largely, Gen. xlviii. xlix. 29.

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ginning in this family, might have come down unto Moses so authentically testified, that all he wrote, from the creation to his own times, might unquestionably be received by his brethren and fathers as well warranted to be true. And, agreeably hereto, we find, that notwithstanding all the opposition he had from his Israelites, enough surely, during the whole forty years he had the charge of them," to make it plain, that they were not a people disposed implicitly to believe him; but rather, wherever they could find the least pretence for it, most zealously asserting a liberty to gainsay and contradict him; notwithstanding, in all he had related to them from the creation to his becoming their leader, we have not one hint, that they disbelieved it, even in any parti cular at all.

"See Connect. vol. iii. b. xii.

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