The name of the first is Pison;

And the Lord God
planted a garden east-

ward in Eden; and
there he put the man
whom he had formed.
And out of the ground
made the Lord God to
grow every tree that is
pleasant to the sight
and good for food; the
tree of life also in the
midst of the garden,
and the tree of the
knowledge of good and
evil. And a river went
out of Eden to water the
garden, and from thence

it was parted and be

that is it which came into four heads. compasseth the

whole land of And the Lord God took Havilah, where

there is gold; the man, and put him

and the gold of

cond river is Gi

hon: the same is it

that encompasseth

the whole land of

Ethiopia. And

the name of the

third is Hiddekel;

that is it which

that land is good: into the garden of Eden goeth in front of

there is bdellium

Assyria1. And

and the onyx- to dress it, and to keep the fourth river is

stone. And the name of the se

it, &c.

Euphrates.

PART III.

CHAP. XIV.

'The Hiddekel, or Tigris, runs along the western side of ancient Assyria; that is, along that front or face of Assyria which looks towards Judea. The word, signifies both, ante, antrorsum-before, in front of, and, versus Orientem

PART III.

CHAP. XIV.

That the illustration intended is unskilful, and does not answer to the text, is manifest ; for, the text describes one river, whereas the gloss assigns four rivers. Michaelis learnedly shows, that w, heads, denotes sources in all the Oriental languages1; so that the confluence of four streams, proceeding from the four sources or heads to which the historian traces them, produced the one river related by Moses; which therefore can have no relation to the

four rivers recited in the gloss. The younger Rosenmuller, who interprets "quatuor fluvii

66

four rivers," is obliged nevertheless to add, "fluvius ille, ex quo quatuor alii orti sunt "hodie frustra quæritur—that river, out of "which four other rivers arose, is in vain sought

for at the present day?" Nor can we wonder at this ill success, for it is the nature of all rivers to grow by confluence; no river separates its waters into different rivers, unless at the delta formed of alluvial soil at its mouth by

- towards or on the east; and much error has been occasioned by confounding the two significations. In this place, it manifestly signifies in front of, and therefore, on the west of Assyria; not "towards the east of Assyria," as our version renders it in common with many others. The first interpreters have correctly rendered it, xatvarti Asoupiar— "in front of Assyria.",

2

1 Suppl. ad Lex. Heb. n. 2300. * Schol. ad Gen. p. 23.

the perpetual conflict between the sea and its PART III. flood.

But, since all the rivers adduced in the Hebrew gloss have their origin in Armenia, the locality alone enables us to perceive, that its author was deeply impressed with the traditions respecting the seat of the renewal of the human race, and that he identified it with that of its origin in Eden; and that he thus violently applied to the latter, the characters properly and exclusively pertaining to the former. The fluvial description introduced into the four verses, cannot therefore be regarded, critically, as any part of the Mosaical history; and consequently, it can have no weight to affect the strong evidence which has been deduced from that history, and from the sense of the ancient Jewish and Christian churches, of the DESTRUCTION of the PRIMITIVE EARTH by the waters of the DELUGE,

CHAP. XIV.

CONCLUSION.

CONCLUSION. WE have now considered the principal arguments which have induced the mineral geology to assume, that there must have been more general revolutions of this globe than the Two recorded in the Mosaical history; and we have found, upon due examination, that the plu rality thus assumed is the offspring of defective investigation and unregulated fancy, and that the "numerous revolutions" alleged are all reducible, in point of fact, to those Two only.

In this second question, therefore; relative to the changes which this, globe has undergone since its first formation, and to the mode by which those changes were effected; the Mosaical geology has maintained the superiority over the mineral, which it established in the first question, relative to the mode by which that first formation was produced. It has maintained that superiority by showing, that in

each question it can endure the most rigid CONCLUSION. trial, by the test of Newton's principles of universal philosophy, and of his method of analysis and induction; whereas, the mineral geology, applied to the same test, is altogether rejected by it in both questions. Having therefore ascertained what we were originally to seek, viz. which of the two guides it behoves us to follow, as competent to conduct us, with the most perfect security, to a knowledge of those great historical secrets of time and nature which constitute the proper objects of true geology; let us now collect, and reduce into order, the general principles which we have obtained; and let us sketch out for ourselves a General Scheme, which may at all times guide our view in contemplating the phænomena apparent in the globe, and which may secure us against the fascination of unsubstantial theories, and the seduction of illusive analogies.

And, 1. We take our ground upon the concurrent principle of MOSES, BACON, and NEWTON: That GOD, in the beginning, created by His power, and set in order by the counsels of His intelligence, ALL material things; in such sizes and figures, and with such other properties, and in such proportions to space, as most conduced to THE END for which He formed them. This is the first principle in sane physics.