but one great family. Had a single people only given an account of the creation somewhat resembling that of Moses, or preserved a tradition that one of their ancient kings escaped from the waters of a deluge; we might then with justice conclude, that the former of these coincidences was merely accidental, and that the latter related entirely to a partial inundation. But, when we find, that nearly all the pagan cosmogonies bear a strong likeness to each other, though different deities may be represented by different nations as completing the work; and when we meet with some tradition of a deluge in every country, though the person saved from it is said, in those various accounts, to have reigned in various districts widely separated from each other: we are constrained to allow, that this general concurrence of belief could never have originated from mere accident. While the mind is in this situation, Scripture comes forward; and offers to it a narrative more simple, better connected, and bearing a greater resemblance to authentic history, than any of those mythological accounts which occur in the traditions of Paganism. A conviction immediately flashes upon the understanding, that this must be the true history of those remarkable facts, which the Gentiles have handed down to us only through the medium of fable and allegory. The universality of similitude between Heathen and Mosaical antiquities bears down every objection; and the authenticity of the Pentateuch is placed upon the sure basis of undesigned coincidence.

The history of the Jewish Legislator commences with an account of the creation of the world. This is a subject, that has perpetually engaged the attention of the more inquisitive part of mankind in all countries; but in the east, the cradle of the human race, we find those accounts of it, which accord most accurately with the page of Scripture.

I. The inhabitants of Chaldea, long celebrated for their astronomical observations, and deducing their origin from the most remote antiquity, are now utterly extinct as a separate people; and their learning has in a great measure perished with them. Some remains however of their sentiments respecting the creation of the world are preserved in the page of Syncellus from Berosus and Alexander Polyhistor.

Whatever knowledge they had of this event, they ascribe it to the teaching of an amphibious monster, denominated Oannes. Like the emblematical deity so common throughout Asia, his form consisted of the body of a man terminating in the tail of a fish. By day he ascended from the waters of the Erythrèan Sea, and conveyed his instructions in a human voice to the assembled multitudes: but at night he retired from the land, and concealed himself within the recesses of the ocean.

There was a time, taught the fish-seer, when all things were darkness, and water, and confusion. In the midst of this chaotic fluid existed various monsters of horrible forms: and over it presided the gigantic demon Omoroca. At length the des

tined hour of creation arrived: the monster Omoroca fell subdued beneath the victorious arm of the god Belus the mishapen animals, which composed her empire, were annihilated: and the world was formed out of her substance. Matters having been thus far prepared, Belus next divided the darkness from the light, separated the earth from the heavens, disposed the world in regular order, and called the starry host into existence. As for the human species, it was formed by other inferior deities out of the dust of the earth mixed with the water of the ocean. Hence man was endowed with intellect, and became a partaker of the divine reason. Oannes however taught, that the physiological part of this account was not to be understood literally, but was to be taken merely in an allegorical sense: for, since Omoroca was no real character but only a personification of the sea, the fable was to be interpreted as allusive to the aqueous origin of the Universe.'

In this tradition we may observe a primordial watery chaos, a separation of darkness from light and of earth from heaven, an orderly disposition of the habitable world, and a confession that the starry host was created by an intellectual agent. We may likewise observe the production of man from the dust of the earth and we may perceive a distinct recognition, that his soul was made in the image of God because it partook of the divine reason, Such points of similitude to the Mosaical

account are abundantly clear, though mingled largely with what is confessedly fabulous or allegorical. Let us reject the mythic humour of the tradition and the residue will approve itself to have originated from the Noëtic school of ancient Patriarchism.

II. The cosmogonic system of the Egyptians, as exhibited by Diodorus Siculus, rests upon the crazy foundation of absolute atheism. Hence I think it not improbable, that they may have received it from those Cuthic or Phenician shepherds; who once subjugated their country, and who, like their brethren in other parts of the world, seem to have been addicted to the impious speculations of Buddhism. But, if we may place any dependance upon an ancient book ascribed to their earliest Thoth or Hermes-Trismegistus, they had also a more rational account of the creation, which in many respects bears a striking resemblance to the Mosaic history.

In the beginning there was a boundless darkness in the abyss: but water and an intelligent ethereal Spirit acted, with divine power, in the midst of Chaos. Then a holy light issued forth: and the elements were compacted together with sand of a moist substance. Lastly, the whole frame of seminative nature was, by all the gods, distributed in proper order."

Here we have the divine incubating Spirit, the primeval Chaos, the aboriginal darkness, the first

Herm. Serm. Sacr. c. 3.

produced light, the creation of the elements, and the orderly distribution of all things, set forth in a manner not very dissimilar to that of the inspired narrative. The order likewise of succession is much the same in both accounts: and their general resemblance is such, that it can scarcely be thought to have originated from mere accident. It is not impossible, that, as the Egyptians seem to have learned their atheistical system from the royal Shepherds; so they may have received a correction to it from those other Shepherds, who are said by Manetho to have likewise dwelt as strangers in the country, and who from his description of them were plainly the children of Israel.' Moses, we are told, was learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians and, as he thus frequented the schools of their Brahmens, we may easily conceive, that, in return, he communicated to them some portion of his own divine and better wisdoin.

III. I have just intimated my suspicion, that the Egyptians may have received their atheistic cosmogony from the Phenician Shepherds; who were an eminent branch of the daring house of Cush, who had migrated into Palestine from the shores of the Erythrèan sea or the Persian gulph, and who had previously left their early settlements at the sources of the Indus and the Ganges. These Ethiopic warriors have, in all ages, been votaries of Buddha or Saman: and, though they despised

Joseph. cont. Apion. lib. i. § 14, 15, 26, 27.

2 See my Orig. of Pagan Idol. book vi. c. 4, 5.

2