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"Now the Lord had said unto Abram, get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father's house, unto a land that I will shew thee. And I will make of thee a great nation; and I will bless thee, and make thy name great, and thou shalt be a blessing, and I will bless them that bless thee, and curse him that curseth thee; and in thee shall all the families of the earth be blessed."

IMMEDIATELY upon the fall, it was declared by the Lord God to Adam, that the seed of the woman should bruise the serpent's head." This great and most blessed revelation of Christ, who was set forth by God as a propitiation through faith in his blood, with the cherubic em blems of the three in Jehovah, whose will, cove nant, and decree, it was to save an innumerable

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company of the sinners of mankind from sin, satan, death, and hell, by the incarnation, obedience, and death of the only begotten Son of God, was the gospel which the antediluvian patriarchs were favored with. Noah, on his coming out of the ark, offered his burnt-offerings to Jehovah, in the faith of Christ's one efficacious oblation of himself in the fulness of time. And hereon the everlasting covenant is afresh proclaimed and established, with a fresh renewal of the revelation concerning the promised seed; the Almighty Conqueror of sin, satan, death and hell.

These words, "Whoso shed deth man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed," for in the image of God made he man, refer to Christ, the woman's seed. A learned writer says, the word whoso, is not in the original, it is, "he who sheds man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed." So that it is from the mouth of Jehovah, a fresh declaration concerning Jesus Christ, that Omnipotent One, who should destroy satan, who was the original cause of introducing the shedding of man's blood, and of propagating sin and death amongst mankind. It was God's immutable will that he whose trade and business it had been to shed man's blood, and bring him under the power of death, should be completely conquered by man, by the God-man, who is the image of the invisible God. The reason given, why the shedder of man's blood should be

destroyed, shews, that the attempting his destruction, must be the most enormous crime a creature could commit, and deserved the most exemplary punishment; namely, that he, the murderer of man, should be destroyed by the man who was his perfect image; or that seed of the woman who should finally bruise the head of the old serpent, called the devil.

Noah lived three hundred and fifty years after the flood, and saw the inhabitants of the new world, almost as corrupt as those were who lived in the old world. He conveyed down the true knowledge of the essence and personalities of Jehovah to the times of Terah, the father of Abraham, and died but two years before the birth of Abram, in the year of the world 2006, and lived to see the tenth generation after him before his death. Shem stands on the list of the generation of the new world, or, the world after the flood, without father, or mother, as to any mention of them, or beginning of days, or end of life. Hence some have affirmed him to be Melchizedeck. He was the beloved of God; an elect vessel of mercy. He was truly blessed, because he had Jehovah, the three in covenant, for his God. In the account given of him, it is recorded, that his father, in a prophetic manner, pronounced what would be the case and circumstances of his other sons in their posterity, and of him, and his also, saying, "Blessed be the Lord

God of Shem." Or rather, says one, as there is neither verb nor tense in the original," Blessed is Shem of the Lord his God." His name was in the book of life. He begat Arphaxad the second year after the flood, which was in the year of the world 1658. Selah, his son, was born in the year of the world 1693. Eber, the son of Selah, was born in the year of the world 1723. He was the longest liver of all born after the flood, and they who came after him lived not half so long: he outlived Abraham. Ainsworth says, Adam and all the patriarchs spake in the Hebrew tongue and it was used by all the world for the space of 1715 years, till Peleg, the son of Eber, was born, and the tower of Babel was building, which was one hundred years after the flood. After which it was in use among the Hebrews, and was conveyed down to Abraham by Eber, the oldest man born since the flood. Peleg, the son of Eber, was born in the year of the world 1757. In his days the earth was divided. By which Dr. Lightfoot understands the confounding of the languages at Babel: and as this happened about the time of his birth, his name was given as a memorial of it. And the age of man from that time was shortened. He died the first of the postdiluvian patriarchs, to shew the Lord's displeasure with that rebellion against his majesty and worship; which broke forth in the year of his birth. The original of

idolatry, which began at Babel, in the land of Shinar, or Babylon, or Chaldea, where a city and tower was begun to be built to the names, or to the heavens, seems to be this. Men began, from their observations, to see and know, that fire, light, and air, the three great agents in nature, had a universal influence in carrying on all the operations in nature, and that their effects were manifested throughout the whole of our system, They, therefore, began to ascribe divinity to them, and worship them under the idea of various attributes which they gave them, from the effects which were seen to be produced by them.

Adam, in paradise, understood that the Lord God had created the heavens into a machine capable of supporting themselves mechanically by perpetual motion and circulation, in imitation of perpetual life, and of communicating motion, and so life, to animal bodies, as a type of the life that he, the incomprehensible Jehovah, is the fountain of, and as a memorial of the life the essential Three in the one Jehovah have to give to the soul. So that hereby, in the state of purity Adam was in before his fall, the great mystery of the Trinity was made clear to his understanding by sense.

This, which may well be called bible philosophy, was communicated to those patriarchs he was cotemporary with. Noah was well ac

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