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Whether with particles of heavenly fire
The God of nature did his soul inspire,
Or earth, but new divided from the sky
And pliant still, retained th' etherial energy,
Which wise Prometheus tempered into paste,

And mixed with living streams, the God-like image cast.
Thus while the mute creation downward bend

Their sight, and to their earthly mother tend,
Man looks aloft; and with erected eyes

Beholds his own hereditary skies.

From such rude principles our form began,

And earth was metamorphosed into man."-Ov. Met. I. I. v. 68.

29. And God said, Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat.

"As the parts and members of the mortal body were liable to decay and exhaustion, the gods provided for it the following remedy :-intermingling a nature resembling that of man with other forms and senses, they planned, as it were, other animals, such as kindly-disposed trees, plants, and seeds, which are made useful to us by agriculture."-PLAT. Timous, c. 34.

"The fruits and tender herbage God created for this very purpose, that they might be food for us."-IBID. c. 38.

"Man, for whose sake all other things appear to have been produced by nature."-PLIN. Hist. Nat. 1. vII. c. 1.

31. And God saw every thing that he had made, and behold it was very good. And the evening and the morning were the sixth day.

"When the parent Creator perceived that this created image of the eternal gods had life and motion, he was delighted with his work."-PLAT. Tim. c. 10.

"Plato says of the Deity that he rejoiced when he had created the world and given it its first motion."-PLUT. Lycurg. c. 29.

"God arranged and established the whole world, in which all things are fair and good."-XEN. Mem. 1. iv. c. 3.

"Anaxagoras, who received his learning from Anaximenes, was the first who affirmed the system and disposition of all things to be contrived and perfected by the power and reason of an infinite mind."-CIC. de Nat. Deor. 1. 1. c. 11.

"The works of nature are brought into existence complete and perfect in every respect."-PLIN. Hist. Nat. 1. XXII. c. 56.

GENESIS II.

2. And on the seventh day God ended his work which he had made; and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had made.

"The Creator, after arranging all these particulars (of creation), retired to his accustomed repose."-PLAT. Timæus, c. 15.

7. And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground.

"Natives of the soil." (auróx@ovas)-PLAT. Critias, c. 3.

"One of those men who, in primitive times, sprang from the earth.”—IBID. c. 7. "The paltry body is by nature clay."-EPICT. 1. IV. c. 11.

"Anaximander affirmed that men were first engendered within fishes, and there nourished like their young fry; but afterwards, when they became sufficient and able to help themselves, they were cast forth, and so took land."-PLUT. Sympos. 1. vIII. qu. 8.

"Earth

To what she now supports, at first gave birth."-LUCR. de rer. nat. I. 11. v. 1155. "The human race sprung from the hard earth."-IBID. I. v. v. 923.

"Thus sings the poet's lay,

Prometheus, to inform his nobler clay,

Their various passions chose from every beast,

And with the lion's rage inspired the human breast.”—HOR. 1. 1. carm.16. "Brutus, as if he had accidentally stumbled, fell and touched the earth; considering that she was the common mother of mankind."-LIV. 1. LI. c. 56.

"When the world was new, and the sky but freshly created, men, born from

the riven oak, or moulded out of clay, had no parents."-Juv. Sat. VI. v. 11.

7. And breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul.

"Be of good courage. Mortals are of divine origin."-PYTH. Aur. Car. v. 63.

"If there be anything in man partaking of the Divine nature, it must surely be the soul, which governs and directs him."-XEN. Socr. mem. 1. IV. c. 3.

"We must, at some former time, have learned what we now remember. But this is impossible unless our soul existed somewhere before it came into this human form; so that from hence also the soul appears to be something immortal."-PLAT. Phædo, c. 18. "A man's soul is, after the gods, the most divine of all his possessions."IBID. de leg. 1. v. c.1.

"This body (says Jove) is not thine own; but only a finer mixture of clay. But I have given thee a certain portion of myself, the faculty of exerting the powers of pursuit and avoidance, of desire and aversion."-EPICT. 1. 1. c. 1. See also 1. IV. c. 11.

"If a person could be persuaded of this principle as he ought, that we are all originally descended from God, and that He is the father of gods and men, I conceive he would never think meanly or degenerately concerning himself. But having two things in our composition intimately united, a body in common with the brutes, and reason and sentiment in common with the gods, many incline to this unhappy and mortal kindred, and only some few to the divine and happy one."-IBID. 1. I. c. 3.

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Prometheus, when yet no other men were in existence, formed them after an idea which he had conceived in his own mind. Minerva assisted him by breathing a living breath into the clay and giving to his new creatures the soul which they wanted."-LUCIAN. ad dicent. Prom. es, c. 3.

"In the first place all natural philosophers say that man is made up of soul and body."-LUCIL. 1. XXVI. v. 17.

"There is a divine energy in human souls."-Cic. de div. 1. 1. c. 37.

"When the human race was scattered over the earth it was animated by the divine gift of souls, and as men retained from their terrestial origin those other particulars by which they cohere together, which are frail and perishable, their immortal spirits were ingenerated by the Deity. From which circumstance it may be truly said that we possess a certain consanguinity, and kindred, and fellowship, with the heavenly powers."-Cic. de leg. 1. 1. c. 8.

"The soul, that breath of God."-HOR. 1. II. Sat. 2.

"Reason is nothing else but a particle of the Divine Spirit infused into the human body."-SENEC. ep. 66.

"To brutes our Maker, when the world was new

Sent only life: to men, a spirit too;

That mutual kindness in our hearts might burn,

The good which others did to us, to return."-Juv. 1. xv. v. 148.

"As birds are provided by nature with a propensity to fly, horses to run, and wild beasts to be savage, so the working and sagacity of the brain is peculiar to man; and hence it is that his mind is supposed to be of divine original.-QUINTIL. 1. I. c. 1.

8.

And the Lord God planted a garden, eastward in Eden; and there he put the man whom he had formed.

9. And out of the ground made the Lord God to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food.

Hesiod and others of the poets describe four ages marked with their distinct emblems and characterised by the terms gold, silver, brass, and iron, in a manner which reminds us of the image in the Vision of Nebuchadnezzar. (Dan. 11. 31.) The two first ages of Hesiod appear to have preceded the Deluge; and the former of these alone, the golden, referred to the state of man in Paradise. The shorter duration of life in the silver age applies, however, to the period after the flood.

"When gods alike, and mortals rose to birth,
Th' immortals form'd a golden race on earth,
Of many-languag'd men: they liv'd of old,
When Saturn reign'd in heaven-an age of gold.
Like gods they liv'd, with calm untroubled mind,
Free from the toil and anguish of our kind:
Nor e'er decrepid age mis-shap'd their frame,
The hand's, the foot's proportions still the same:
Pleased with earth's unbought feasts, all ills remov'd,.
Wealthy in flocks, and of the blest belov'd:
Death, as a slumber, press'd their eye-lids down:
All nature's common blessings were their own.
The life-bestowing tilth its fruitage bore
A full, spontaneous, and ungrudging store.
They, with abundant goods, midst quiet lands,
All willing, shar'd the gatherings of their hands."

HES. Oper. et dier. v. 108.

"The land of Cyclops first, a savage kind,
Nor tamed by manners, nor by lands confined:
Untaught to plant, to turn the glebe and sow;
They all their products to free nature owe.
The soil untill'd a ready harvest yields;
With wheat and barley wave the golden fields;
Spontaneous wines from weighty clusters pour,
And Jove descends in each prolific shower.
By these no statutes and no rights are known,
No council held, no monarch fills the throne,
But high on hills or airy cliffs they dwell,

Or deep in caves whose entrance leads to hell."

"It is said there was once an earth-born race. (nyevès) tended them, and was their protector. .

HOм. Odyss. 1. Ix. v. 106.

The Deity himself They had fruit in abundance from oaks and many other trees; not grown by land-tilling, but given spontaneously by the earth. They lived, too, for the most part, naked-upon no strewed couch, and in the open air, for the temperament of the seasons was not painful to them; theirs were soft beds of grass, springing up without grudging from the earth.

The men of that time were ten thousand-fold happier than those of the present."-PLAT. Politic. c. 15-16.

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The knotted oak shall show'rs of honey weep,

And through the matted grass the liquid gold shall creep."
VIRG. Ecl. IV. v. 6-24.

"How blest man liv'd in Saturn's golden days,

E'er distant climes were join'd by lengthen'd ways.
Secure the pine upon the mountain grew,
Nor yet o'er billows in the ocean flew ;
Then every clime a wild abundance bore,
And man liv'd happy on his natal shore:
For then no steed to feel the bit was broke,
Then had no steer submitted to the yoke;

No house had gates (blest times!), and, in the grounds,

No scanty land-marks parcell'd out the bounds:

From every oak redundant honey ran,

And ewes spontaneous bore their milk to man:

No deathful arms were forged, no war was waged,

No rapine plunder'd, no ambition raged."-TIBUL. 1. 1. eleg. 3.

The garden of Eden may have given to the poets their idea of the Elysian fields, in which the souls of the just are represented dwelling, after death, in a state of rest and happiness. The poet Museus thus directs Eneas in his search for Anchises :

"In no fix'd place the happy souls reside.

In groves we live, and lie on mossy beds

By crystal streams, that murmur through the meads.
But pass yon easy hill, and thence descend,

The path conducts you to your journey's end.'

This said, he leads them to the mountain's brow,

And shows them all the shining fields below:

They wind the hill, and through the blissful meadows go."

VIRG. An. 1. vI. v. 673.

"The golden age was first, when man, yet new,
No rule but uncorrupted reason knew;
And, with a native bent, did good pursue.
Unforc'd by punishment, unaw'd by fear,
His words were simple, and his soul sincere :
Needless was written law, where none oppress'd,
The law of man was written in his breast.

The teeming earth, yet guiltless of the plough,
And unprovok'd did fruitful stores allow :
Content with food, which nature freely bred,
On wildings and on strawberries they fed;
Cornels and bramble-berries gave the rest,
And falling acorns furnished out a feast.
The flow'rs unsown in fields and meadows reign'd;
And western winds immortal spring maintained.

In following years the bearded corn ensued

From earth unask'd, nor was that earth renew'd;
From veins of vallies milk and nectar broke,

And honey sweating through the pores of oak."-Ov. Met. 1. 1. v. 89. "Great King of the ancient world, and of the primitive state of things, under whose rule quiet repose prevailed, and labour was unknown. And the earth yielded its riches without being cloven down to the infernal regions.”—MART. 1. XII. Epig. 62.

"The first race of men, free as yet from every depraved passion, lived without guile and crimes, and therefore without chastisements and restraints; nor was there occasion for rewards, when of their own accord they pursued righteousness; and as they courted nothing contrary to justice, they were debarred from nothing by terrors." -TAC. Ann. 1. III. c. 26.

12. There is bdellium and the onyx stone.

"In the vicinity of India is Bactriana, in which region we find bdellium, that is so highly esteemed. This tree is of a black colour, and about the size of the olive; it has leaves like those of the robur, and bears a fruit similar to that of the wild fig, and in nature resembling a kind of gum."-PLIN. Hist. Nat. 1. XII. c. 19.

18. I will make him a help meet for him.

"Marriage is so ordained by nature as to form not only the most agreeable, but also the most useful companionship of life."-CIC. Econ. ex Xen. 1. 1.

21. And the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept; and he took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh instead thereof;

22. And the rib which the Lord God had taken from man, made he a woman, and brought her unto the man.

Compare with this Gen. I. v. 27., " Male and female created he them."

"Our nature of old was not the same as it is now. It was then one man-woman; whose form and name partook of, and was common to both the male and the female. Then Jupiter said, I will divide them into two parts."-PLAT. Sympos. c. 14-15

24.

Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife; and they shall be one flesh.

"Socrates said that those who love each other, from being two, became, after a manner both one."-ARISTOT. Polit. 1. II. c. 4.

25. And they were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed.

"Shame does not pertain to a worthy man, since it is produced by bad conduct. Shame does not pertain to the virtues."--ARISTOT. Eth. 1. IV. c. 9.

GENESIS III.

1. Now the serpent was more subtil than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made. And he said unto the woman, Yea, hath God said, Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden?

2. And the woman said unto the serpent, We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden :

3. But of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God hath said, Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die.

Hesiod in his Theogony mentions the serpent who guards the golden apples; alluding, most probably, to some tradition or representation of the serpent and the forbidden tree in Paradise. The passages quoted seem also to refer to that time when the curse-" Upon thy belly shalt thou go, and dust shalt thou eat," had not yet been pronounced.

"Ceto brought forth

Her youngest-born, the dreadful snake, that, couch'd

In the dark earth's abyss, a wide domain,

Holds o'er the golden apples wakeful guard."-HES. Theog. v. 333.

"Those nurtured by Kronos (Saturn) had the power to converse not only with men but with brutes likewise."-PLAT. Politic. c. XVI.

"The Hesperides and the dragon that guarded the golden apple."-LUCIAN. de Saltat. c. 51.

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