were looked upon as enjoying immortality and happiness in the delicious retreat where the skies were for ever fair, and the soil adorned with flowers of amaranth and lawns of asphodel, blooming beside the banks of the sacred and mysterious river, which at length emerged from their joyous seat, and pursued its course to the sea, amidst the habitations of mortals. Hence such extraordinary rivers as the Nile and the Ganges were imagined as flowing from some fountain in heaven; and hence those solemn rites were instituted among the nations upon their borders, which, derived from traditions of Eden, obscurely pointed to that only mode whereby man might be cleansed from the pollutions of sin, and permitted to re-enter the paradise of God. Hence, also, some title of one of the four rivers of Eden was usually bestowed upon the particular stream thus venerated; and hence, as will be presently shewn, when they consulted the oracle in the midst of the grove or garden, surrounded by all that was mysterious and awful, they slew some appointed victim, and then clothing themselves in its skin, waited all night for the response they looked for. For nearly all these paradisi were esteemed oracular; and while they memorialized the happiness of the first parents of mankind in

immediate communion with God before their fall, they also pointed to that future state of existence where the presence of the Deity was to be again for ever enjoyed;-where sin and sorrow were to be done away; and of which state of existence, Eden itself presented but a feeble type or anticipation.

The paradisaic titles, however, were all derived to the postdiluvian world by tradition; for after the flood, no such place as paradise appears to have been in existence, on the surface at least, of our globe; and it is surprising to see the waste of learning which has been made, in order to discover the exact scite and situation of the garden of Eden. By the deluge, it seems likely that the whole earth was dissolved, and reduced again into its state of primeval chaos; and of course, therefore, any place, or mountain, or garden, or river, however well known it might have been to the inhabitants of the antediluvian world, could have no existence on the renewed surface of the earth, as it rose once more from the retiring waters. Tradition, handed down by the family of Noah, preserved some account of the former state of things, and particularly of paradise. For it seems clear, that after the expulsion of man from thence, on account of his fall, a tabernacle of Cherubim

was pitched on the east of Eden, and certain rites of sacrificature instituted, which had a reference to the restoration of mankind by the amazing plan of redemption and atonement, to the happy state he had so justly forfeited.

In a devout attention to these rites, accompanied with faith in the promised atonement, the religion of the patriarchs prior to the deluge, consisted. When that tremendous judgment was about to come upon the world, it appears likely that the sacred garden,* with all its mysterious accompaniments, was removed from the earth to some place of security, where scripture seems to affirm, it yet exists. For it is surely hard to conceive that the paradise planted by the immediate hand of God, which

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*“Know that in the trees, fountains, and other things of "the garden of Eden, were the figures of most curious things, by which the first Adam saw and understood spiritual things; even as God hath given to us the forms " and figures of the tabernacle, of the sanctuary, and of all "its furniture, the candlestick, the table, and the altars for "types of intellectual things, and that we might from them "understand heavenly truths. In the trees, likewise, and "fountains or rivers of the garden, he prefigured admirable "mysteries." Rabbi Simon Bar Abraham, cited by Hutchinson. Heb. Writ. p. 21. Τα δε δυο ξυλα, το της ζώης, και το της γνώσεως, ουκ έχηκεν ετέρα γη, αλλ' εν μόνω τω παραδείσω. Theoph, ad Autol. lib. ii. p. 101.

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contained the Tree of Life and immortality, which could suffer no sin unatoned for, to continue in it, which had witnessed the institution of the covenant of grace on the ruins of that of works, and which, lastly, was guarded by the Cherubim themselves, those awful images of the great ones;* it is hard, I say, to conceive that all this was swept away in the universal deluge. Inspiration, moreover, which can never fail, appears to have declared that the contrast to such a supposition is the real fact. It speaks of paradise as the abode of departed spirits in their intermediate state of existence; that state of being, where the redeemed enjoy an everlasting bliss, which is for ever and for ever brightening till the day of the consummation of all things, when Hades itself shall be no more; and even the happiness of paradise is to be swallowed up in the overwhelming glories of the beatific vision!

It is time, however, to consider a little the favoured inhabitants of this blissful garden, before the catastrophe of the fall. At the close of the sixth day, "God created man in his

*-Literally "the similitude of the great ones!" For further particulars on this point, the reader may be referred generally to the writings of Hutchinson, Spearman, Bate, Jones, and Parkhurst.

"own image; in the image of God created he

him; male and female created he them."* This description is afterwards given again, though in a form somewhat varied; "And the "Lord God formed man out of the dust of the

ground, and breathed into his nostrils the "breath of life; and man became a living soul." The tradition of man's being created "in the image of God," was very clearly preserved amongst the heathen. Thus Cicero declares that" He who knows himself, will, in "the first place perceive that he is possessed "of something divine, and will think that the " mind within him was dedicated like a sacred image." The authors of the Metamorphoses also, in terms equally plain, affirms that "the "divine counsel formed man after the image "of the gods, who govern all things." This divine counsel, the poet personifies as Prometheus, who, as Hyginus expressly tells us, "first formed men out of clay," while Vulcan, at the command of Jove, added the woman; to whom "Minerva gave a soul, and the rest of "the gods each conferred some gift; so that "she was called from this, Pandora." Here we

་་་་་་་་་་*

Cic. de Leg. lib. i. cap. 22.

Hyg. Fab. 142.