situation feared neither perishing by fire nor water), serve only for a confirmation of Noah's flood so many ages past, and the surer expectation of St. Peter's fire, we know not how soon to

come.

It remaineth then that we steadfastly believe, not only that the "heavens and earth, and all the host of them" (Gen. ii. 1.) were made, and so acknowledge a creation, or an actual and immediate dependence of all things on God; but also that all things were created oy the hand of God, in the same manner, and at the same time, which are delivered unto us in the books of Moses by the Spirit of God, and so acknowledge a novity, or no long existence of the creature.

Neither will the novity of the World appear more plainly unto our conceptions, than if we look upon our own successions. The vulgar accounts, which exhibit about five thousand six hundred years, though sufficiently refuting an eternity, and allaying all conceits of any great antiquity, are not yet so properly and nearly operative on the thoughts of men, as a reflection upon our own generations. The first of men was but six days younger than the being, not so many than the appearance, of the earth: and if any particular person would consider how many degrees in a direct line he probably is removed from that single person Adam, who bare together the name of man and of the earth from whence he came, he could not choose but think himself so near the original fountain of mankind, as not to conceive any great antiquity of the World. For though the ancient heathens did imagine innumerable* ages and generations of men past, though Örigent did fondly seem to collect

ἡμῖν δὲ, saith he, ὁ Νεῖλος εἰς τε τἆλλα σωτὴς, καὶ τότε ἐκ ταύτης τῆς ἀπορίας σώζει λυόμενος. p. 291. Thus the Egyptians pretend Nilus saved them from the flames of Phaethon. Nor were they only safe from conflagrations, but from inundations also. For when in Greece or other parts a deluge happened, then all their cities were swept away into the sea: Κατὰ δὲ τήνδε τὴν χώραν, save the priest, οὔτε τότε, οὔτε ἄλλοτε ἄνωθεν ἐπὶ τὰς ἀξούρας ὕδωρ ἐπιῤῥεῖ· τὸ δ ̓ ἐναντίον, κάτωθεν ἐπανιέναι πέφυκεν. ὅθεν καὶ δι ̓ ἃς αἰτίας τἀνθάδε σωζό μενα λέγεται παλαιότατα. p. 299. Egypt receiving not their waters from above by clouds, but from below by springs from the river Nile, was out of danger in a deluge, and thereby preserved the most ancient monuments and records. But, alas! this is a poor shift to them who believe that in the great and universal flood, "all the fountains of the great deep were broken up, and the windows of heaven were opened." Gen vii. 11.

So

So Cicero indeed speaks, innumerabilia sacula, in his book of Divination: and Socrates in Plato's Theætetus brings

this argament against the pride of great and noble families, that they who mention a succession of their ancestors who have been rich and powerful, do it merely: ὑπ' ἀπαιδευσίας, οὐ δυναμένων εἰς τὸ πᾶν ἀεὶ βλέπειν, οὐδὲ λογίζεσθαι, ὅτι πάππων καὶ προγόνων μυριάδες ἑκάστω γεγόνασιν ἀναρίθμη τοι, ἐν αἷς πλούσιοι καὶ πτωχοί, καὶ βασιλεῖς καὶ δοῦλοι, βάρβαροί τε καὶ Ἕλληνες πολλάκις Mugio yeyóvaσiv orov p. 118. as if every person were equally honourable, having innumerable ancestors, rich and poor, servants and kings, learned and barba

rous.

+ Origen did not only collect the eternity of the World from the coexistence of all God's attributes, as because he is παντοκράτωρ and δημιουργός, therefore he was always so, for how could he be inουργὸς ἄνευ δημιουργημάτων, οι παντοκράτως ἄνευ των κρατουμένων; but also from the ninetieth psalm, "From everlasting to everlasting, thou art God. For a thousand years in thy sight are but as yester day;" and that at the beginning of Ecclesiasticus, "Who can number the sand of the sea, and the drops of the rain, and

so much by some misrepresentations of the Scriptures; yet if we take a sober view, and make but rational collections from the chronology of the Sacred Writ, we shall find no man's pedigree very exorbitant, or in his line of generation descent of

many score.

When the age of man was long, in the infancy of the World, we find ten generations extend to one thousand six hundred and fifty-six years, according to the shortest, which is thought, because the Hebrew, therefore the best account; according to the longest, which, because the Septuagint's, is not to be contemned, two thousand two hundred and sixty-two, or rather two thousand two hundred and fifty-six. From the flood brought at that time upon the earth for the sins of men which polluted it, unto the birth of Abraham, the father of the faithful, not above ten generations, if so many, took up two hundred and ninety-two years according to the least, one thousand one hundred and thirty-two according to the largest account. Since which time the ages of men have been very much alike proportionably long; and it is agreed by all that there have not passed since the birth of Abraham three thousand seven hundred years. Now by the experience of our families, which for their honour and greatness have been preserved, by the genealogies delivered in the Sacred Scriptures, and thought necessary to be presented to us by the blessed evangelists, by the observation and concurrent judgment of former ages, three generations* usually take up a hundred years. If then it be not yet three thousand seven hundred years since the birth of Abraham, as certainly it is not; if all men who are or have been since have descended from Noah, as undoubtedly they have; if Abraham were but the tenth from Noah, as Noah from Adam, which Moses hath assured us: then it is not probable that any person now alive is above one hundred and

the days of eternity?" But Methodius, bishop and martyr, hath well concluded that disputation: ταῦτά φησιν ὁ Ωριγένης σπουδάζων, καὶ ὅρα οἷα παίζει. [Vid. p. 83.]

By the Greeks called yeveal, which are successions of generations from father to son as in St. Matt. i. 17. Indeed sometimes they take it for other spaces of time as Artemidorus observes, for seven years. Κατ ̓ ἐνίους μὲν ἔτη ζ'. ἔθεν καὶ λέγουσιν οἱ ἰατρικοὶ, τῶν δύο γενεῶν (not grav, as Wolfius and Portus would correct it) μηδένα (not μὴ δεῖν, as Suidas) φλεβοτομεῖν, τὸν τεσσαρεσκαιδεκέτη (not τεσ. σαρεσκαιδέκατον, as Suidas transcribing him negligently) Aéyores. Sometimes they interpret it twenty, twenty five, or thirty years, as appears by Hesychius. And by that last account they reckoned the years of Nestor: Κατ' ἐνίους δὲ λ'. ὅθεν καὶ τὸν Νέστορα βούλονται εἰς ἐννενήκοντα ἔτη για

yovival. So Artemidorus and the Grammarians. Although I cannot imagine that to be the sense of Homer. 'Iλ. A. 250. Τῷδ ̓ ἤδη δύο μὲν γενεαὶ μερόπων ἀνθρώπων Ἐφθίαθ ̓, οἳ οἱ πρόσθεν ἅμα τράφεν ἠδ ̓ ἐγέ

VOYTO.

And I conceive that gloss in Hesychius, Ἐπὶ διαστήματος χρόνων τῶν μὴ κατ ̓ αὐτὸ BeCianórar, to be far more properly applicable to that place. But, in the sense of which we now speak, it is taken for the third part ordinarily of a hundred years; as Herodotus, mentioning the Egyptian feigned genealogies: Καίτοι τριηκόσιαι μὲν ἀνδρῶν γενεαὶ δυνέαται μύρια έτεα· three hundred generations equalize ten thousand years: γενεαὶ γὰς τρεῖς ἀνδρῶν ἑκατὸν Tá iσTI. Enterp. c. 142. And after him Clemens Alex. Strom. I. i. c. 21. p. 145. Εἰς τὰ ἑκατὸν ἔτη τρεῖς εγκαταλέγονται γεviai.

thirty generations removed from Adam. And indeed thus admitting but the Greek account of less than five thousand years since the flood, we may easily bring all sober or probable accounts of the Egyptians, Babylonians, and Chinese, to begin since the dispersion at Babel. Thus having expressed at last the time so far as it is necessary to be known, I shall conclude this second consideration of the nature and notion of creation.

Now being under the terms of heaven and earth, we have proved all things beside God to be contained, and that the making of all these things was a clear production of them out of nothing; the third part of the explication must of necessity follow, that he which made all things is God. This truth is so evident in itself, and so confessed by all men, that none did ever assert the World was made, but withal affirmed that it was God who made it. There remaineth therefore nothing more in this particular, than to assert God so the Creator of the World as he is described in this Article.

Being then we believe in God the Father, maker of heaven and earth, and by that God we expressed already a singularity of the Deity; our first assertion which we must make good is, That the one God did create the World. Again, being whosoever is that God, cannot be excluded from this act of creation, as being an emanation of the Divinity, and we seem by these words to appropriate it to the Father, beside whom we shall hereafter shew that we believe some other persons to be the same God; it will be likewise necessary to declare the reason why the creation of the World is thus signally attributed to God the Father.

The first of these deserves no explication of itself, it is so obvious to all who have any true conception of God. But because it hath been formerly denied (as there is nothing so senseless but some kind of heretics have embraced, and inay be yet taken up in times of which we have no reason to presume better than of the former), I shall briefly declare the creation of the World to have been performed by that one God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.

As for the first, there is no such difference between things of the World, as to infer a diversity of makers of them, nor is the least or worst of creatures in their original, any way derogatory to the Creator. "God saw every thing that he had made, and behold it was very good," (Gen. i. 31.) and consequently likely to come from the Fountain of all goodness, and fit always to be ascribed to the same. Whatsoever is evil, is not so by the Creator's action, but by the creature's defection.

In vain then did the heretics of old, to remove a seeming inconvenience, remove a certain truth; and while they feared

to make their own god evil,* they made him partial, or but half the Deity, and so a companion at least with an evil god. For dividing all things of this World into nature substantially evil, and substantially good, and apprehending a necessity of an origination conformable to so different a condition, they imagined one God essentially good, as the first principle of the one, another god essentially evil, as the original of the other. And this strange heresy began upon the first spreading + of

the Gospel; as if the greatest light could not appear without a shadow.

"

Whereas there is no nature originally sinful, no substance in itself evil, and therefore no being which may not come from the same fountain of goodness. I formed the light, and create darkness; I make peace, and create evil; I the Lord do all these things," (Isa. xlv. 7.) saith he who also said, "I am the Lord, and there is none else, there is no god besides me." (Isa. xlv. 5.) Vain then is that conceit which framed two gods, one of them called Light, the other Darkness; one good, the other evil; refuted in the first words of the CREED, I believe in God, maker of heaven and earth.

:

But as we have already proved that one God to be the Father, so must we yet farther shew that one God the Father to be the Maker of the World. In which there is no difficulty at all the whole Church at Jerusalem hath sufficiently declared this truth in their devotions. Lord, thou art God which hast made heaven and earth, and the sea, and all that in them is : against thy holy child Jesus, whom thou hast anointed, both Herod and Pontius Pilate with the Gentiles and the people of Israel were gathered together." (Acts iv. 24. 27.) Jesus then Iwas the child of that God which made the heaven and the earth, and consequently the Father of Christ is the Creator of the World.

We know that Christ is the light of the Gentiles by his own interpretation; we are assured likewise that his Father gave him, by his frequent assertion: we may then as certainly conclude that the Father of Christ is the Creator of the World, by the prophet's express prediction: "For thus saith God the Lord, he that created the heavens and stretched them out, he which spread forth the earth, and that which cometh out of it; I the Lord have called thee in righteousness, and will hold thine hand, and will keep thee, and give thee for a covenant of the people, for a light of the Gentiles." (Isa. xlii. 5, 6.)

And now this great facility may seem to create the greater difficulty for being the apostles teach us, that the Son made all things, and the prophets that by the Spirit they were produced, how can we attribute that peculiarly in the CREED

him. Hist. I. iv. c. 11. Irenæus relates how he spake with Polycarpus bishop of Smyrna, who was taught by the apostles, and conversed with divers who saw our Saviour, l. iii. c. 3. Neither was Marcion the first who taught it at Rome, for he received it from Cerdon. Habuit et Cerdonem quendam informatorem scandali bujus, quo facilius duos Deos cæci existimaverunt.' adv. Marcion. 1. i. c. 2. This Cerdon succeeded Heracleon, and so at last this heresy may be reduced to the Gnostics, wo derived it from the old gen

tile philosophers, and might well be emtraced by Manes in Persia, because it was the doctrine of the Persian Magi, as Aristotle testifieth. ̓Αριστοτέλης ἐν πρώτο περὶ φιλοσοφίας καὶ πρεσβυτέρους( τοὺς Μάγους) εἶναι τῶν Αἰγυπτίων, καὶ δύο κατ ̓ αὐτοὺς εἶναι ἀρχὰς, ἀγαθὸν δαίμονα καὶ κακὸν δαίμονα. Laert. in Proamio, p. 2. And this derivation is well observed by Timotheus, presbyter of Constantinople, speaking thus of Manes : Παρὰ δὲ Μαρκίωνος καὶ τῶν πρὸ ἐκείνου αἰσχροποιῶν καὶ δυσσεβῶν καὶ τῶν κατὰ Περσίδα μάγων ἀφορμὰς λαβὼν δογματίζει δύο ἀρχάς.