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Confusion

of the human

in tracing the genealogy of Abraham from Shem, says, that he was 100 years old when he begat Arphaxad, two years after the flood; and that Shem lived after that 500 years, and begat sons and daughters; that Arphaxad, at the age of thirty-five, begat Sale, and lived 303 years after, and continued to beget sons and daughters; and that Sale, after having begotten Heber at the age of thirty, survived 403 years. The continuance of the genealogy of Abraham shews, that notwithstanding the great longevity of man in those days, he was in virile maturity before thirty; and each of them lived from two to five centuries, begetting sons and daughters, although their particular genealogies be no further noticed by the sacred penman. Considering then, that in the days of Abraham so many other human individuals, his cotemporaries, had probably received the same traditions from their immediate parents, who had lived above two centuries with Noah, the wonder is, not that any, but that so few traces of the history of each of these fiftyfive families of Noah, exclusive of that of Heber, are to be met with. They must have been continued for a great length of time in their respective institutions and governments; for their variations and changes, (from the universal lapse of mankind into depravity they were never for the better,, their suspension and final extinctions must have been gradual, though irregularly, occasioned by local circumstances.

Reflection upon the sacred text will teach us, that the division of the earth followed very close upon the Babel. confusion of the human tongue at Babel, a nd was in timately connected with, or arose wholly out of it,

tongue at

For, in the scriptural stile, Almighty God is introduced as conversing with man, and is made to say, And the Lord came down to see the city and the tower, which the children of Adam were building, and he said behold it is one people, and all have one tongue and then for preventing their accomplishing their presumptuous designs of building a tower up to heaven, their tongues were confounded, so that they should not understand one another's speech, and so the Lord scattered them abroad from thence upon the face of the earth.

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This allotment, or apportionment of the earth amongst the heads of the then second and third generations of Noah, appears to have been, not only subsequent in time to the confusion of the human tongue, but consequent to it as to effect. For as it pleased God to defeat an arrogant or presumptive resolution of man before their separation, which they foresaw must necessarily soon follow*, it is no vain assumption, but a necessary conclusion, that the scattering or dis tribution of these generations, every one after his tongue after their families, must have been imme. : diately, or, at least, soon after each family had a separate tongue. This multiplication of languages happened, according to the more generally received opinion, about 140 years after the deluge. Noah survived the deluge 250 years, when he died in the

* Gen. xi. 4. And they said, go to, come let us build us a city and a tower, whose top may reach into heaven: and let us make us a name lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth.

Longevity no patriar.

lege.

850th year of his age; and as Abraham, though the 11th generation from Noah, was born 292 years after the flood, yet did he live contemporary with his direct progenitor, the ante-diluvian patriarch, fiftyeight years, with whom, considering the select vocation of Abraham to be the father of the faithful, it is to be presumed he often conversed, and received knowledge and instruction concerning the state of the ante-diluvian world, and of the more interesting events, through the ten generations from Adam down to the times of Abraham himself.

The longevity of the post-diluvian patriarchs was not chal privi- confined to the heads of the particular families or septs, whose ages the sacred penman has recorded. There is no suggestion in the sacred text, that this was a special privilege of a particular lineage. The abbreviation of the days of man was gradual, though general; and innumerable were the sources, through which the tradition of ancient times was handed down from cotemporary generations through the several parts of the inhabited world.

Links of

tradition

Moses.

The mind, by reflection, familiarizes with the prac between ticability of tradition, in reckoning the few links of Adam and the chain, which connect the twenty-five centuries, that intervened between Adam and Moses, who was born 805 years after the flood. For as two persons, Methusalem and Noah, sufficed to transmit the traditions of Adam to Abraham, so four persons sufficed to carry it on to Moses, who committed to writing so much of the history of mankind, as was necessary to illustrate

* According to the generation given by St. Luke, c. iii.

that series of events, which terminated in the establishment of the order of grace. Isaac was seventy-four years of age at the death of Abraham: Jacob was 119 when his father Isaac died. Levi, the grandfather of Moses, had attained threescore before the death of Jacob; Amram, the father of Moses, had attained the age of thirty-six when Levi died; and Moses lost his father Amram after he had arrived at the mature age of fifty-eight years. Barring, then, all the collateral sources of cotemporary transmission, seven individuals, according to the sacred record of Genesis, have in fact sufficed to connect the chain of tradition for about 2500 years between Adam and Moses.

in favour

and Rome.

These premises admitted, it follows, that general Prejudices national traditions of this early period command a de-of Greece ference, which latter traditions, more likely to have been disguised by pagan mythology, or exaggerated by the imagery and fancies of ancient bards, cannot raise claim to. It is no uncommon, though a most unwarrantable assumption, that beside the scriptural authority, credit can be allowed to no history before the writings of the Greeks and Romans. The prejudices of classical education, in favour of the works of these two polished nations of antiquity, have thrown a general discredit upon the pretensions of every people, which sets up a claim to more ancient and authentic annals, than any handed down to posterity from Greece or Rome. Their arrogance in barbarizing all other nations than themselves, has unaccountably operated through every age to fix the prejudice of the latest posterity. Yet nothing will

Consequence of

æra to the

the Irish

annals:

add higher honor to the present age, than to refute this imposing error of two score centuries. Where moral incongruity, where physical impossibility, where metaphysical inconsistency interfere not, there the question is open to reason, and her voice fairly put forth will ultimately be heard.

The Mosaic æra is a period of more than common the Mosaic interest and importance to the enquiry into the subauthority of Stantial truth, or total fiction of the ancient history of Ireland. It fixes a time, before which the use of letters was known. It fixes the place, in which the progenitors of the Milesian race then resided. It traces the origin of the language and institutions, which they brought with them into Ireland. It clears of total fiction the arrival of that colony, whence sprung the race of monarchs, who successively ruled it down to its invasion by our second Henry. The object of our research is, whether there be that moral certainty of the existence and continuance of the Milesian race of sovereigns in Ireland, which commands rational belief. This involves not the enquiry into the immediate origin of the inhabitants, which the colony found on their arrival. That event the Irish annalists fix at the year of the world 2737, and 1300 years before the christian æra.

Noah probably knew

Whether Ireland were, as its annals

say, inhathe state of bited before the flood, we refrain from considering.

the whole

ante-dilu- But it is obvious to remark, that if it were, the fact

vian popu

lation. was in all human probability known to Noah and his

sons, when they entered the ark: and if known, would have been communicated to their co-tempora

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