'wonder is, not that any, but that so few, traces of the history of each of these fifty-five 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. 20. Reflection upon the sacred text will teach us, that the division of the earth followed very close upon the confusion of the human tongue at Babel, and was intimately connected with or arose wholly out of it. 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 onepeople, 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. 21. 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 distribution of these generations, every one after his tongue after their families, must have been immediately, 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 350 years, when he died in the 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, fifty-eight years, with whom, consi * 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. + According to the generation given by St. Luke, c. iii. dering 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. 22. The longevity of the post-diluvian patriarchs was not confined to the heads of particular families or septs, whose ages the sacred penman has recorded. There is no sugges tion 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. 23. The mind, by reflection, familiarizes with the practicability of tradition, in reckoning the few links of 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 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. 24. These premises admitted, it follows, that general national traditions of this early period command a deference, 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 add higher honour 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. 25. The Mosaic era is a period of more than common interest and importance to the inquiry into the substantial truth or total fiction of the ancient history of Ireland. It fixes a time before 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 inquiry 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 era. 26. Whether Ireland were, as its annals say, inhabited before the flood, we refrain from considering. But it is obvious to remark, that if it were, the fact 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 cotemporaries; and by them have been transmitted down to their descendants.* There is no physical reason why Ireland should not have been inhabited before the flood. It no where appears to have been a post-diluvian discovery that Ireland existed. On the contrary, the allotment of the isles of the Gentiles to Japhet, appears to have been the ef * The observation of Mr. Davies, which has been before referred to, is pointedly relevant to this hypothesis. Spain, and even Britain, were probably colonized by those who were born within a century of the deluge. fect of ante-diluvian knowledge. Many and various relicts of former habitations must, in the supposition of its antediluvian population, have remained visible after the waters had subsided: it might consequently have appeared to the first post-diluvian colonists, that the island had been formerly inhabited. These appearances would verify the tradition, which they must have brought with them from the mother country: Nor can it indeed be presumed, that an island so distant from Asia, which was the cradle of the human race, should in such early times have been a chance discovery of adventurers and explorers of lands unknown. 27. It appears essential to the intellectual perfection in which God created Adam, that his knowledge should have extended beyond his eye sight; that he should have possessed full and correct geographical knowledge of that earth which the Lord had created for him and his posterity. The gradual occupation of the globe by our ante-diluvian ancestors could not have been the chance wandering of the parents or children as their curiosity or conveniency prompted, but was probably effected by the common parents allotting different and distant regions to the heads of different families, as his inspired knowledge suggested for the more speedily peopling the whole surface of the globe. 28. It must be presumed, that the knowledge which Adam had received by divine inspiration was carefully communicated to his children; that by them it was transmitted to their successive posterity; that it was concentrated in Noah and his sons; that after the deluge it became in like manner diffused through and transmitted by their respective descendants to future and remote generations. The Irish annals scarcely disagree from the Mosaic accounts of the space of time, which intervened between the deluge and the confusion of tongues, viz. 145 years. * * The short and simple account given of this wonderful period, by the sacred penman, is beyond example comprehensive and instructive, Gen. xi. v. 6. "And the Lord said; Behold the people is one, and they have all one language: and this they begin to do: and now no thing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do. Go to, let us go down, and there confound their language, that they may not understand one another's speech: and so the Lord scattered them abroad from thence upon the face of all the earth: and they left off to build the city. Therefore is the name of it called Babel because the Lord did there confound the language of all the earth, and from thence did the Lord scatter them abroad upon the face of all the earth." What words could more distinctly connect the scattering over all the earth, with the confusion of the one or common language. 29. If we particularize the general report of the sacred text, and if by dropping the imposing glare and awe of great antiquity, we bring the circumstances within the familiar judgment of our daily conceptions, it will clearly appear that this allotment or distribution of all the earth amongst certain families could only have been made by those who claimed the paramount right of ownership over the whole : these were Noah and his three sons, upon whom, by divine preservation from the deluge, the proprietorship of the restored earth naturally devolved. As the hand of Providence had with a special and supernatural manner interposed to give each family their own tongue, or a new dialect, these patriarchs, perceiving their descendants thus separated by language into distinct communities, judged it wise and necessary to allot them separate portions of the earth, in which to live apart from each other, and to preserve them from confusion, strife, and contention for property. As this settlement was an allotment or distribution (or according to the frequently repeated scriptural phrase, a scattering over) of all the earth, it necessarily follows, that those who managed or directed such allotments or distribution, must have possessed a geographical knowledge of the earth, and particularly of the extent, nature, soil, situation, boundaries, and climate of the different nations or divisions, into which the ante-diluvian population of the globe had ramified. Allowing this general settlement of all the earth amongst a given number of the descendants of Noah, not to have been a mere lottery or scramble, but an apportionment by knowledge, judgment, and authority, it will follow that the islands were not appointed to those who knew or possessed not the art of navigation. 30. It must be presumed, that the islands were imme This seems not to import an inspiration of as many new languages, as there were human individuals then existing, which would have rendered language perfectly useless for all the purposes of social intercourse. Nor was it, as it seems, an extinction of the original tongue, but such a modification or dialect of it, as to render it immediately unintelligible to the retainers of the old, or the acquirers of the different new dialects: this only can be termed a confusion of the language: and as the sacred text enumerates fifty-five of the descendants of Noah, amongst whom the division of the whole earth was then made, every one after his tongue, after their families in their nation, it appears reasonable that as many new dialects or modifications of the original tongue, were miraculously effected, as there were distinct families, amongst which the earth was to be alloted or divided, otherwise each family could not have had its several respective tongue. |