in all parts of it. And Acosta tells us, that, at the first discovery of America, the inhabitants of Peru did worship one chief God, under the name or title of the Maker of the Universe: and yet these people had not had any commerce with the other known parts of the world, for God knows how many ages.

To which may be added, that the most ancient of the philosophers, and those that were the heads of the chief sects of philosophy, as Thales, Anaxagoras, and Pythagoras, did likewise consent to this tradition. Particularly concerning Thales, Tully tells us that he was the first of all the philosophers that inquired into these things, and he said that water was the beginning of all things, and that God was that mind (or intelligent principle) which fashioned all things out of water. So likewise Strabo informs us that the Brahmins, the chief' sect of philosophers among the Indians,

agreed with the Grecians in this, that the world was made of water. Which agrees exactly with Moses' account of the Creation, viz. that the Spirit of God moved upon the face of waters; which St. Peter 29 expresses thus, "That by the word of God, the heavens and the earth (for so the Hebrews call the world) were of old ἐξ ὕδατος συνεζῶσα, constituted or made of water;" not "standing out of the water," as our Translation renders it.

Nay, Aristotle 30 himself, who was the great asserter of the eternity of the world, gives this account why the gods were anciently represented by the heathens as swearing by the lake Styx, because water was supposed to be the principle of all things. And this, he tells us, was the most ancient opinion concerning the original of the world; and that the very oldest writers of theology, and those who lived at the greatest distance from his time, were of

this mind. And in the book "De Mundo" it is freely acknowledged to have been an ancient saying, and a general tradition among all men, That all things are of God, and were made by him. I will conclude this with that full testimony of Maximus Tyrius" to this purpose: "However," says he, "men may differ in other things, yet they all agree in this law or principle, that there is one God, King, and Father of all things, &c. This the Greeks say; this the Barbarians; this those that live upon the Continent, and those that dwell by the sea; the wise and the unwise."

2. We have likewise a most ancient and credible history of the beginning of the world; I mean the history of Moses, with which no book in the world in point of antiquity can contend. I shall not now go about to strengthen my argument, by pleading the Divine authority of this book; for which yet I could offer

good evidence, if that were proper to the matter in hand. It is sufficient to my present purpose that Moses have the ordinary credit of an historian given him, which none in reason can deny him, he being cited by the most ancient of the heathen historians, and the antiquity of his writings never questioned by any of them, as Josephus 3 assures us.

Now this history of Moses gives us a particular account of the beginning of the world, and of the creation of it by God. Which assertion of his is agreeable to the most ancient writers among the heathen, whether poets or historians. And several of the main parts of Moses' history, as concerning the flood, and the first fathers of the several nations of the world (of which he gives a particular account") do very well accord with the most ancient accounts of profane history. And I do not know whether any thing ought more to recommend

the writings of Moses to a human belief, than the easy and credible account which he gives of the original of the world, and of the first peopling of it.

As to the account of ancient times, both the Egyptian and Chaldean accounts, which are pretended by some to be so vastly different from that of the Scriptures, may for all that be, near the matter, easily reconciled with it 35; if we do but admit what Diodorus Siculus and Plutarch, very credible persons and diligent searchers into ancient books, do most expressly assure us, viz. that both those nations did anciently reckon months for years. And the account of the Chinese is not hard to be reconciled with that of the Septuagint. Now in so nice and obscure a matter as the account of ancient times is, it ought to satisfy any fair and reasonable inquirer if they can be brought any whit near one another.

So that universal tradition and the