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"I believe, that God created heaven and "earth; and gave unto them constant and perpetual laws, which we call of Nature, which is nothing but the laws of the Creation: that the "laws of nature which now remain, and govern inviolably till the end of the world, began to be "in force when God rested from His work:- that, "notwithstanding God hath rested from creating "since the first sabbath, yet, nevertheless, He "doth accomplish and fulfil His divine will in all things, great and small, general and particular, as "full and exactly by providence, as He could "do by miracle and new creation; though His working be not immediate and direct, but by compass; not violating nature, which is His "own laws, upon His creatures1."

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1 Confession of Faith.

-END OF PART II.

NOTES.

NOTE [I.]

On the Mosaic Days of Creation.

THE learned and pious author of the Treatise on the Three Dispensations, in the geological disquisition which he has introduced, as it were episodically, into that work, has made a very strenuous effort, (which I have observed with extreme regret, and with equal astonishment ;) to secure to the word day, in the first chapter of Genesis, that distracting and improbable vagueness of signification, which shall render it available to denote measures of time from twenty-four hours to six thousand years, and even to periods wholly undetermined; adding, I must risk to say, intensity to the error which has already too much prevailed upon this philological and critical question. "In Scripture," says he, "nothing can well be more indefinite than the term which we translate by the English word day-in truth, the term, abstractedly, would be "more accurately expressed by the English word period "than by the English word day1."

These allegations, he thinks," may be proved, partly by the analogy of language, partly by the very necessity of the narrative, partly by ancient tradition, and partly

1 Vol. i. p. 111, 112. The sublime researches and speculations, and the ingenious expositions of this learned work, do not in any manner depend upon the confirmation of the geological theory which forms the third chapter of the first volume; and which is entirely distinct from, and extraneous to, its general argument.

(and that most decisively) by the discoveries, or possibly "the re-discoveries, of modern physiologists." With respect to the last of these supposed proofs, the Comparative Estimate was principally directed to an exposure of its fallacy; and, after examining, with the attention due to such a writer, the arguments which he has adduced in support of it, I must confess that I find nothing to make me apprehend, that the Comparative Estimate has not fully effected its original purpose. With respect to ancient tradition, derived from the Hindoos, Persians, and Etruscans, I must also frankly confess, that I regard it as totally null, and absolutely inadmissible in this particular question. With regard to the alleged necessity of the narrative, I shall have occasion incidentally to evince an opinion; but, I shall direct this note, principally, to an examination of the first point, viz. the analogy of language. And I shall here be under the necessity of endeavouring to render it conspicuous to every plain understanding, that the preceding positions of this pious and zealous expositor are the results of an hasty and incautious criticism, and that the conclusions which he draws from them are altogether fallacious and radically unsound, by shewing, that the Hebrew noun, day, is always definite in its import, if it be minutely examined and accurately apprehended; and that it essentially excludes the wide and extensive notion which we attach to the English word period." With a view to this very material purpose, I shall here consider the several significations which this highly respected writer has been led to ascribe to the word "day" in Scripture, in the order in which he himself has presented them.

10M —

1. "Sometimes," says he, " it denotes-a single revo"lution of the earth round its axis." This it may be said to do, in point of philosophical truth, and such undoubtedly will be its signification when interpreted by the science

of these latter ages; but it is, nevertheless, a great inaccuracy and oversight to affirm, philologically, that it therefore denotes that revolution in the original language, for, most assuredly, it does not. According to the genius of that language, the word only denotes, the portion of ACTUAL TIME which is included between two evenings, or two sun-sets. This is the whole extent and only true notion of the term, iom-day, according to its primitive and genuine acceptation in the language of the original Scripture. Simon, with much reason, considers its strictest sense to be confined to the time of light: "God called the light, day"—although it was habitually extended to its two nocturnal limits; and he deduces day," from the root iama "it is hot" preserved in the Arabic1; referring for his evidence, to Gen. xxxi. 40, and Jerem. xxxvi. 30. This interpretation is the more probable, because, as Michaelis has well observed; "all the first significations of primitive words relate "to the senses — omnes primitivorum prima significationes “in sensus incurrunt 2." It is of the most essential importance, to adhere closely to this discrimination, which is the key to all truth in the criticism on which we are entering; and to put the modern philosophical interpretation entirely out of sight, in pursuing philologically the true signification of the Hebrew iom-day, and in determining its proper meaning on every given occasion.

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2. "Sometimes," says he," it denotes a revolution of the earth round the sun, or what we call a natural "year." This statement is radically and palpably incor

"Sic dictus (ab caluit, ferbuit,) quia in regionibus, à primis "hominibus habitatis, calidissimus est, ut contrà nox frigidior: Conf. "Gen. xxxi. 40. Jerem. xxxvi. 30. Adde, quòd Deus nomen istud "luci, naturâ suâ calidæ, primitus imposuit, Gen. i, 5." Lex. Hebr. et Chald.

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rect; as will be immediately perceived on consulting the authorities to which he appeals. Num. xiv. 34. "After "the number of days in which ye searched the land, even forty days, each day, 10м, for a year, SHANAH, shall ye "bear your iniquities, even forty years." And reversely; Ezekiel, iv. 6. “Thou shalt bear the iniquity of the “house of Judah forty days, I have appointed thee each day, 10м, for a year, SHANAH.” I would venture to ask the respected author, in which of these two passages does the word day" denote a revolution of the earth round the sun, or a natural year?" It is not possible to keep the proper and distinctive significations of those terms more entirely separate, than they are kept by their contra-positions in these two cited passages. In both, the word day has relation only to" a single "revolution of the earth round its axis," although it does not denote it; and that diurnal revolution God was pleased to ordain, expressly and specially, in those two particular cases, first for the exemplar, and, secondly, for the representative, of an annual revolution; but the term day, 10м, has no other than its simple signification in either passage.

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The remaining passage of the Hebrew Scriptures to which the learned author appeals, and to which the two passages which he cites from the Greek Scriptures are subordinate, is to be brought to another and a very different criterion of eriticism. Dan. xii. 11, 12: "And from "the time that the daily sacrifice shall be taken away, &c., there shall be IAMIM a thousand two hundred and ninety. Blessed is he that waiteth and cometh to the IAMIM a thousand, three hundred, and thirty-five." We know, that the plural, -iamim-days, sometimes obtains the singular signification of a year, because a year consists of a plurality of days; in which sense it denotes, conventionally, an exact annual complement of