but the alien and stranger, who knew of no such orders for setting it apart for that use, might as freely eat it as any part of the creature. And I think this account of the prohibition of blood, will fully answer all the scruples which some Christians have about it. The use of it upon the altar is now over, and therefore the reason from abstaining from it is ceased. And though the Apostles at the council of Jerusalem, that offence might not be given to the Jews, advised the Gentiles at that season to abstain from it; yet, the eating it, or not eating it, is no part of our religion, but we are at perfect liberty in this matter.

In the third place, Gon set before them the dignity of human nature, and his abhorrence of any person's taking away the life of his brother; and commanded for the future, that murder should be punished with death. Then he promised Noah that mankind should never be destroyed by water any more; and lest he or his posterity should live in fear, from the frequent rains to which the world by its constitution was become subject, he appointed the rainbow for a per

f Acts xv.

Homer seems to have had a notion that the rainbow was at first (to use Moses's expression) set in the cloud to be a sign unto men; for he speaks to this purpose, Iliad.

λ v. 28.

That

* Εν νέφει σηριξε τερας μερόπων Ανθρώπων.

τέρας here signifies a sign, is evident from the fourth verse of this Iliad.

petual memorial, that he had made them this promise.

The ark, we said, touched upon mount Ararat. We do not find that it floated away from thence, but rather conclude that here they came ashore. But where this Ararat is, has been variously conjectured. The common opinion is, that the ark rested on one of the Gordyæan hills, which separate Armenia from Mesopotamia; but there are some reasons for receding from this opinion.

First, the journeying of mankind from the place where the ark rested, to Shinaar, is said to be from the East; but a journey from the Gordyæan hills to Shinaar would be from the North. Secondly, Noah is not once mentioned in the following part of Moses's history; a strong intimation that he neither came with these travellers to Shinaar, nor was settled in Armenia or Mesopotamia, or any of the adjacent countries. He was alive a great while after the confusion of Babel, for he lived three hundred years after the Flood. And surely if he had come to Babel, or lived in any of the nations into which mankind were dispersed from thence, a person of such eminence could not at once sink to nothing, and be no more mentioned in the history and settlement of these nations, than if he had not been at all. Some authors, for these reasons, have attempted to find Mount Ararat in another place, and suppose it to be some of

1 Gen. xi. i.

the mountains north of India. They think that the ark rested in this country, and that Noah settled here after he came out of it; that only part of his descendants travelled into Shinaar, the other part of them settled where he did; and that the reason why Moses mentions neither him nor them, was because they lived at a great distance from, and had no share in the actions of the nations round about Shinaar, to whom alone, from the dispersion of mankind, he confines his history. The reasons to be given for this opinion. are, First, If Ararat be situate as far East as India, the travellers might very justly be said to journey from the East to Shinaar. Secondly, This account is favoured by old heathen testimonies. "Two hundred and fifty years before Ninus (says Portius Cato) the earth was overflowed with waters, and mankind began again in Saga Scythia." Now Saga Scythia is in the same latitude with Bactria, between the Caspian sea and Imaus, north of Mount Paraponisus. And this agrees with the general notion that the Scythians might contend for the primævity of original with the most ancient nations of the world. The later writers, unacquainted with the original history of this people, recur to philosophical reasons to support their antiquity, and speak of them as seated near the Mæotis and Euxine Sea. But these Scythians so seated, must be some later descendants or colonies from the original Scythians; so late, that Heroditus '

Justin Lib. 2. c. I. 1 In Melpom.

* Ibid, c. 1. & 2.

imagined their first settlement under Targitanus, to be not above a hundred years before Darius's repelling the Scythians, who had invaded his provinces, i. e. about A. M. 3400; so late," that they thought themselves the most recent nation in the world. The original Scythians were situate" as I said, near Bactria. Herodotus placed them as far east as Persia; and says that the Persians called them Saca, and supposes them and the Bactrians to be near neighbours.

Thirdly, The notion of Noah's settling in these parts, as also his living here, and not coming at all to Shinaar, is agreeable to the Chaldean traditions about the deluge; which P inform us, that Xisuthrus (for so they called Noah) came out of the ark with his wife and daughter, and the pilot of the ark, and offered sacrifice to GoD, and then both he and they disappeared, and were never seen again; and that afterwards, Xisuthrus's sons journeyed towards Babylonia, and built Babylon and built several other cities. Fourthly, The language, learning, and history of the Chinese, do all favour this account; their language seems not to have been altered in the confusion of Babel; their learning is reported to have been full as ancient as the learning of the more western nations; their polity is of another sort; and their government

σφετερον,

m Σκύθαι λεγεσι νεωτατον απανίων εθνέων είναι Herod. ibid.

n See Ptol. Asiæ Tab.

ΤΟ

• In Polyhymn.

P See Syncellus, p. 30, 31. and Eusebius in Chron.

q

established upon very different maxims and foundations; and their history reaches up indisputably to the times of Noah, not falling short, like the histories. of other nations, such a number of years as ought to be allowed, for their inhabitants removing from Shinaar, to their place of settlement. The first king of China was Fohi; and as I have before observed that Fohi and Noah were contemporaries, at least, for there are many reasons from the Chinese traditions concerning Fohi, to think him and Noah the same person. First, they say, Fohi had no father, i. e. Noah was the first man in the postdiluvian world; his ancestors perished in the Flood, and no tradition hereof being preserved in the Chinese annals, Noah, or Fohi, stands there as if he had no father at all. Secondly, Fohi's mother is said to have conceived him encompassed with a rainbow; a conceit very probably arising from the rainbow's first appearing to Noah, and the Chinese being willing to give some account of his original. Thirdly, Fohi is said to have carefully bred seven sorts of creatures, which he used to sacrifice to the Supreme Spirit of heaven and earth and Moses tells us that Noah took into the ark, of every clean beast by sevens, and of fowls of the air by sevens: and after the Flood Noah built an altar, and took of every clean beast, and every clean

9 Martinii Hist. Sinica, p. 21.

Le Compte. Mem. of China. p. 313.

Gen. vii. & viij.

rld. ibid.