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and the Euphrates , being well known , determines in some degree that of the other two . We are not , however , to look for a place where all their sources centre ; it
is-enough that they verge towards one point . Wonderful changes happen in the courses of rivers , during a much shorter period than six thousand years / ' We are hence led to tke presumption that it is of the land of the Israelites of which
Moses writes , and which he calls the garden of Eden , or the delightful spot ; and there are many places m the scriptures in which the possessions of the Israelites are
described by their prophets , with all the warmth of poetry , as a perfect paradise . It was in this land that the first pair ate the forbidden fruit , and from which they were driven out .
To Adam only one prohibition flnd one threat were published . There was but one offence for which he could lose the favour of
God , and the enjoyment of his local privileges . The same is true of the Israelites . It was only for the sin of idolatry that they were threatened to be driven from the
land which £ hey had received for an inheritance . The words < selected on the two occasions , by way of warning , were strikingly alike ; and neither of them meant what they seemed to import * To Adam " In the day thou eatest thereof them
shalt surely die "—* and to flhe Jews "And lest thou lift up thine eyes Unto heaven , and , when tbou seest the sun , and the moon , and the stars , even all the hosts of heaven , shouldst be driven to worship ^ them and serve them , &c . I call heaven and earth to witness , that ye shall soon utterly perish from off the land ; ye shall not prolong your
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days upon it , but shall utterly be destroyed / ' And also by Ezekiel , in almost the very words of Moses : " Turn ye , turn ye ; why will ye die , O hou&e of Israel . * Both the first human Dair . and
their descendants , the children of Israel , did actually forfeit their blessings , by breaking the only covenant that was made between them and their God . And what was the result of it ? Did they die ? No—neither the one northe other . Adam and his wife were driven
out of Eden ; and the Jews were driven out of the same land many centuries afterwards . Now to show that this driving out , which the scripture writers call death , was probably in bath cases for the self-same offence , you will observe that the Divine Being could not mean , as the event proves , that either Adam or the children of Israel should die when
they fdl into the sin which he cautioned them against , but that they should be removed from a state of perfect ease , in which he had placed them , to one of labour ,
anxiety and sorrow . Moses forewarned the Israelites , whom he had planted in an Eden , a good land , well supplied with blessings of a sensual and a social kind , that , in the midst of them , and before their eyes , was a forbidden fruit , and one whose appearance had a most fascinating influence orer them ( so much so , that all the endeavours of himself and his successors Could not keep them from eating of that forbidden tree ) . He told them , in language which needs no comment , that in the day in Which they ind-nlged in that delight they would morally , and should politically die . That > as they hatd been the instruments in the hands
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toju . ix . 3 b
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On the Fall t > f Man . 593
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), July 2, 1814, page 393, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2442/page/9/
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