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the heaven: The days were distinguished, and the years were numbered. They made the earth round, and surrounded it with the deep ocean, upon the banks of which they placed the giants. One day, as the sons of Bor, or the gods, were taking a walk, they found two pieces of wood floating upon the water; these they took, and out of them made a man and a woman. The eldest of the gods gave them life and souls; the second motion and knowledge; the third the gift of speech, hearing and sight, to which he added beauty and raiment. From this man and this woman, named Askus and Embla, is descended the race of men who are permitted to inhabit the earth.”
It is easy to trace out in this narration vestiges of an ancient and general tradition, of which every sect of paganism hath altered, adorned or suppressed many circumstances, according to their own fancy, and which is now only to be found intire in the books of Moses. Let the strokes we have here produced be compared with the beginning of Hesiod's Theogony, with the mythology of some Asiatic nations, and with the book of Genesis, and we shall instantly be convinced, that the conformity which is found between many circumstances of their recitals, cannot be the
