how to find a shelter, which might protect them. However, they attempted to do the best they could; they sewed fig-leaves together, and made themselves aprons.

They made themselves aprons. Here again Moses is supposed to say, what no one would have thought of, unless he imagined that our first parents had reasons of shame to cover some particular parts of their bodies. But Moses hints nothing like it: his words are, vajithperu aaleh teenah, vejaaashu lehem chaggoroth.m We may observe, that the word which we render leaves, is, in the text, not plural, but singular; and, I apprehend, that both here, and in some other places of scripture, it should be rendered, not leaves, but a foliature, or intertwining of leaves, and that the whole paragraph should be thus translated: they wreathed together a foliature of the fig-tree, and made themselves enwrapments; i. e. they wrapped themselves up in them.

As the text may be thus construed, Dr. Burnet's low ridicule of the beginning of the art of a seamstress, of their having neither thread nor needle, is without foundation. • En!' says he, primordia artis sutoriæ: sed unde illis acus, unde filum? Archæol. p. 293.-There was no want of any instruments to try to entwine tender boughs into one another, and it must seem a very natural thought for them to attempt a work of this nature.

What they wanted, was to hide themselves from God. An apron, or a cincture about their waists, would in no wise answer this purpose; therefore they could have no thought of so partial a covering; but the casing themselves up within boughs full of leaves, to look like trees, and thereby to escape his observation,--this might be a sentiment not too weak for a first thought of persons, who, when they found their investments inconvenient or insufficient, were still so ignorant and foolish before God, as to conceive, that they might possibly be hidden from Him behind the trees of the garden.

What Moses therefore relates, thus explained, is highly natural; they had broken the commandment of the Lord their God; and now it came into their mind, how shall we escape his observation? Will he not soon see us? and when he sees us, will he not punish? Every thought about themselves now was a new terror; their eyes were opened, and they saw they had no covering; their hearts were alarmed, they considered they had nothing wherewith they might protect themselves against him; whither now could they fly from his presence? or what should they do to ward off his displeasure? Had they now known the world, and the hiding-places which are therein, they would have gone into the dens and rocks of the mountains, and said to the mountains and rocks, fall on us, and hide us from the face of Him, and from his wrath to come." But they had, as yet, been little farther than the compass of their garden, and knew of no thicker cover than the leaves and shelter of their

"Rev. vi. 16.

trees; with some of these, therefore, they tried to wrap up and disguise themselves, as well as they could; and herein they seemed to amuse themselves, until towards the evening of the day: they then heard the voice of God moving from one part of the garden to the other;" which struck them with fresh confusion. Their fears came now upon them like an armed man; they were not able to abide in the way of the voice of God, but gat themselves into the closest thicket of trees they could find, and here they hoped to lie hid. But the voice of God, calling now more peremptorily, Adam, where art thou? darted terrors quite through him; he could no longer think that he was concealed, but came forth, confessing, that he was afraid because he was naked, and had therefore hid himself. The transaction is a most natural progress of conscious guilt; and the words which Adam now spake, are as natural, and a deep humiliation of himself before God. They are, as if he had said, I was afraid, and hid myself; but I see I am naked, I have no cover from thine eye; I know also that I am further naked, unarmed against, having nothing to oppose to, or protect me from thy power; I submit, Lord, do unto me as thou wilt.

It is very obvious to remark, how our translators and commentators came to have a notion of Adam and Eve's shame for their nakedness. In the last verse of the second chapter of Genesis we have this observation, that, they were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed. It being here observed, that no shame

Gen, iii. 8-10.

P Ver. 10.

attended their being naked before they ate of the tree, it was concluded that a shame of being naked entered with sin into the world. But I would, hereupon, offer to the reader's consideration,

1. That what is expressed in this 25th verse of the second chapter of Genesis, is an observation that has no manner of reference to, or connexion with, any thing before said, which might give occasion for it; nor does it any way lead to introduce what follows in beginning the next chapter. It seems, in its obvious sense, quite an independent remark, which might indeed be made by any one who considered, that at that time they were not clothed but had mankind never worn clothes at all, nothing was yet said which could have occasioned such an observation. Every thing which Moses had related, or proceeded to relate, would have been as full and complete without it as with it.

2. There are several observations of this sort, in many parts of the Old Testament, and in the Book of Genesis particularly, which the learned agree, were not originally in the text; but were hints written in the margin of ancient copies, as observations from, or upon, the text; and that transcribers from these copies, not carefully distinguishing, took them into the text; that such transcribers, not being modern, but more ancient than any printed copies, or, indeed, any manuscript bibles now extant; perhaps we have now no copies without some of these insertions in the text. If, indeed, the

9 See Prideaux's Connect. part i. b. v. Connect. Sacr. and Proph. History, vol. ii. b. vii. vol. iii, b. xii.

meaning of the verse we are treating was, that Adam and Eve were not ashamed at their wearing no clothing, and I could have any warrant from any one copy to omit it, I should be inclined to think it an insertion of this nature.

3. But I apprehend the truth is, that this verse was not intended at all to speak of their being naked, in respect to clothing. As the word naked has metaphorical senses in some passages of the Old Testament, so also has the word, which we here translate ashamed.' It is far from signifying, in all places, being affected' with what we call the passion of shame; it often means, being confounded or destroyed. The word here used is a termination of the verb [buosh, wa], and this is the verb used by Isaiah, where, recollecting how God had destroyed the kings of Canaan before the Israelites, and laid waste their fenced cities into ruinous heaps; he tells us, that their inhabitants were of small power; they were dismayed, [, veboshu.] He does not here mean that they literally had the passion of shame affecting them, but were confounded; were, as he proceeds, as the grass of the field, and as the green herb, as the grass on the house-tops, and as corn blasted before it be grown up. And this was Moses' meaning in the word here used; a meaning of it perfectly coinciding with what afterwards appeared to be his sentiment of man's standing personally to hear the voice of God. Moses, elsewhere, speaks of it as being no ordinary mercy, that a man

The Hebrew text is, wwan br.

32 Kings xix. 26. Isaiah xxxvii. 26.