ADAM As one of the objects in these selections is to afford a specimen of whatever the industrious learning of Bayle may supply in illustration of the eccentricities of human opinion, we here give an example of the vagaries of imagination in respect to Adam. We shall not however fatigue our readers much in this way, satisfied that while such lore ma interest in regard to a few leading traditional characters it cannot be materially extended with profit to any party.—Ed. ¹³.

Specimen of the strange and visionary Opinionsconcerning him.

The stem and father of all mankind was immediately produced by God on the sixth day of the creation; his body having been formed of the dust of the earth, God breathed a spirit of life into his nostrils; that is to say, he animated him, and made the compound that is called man, which comprehends an organized body and a rational soul. The same God which produced Adam, placed him in a fine garden; and, to put him in a state to impose a name on the beasts, he made them all come to him; afterwards he caused a deep sleep to fall upon him, and took a rib from him, of which he made a woman. Adam knew that the woman was “ bone of his bone, and flesh of his flesh and they lived together without being ashamed to see themselves naked. There was a tree in the garden, of which God had forbidden them to eat on pain of death; yet the woman, seduced by a serpent, did not forbear to eat of it, and to persuade Adam to eat of it also. From that time they perceived that they were naked, and made themselves aprons with fig-leaves sewed together. God came and pronounced to them the punishment that he would inflict upon them, drove them out of the garden, and made them clothes of skins. Adam called his wife Eve, and consummated his marriage. He became the father of Cain and of Abel, and afterwards of Seth, and of divers other sons and daughters, the names whereof are not known, and died at the age of 930 years.

This is all the certainty we have on the subject of Adam. A great number of other things that have been said of him, are either very false or very uncertain; it is true, some of them are not contrary to the analogy of faith, or to probability. I place in that last rank what is asserted of his vast science, of which we read nothing in Genesis but what is less fit to promote that idea than to discourage it. According to the common opinion, Adam knew more, the very first day of his life, than any man besides can learn by long experience. Scarce any thing beside future events, the thoughts of the heart, and one part of individual beings, escaped his notice. Cajetanus, who ventures to rob him of the perfect knowledge of the stars and of the elements, was much censured for it. Some, having made it a question whether Solomon ought not to be excepted out of the general position which gives the preference to Adam’s knowledge above that of all other mortals, have been reduced to acknowledge that Adam was more knowing than Solomon. It is true that Pinedo excepts politics; but no regard is paid to his particular opinion; and it is determined, that the speculative understanding of the first man was endowed with all the philosophical and mathematical knowledge which human nature is naturally capable of; and that his practical understanding possessed a consummate prudence with respect to every thing that men ought to do, either in a public or private capacity;

and besides contained all the moral sciences and all the liberal arts.

The Beauty of Adam.

If some authors had been contented to say, that he was a fine person, and well made, they would have said nothing but what was probable; but instead of this they have fallen into the gaieties of rhetoric and poetry, and even into visionary notions of this matter. It has been fabled that God, intending to create man, assumed a perfect and beautiful human body, and that he formed the body of Adam on that model; whence God might say, in relation to this body, that he made man after his own image. They add, that this apparition of God under a human form was the first prelude to the incarnation; that is, that the second person of the Trinity clothed himself with the appearance of the same nature which he was one day to assume in the flesh, and that, under the likeness of the finest man that ever was, he laboured in the production of Adam, whom he made a copy of that great and divine original of beauty which he had assumed. “ The most element and fair, assuming this divine form and beauty, which he was in process of time to clothe himself withal, even to flesh and bones, created man, bestowing on him this noble form, himself the original archetype, the most beautiful creator of a most beautiful creature.” It is not wonderful that exclamations should be made— “How great must be the beauty of the first man ! And what charms must dwell in his countenance !” In short, the form which the Word assumed was like that which was seen by St Peter on mount Tabor, and by Moses on mount Sinai, and which appeared with Moses and Elias on the day of transfiguration. What is still more surprising Adam himself saw his own Maker, and the manner in

which his body was formed by the fair hands of its Author. “ When man was formed, he beheld those divine hands, that ambrosial countenance, and those beautiful arms, which formed his body, and fashioned every member of it.” A very learned man published these airy notions; and people exist who approve at least one a part of them.

Of the sexual form of Adam.

A great number of the rabbis believed that Adam’s body was created double, male on the one side, and female on the other; and that the two bodies were joined together by the shoulders; the heads looking directly opposite, like the heads of Janus. Thus they pretend that when God made Eve, he only divided the original body into two: the part which was of the masculine sex forming Adam, and that which was of the feminine sex Eve. Manesseh-Ben-Israel, the most learned rabbi of the seventeenth century, maintained this fantastical opinion, if we may believe Heidegger. The learned Maimonides, the honour and glory of the Jewish nation, had already maintained a similar notion; and Antoinette Bourignon pretends, that before Adam sinned, he had the principle of both sexes in himself, and the virtue to produce his likeness without the help of woman. The necessity that each sex has at present to unite to each other for multiplication, is (she says) a consequence of the alterations that sin has made in human bodies. “ Men think that they have been created by God as they are at present, but it is not true, seeing that sin has disfigured the work of God in them, and instead of men as they ought to be, they are become monsters in nature, divided into two imperfect sexes, unable to produce their like alone, as trees and plants do, which in that point have more perfection than men or women, who are incapable to produce by

themselves, but only in conjunction with each other, and with pain and misery.” The particulars of all this mystery are explained in another work, as it was revealed from God to Mrs Bourignon. She believed that she had seen in a trance how Adam was made before sin, and how he alone could produce other men. Nay, she believed she had learned that he had put that rare faculty in practice, by the production of the human nature of Jesus Christ, and she very specifically describes the operation Bayle supplies the whole of this pious vision. It will not be necessary here to be quite so profuse; but a part may be safely given, to show, in the language of our author, to what extravagances the human mind is liable. “ God represented to her in a vision, without the assistance of corporeal eyes, which could not have endured such brightness, the beauty of the first world, and the manner how he formed it out of the original chaos. All was bright, transparent, and radiant, with an ineffable light and glory. In the same spiritual manner he made the first man Adam appear to her, whose body was more pure and transparent than crystal, all light and volatile in appearance; in and through which were seen vessels and streams of light, penetrating from the inside to the outside, through all his pores; vessels which contained most lively and diaphanous liquors of all sorts and colours, not only of water, and milk, but also of fire, air,&c. His motions were wonderfully harmonious; every thing obeyed him; nothing resisted or could annoy him. He was of a larger stature than men are at present; his hair short and curled, inclining to black; his upper lip covered with small hair?” ⁎ ⁎ ⁎ ⁎ ⁎ ⁎ ⁎ ⁎ ⁎ ⁎ ⁎ ⁎ ⁎ ⁎ ⁎ “The first man whom Adam produced by himself in this glorified state, was chosen by God to be the theme of the divinity, the origin and instrument by which God would communicate himself eternally with mankind: that is, Jesus Christ united to the human nature both God and man.”— So much for the mysticism of Antoinette Bourignon, whose Opinions at one time obtained so much root in Scotland, that a declaration against Bouriguonism was required in the examination of a minister. Some remnants of her sect were even discoverable until very lately.—Ed. ¹⁴.

Curious scriptural mistake, in a licensed sermon, respecting the birth of Adam.

A modem author, designing to show that the Roman Catholics are in the wrong to think themselves more learned than the Protestants, reproaches them, among other mistakes, with that of a preacher who said that Adam was formed of one of Eve’s ribs. He reported, that a philosopher, having proposed these three questions to Theodorus, a disciple of St Pacomus—What man is not born but is dead? What man is born but is not dead? What man is born and dead but not corrupted?—had for answer, that the three persons in question were Adam, Enoch, and Lot’s wife. Adam is not born, added the preacher; for he was formed of one of Eve’s ribs. His sermon was printed at Vienna in Austria, in the year 1654, with the approbation of the subdean of the professors in divinity, who was at that time father Leonard Bachin, a Jesuit. The licenser declared that he had read the book, and that he found nothing in it contrary to the faith, or against good manners:—a proof of the little attention wherewith the censors of books examine certain manuscripts.

Of Adam as an author.

The Jews pretend that Adam wrote a book concerning the creation of the world, and another on the Deity. Masius mentions the former. A Mohammedan author, whose name is Kissæus, reports, that Abraham went into the country of the Sabei, and opened Adam’s strong box, wherein he found his books, with those of Seth and Edris. This last name is that which the Arabians gave to Enoch. They say that Adam received twenty books fallen from Heaven, which contained divers laws, and promises, and threatenings from God, and

predictions of many events. Some rabbis attribute the 92d psalm to Adam; and there are several manuscripts wherein the Chaldaic title of that psalm imports that it is a song of praise, recited by the first man on the sabbath-day. The good Eusebius Nierembergius, who was credulity itself, mentions two canticles which he faithfully copied out of the revelations of the blessed Amadeus in the library of the Escurial. It is said, that Adam was the author of these two pieces; he made the one the first time he saw Eve; the other is the penitential psalm which he and his wife sung after their fall.

Burial place of Adam.

St Jerome imagined, without any ground, that Adam was buried at Hebron; but we have as much reason to be of his opinion, as to think with many others, that he was interred upon Mount Calvary. I confess the latter opinion is preferable,per la predica, for the preacher’s use; for it is much more fertile of allusions, antitheses, moral application, and all kind of rhetorical figures. But it is enough for us to be informed, that the fathers generally believed that the first man died in the place where Jerusalem was built afterwards, and that he was buried on a neighbouring hill, which was called Golgotha or Calvary, and which is that where Jesus Christ was crucified. If you ask how Adam’s grave could resist the waters of the deluge, and how his bones could maintain their place, in order to receive the sprinkling of the blood of our Lord, Barcepha will quote a doctor to you, very much esteemed in Syria, who said that Noah dwelt in Judæa; that he planted the cedars, wherewith he built the ark, in the plain of Sodom; that he took Adam’s bones with him into the ark; that, after he was come out of the ark, he divided them among his three sons; that he gave the skull to Shem;

and that the offspring of Shem, having taken possession of Judæa, buried this skull in the same place where Adam’s grave had been. Cornelius Lapide says, that the Hebrews have a tradition that, by the command of an angel, Seth put some of the seed of the forbidden tree into Adam’s mouth, who was already buried; that it produced a tree, of which the cross of Jesus Christ] was made; and that it was but just that the same wood which had caused Adam’s sin, should be that on which Jesus Christ should expiate it.—Art.Adam