text:  This is to be understood not only of the state of man before the Fall as recorded in the two first chapters of Genesis; but every thing in the Bible and the early traditions of famous peoples warrants us to believe that the first ages of men before the Flood were spiritually enlightened from one great common source of extraordinary aboriginal revelation; so that the earliest ages of the world were not the most infantine and ignorant to a comprehensive survey as modern conceit so fondly imagines but the most gigantic and the most enlightened