riage the Rise and Progress of
a Reformation of the new World should receive an early Check, and should
be at once prevented; I say, like a bold Devil, he strikes at the Root,
and _alas!_ poor unhappy _Noah_, he proved too weak for him, _Satan_
prevail'd in his very first Attempt, and got the Victory over him at
once.

_Noah_ thus overcome, and Satan's Conquest carried on to the utmost of
his own Wishes, the _Devil_ had little more to do in the World for some
Ages, than to carry on an universal Degeneracy among Mankind, and to
finish it by a like diligent Application, in deluding the Generality of
the Race, and them as they came on gradually into Life; this he found
the less difficult, because of the first Defection which spread like a
Contagion upon the Earth immediately after.

The first Evidence we have of his Success in this mischievous Design was
in the Building that great stupendious Stair-case, for such it seems it
was intended, call'd _Babel_, which if the whole World had not been
drunk, or otherwise infatuated, they would never have undertaken; even
Satan himself could never have prevail'd with them to undertake such a
preposterous Piece of Work, for it had neither End or Means, Possibility
or Probability in it.

I must confess I am sometimes apt to vindicate our old Ancestors, in my
Thoughts, from the Charge it self, as we generally understand it,
namely, that they really design'd to build a Tower which should reach up
to Heaven, or that it should secure them in case of another Flood; and
Father _Casaubon_ is of my Opinion, whether I am of his or no, is a
Question by it self; his opinion is that the Confusion was nothing but a
Breach among the Undertakers and Directors of the Work, and that the
Building was design'd chiefly for a Store-house for Provisions, in Case
of a second Deluge; as to their Notion of its reaching up to Heaven, he
takes the Expression to be allegorical rather than little, and only to
mean that it should be exceeding high; perhaps they might not be
Astronomers enough to measure the Distance of Space between the Earth
and Heaven, as we pretend to do now; but as _Noah_ was then alive, and
as we believe all his three Sons were so too, they were able to have
inform'd them how absurd it was to suppose either the one or the other
(_viz_.) (1.) that they could build up to Heaven, or (2.) that they
could build firm enough to resist, or high enough to overtop the Waters,
supposing such another F