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of the civil part of the Mosaical law, and the obligation of the moral part. Bishop Horsley.

Erit ligatum et in cælo, i. e. idem erit meum patrisque judicium, quod fuerit tuum. Intellige, si Petrus potestate hac legitime utatur, non ex odio, favore, &c. sed juste judicet, sequatur leges Dei et Christi. Nam si insontem ligaret, id non esset ratum in cælo. Hæc ergo auctoritas Petro data nullum præjudicium adfert juri Dei, quasi is ut pedarius judex subscribere cogatur hominis sententiæ. Lucas Brugensis, Poly. Synop.

The first book of LOCKE'S ESSAY, which with submission I think the worst, tends to establish this dangerous doctrine, that the human mind, previous to education and habit, is as susceptible of any one impression as of any other; a doctrine, which, if true, would go near to prove that truth and virtue are no better than human contrivances, or, at least, that they have nothing permaneat in their nature, but may be as changeable as the racliuations and capacities of men. Surely this is not the doctrine that Locke meant to establish? But his zeal agalast innate ideas and innate principles put him off his card, and made hon allow too little to instinct, for fear of allowing too much. Beattie on Truch, p. 238.

In Mr King's cale lations, the accuracy of which has never yet been questioned, The asserts, thai, of thirty-nine millions of acres of LAND in England, tea millions, or more than a fourth, consisted in heath, 3oors, mountai 15, and barren lands, and this exclusive of woods, forests, parks, commoas, roads, &c. There have, since that time, been many improvements male; but it will be surely allowed no improbable supposition, that one fiftieth part may yet be gained from the unprofitable state in which it is. Campbell's Pol. Survey, vol. ii. p. 732.

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When the Edomites fled from David, with their young king Hadad, into Egypt, it is probable that they carried thither also the use of LETTERS; for letters were then in use, among the posterity of Abraham, in Arabia Petiæa and upon the borders of the Red Sea, the law being written there by Moses, in a book and in tables of stone, long before; for Moses, marrying the daughter of the prince of Midian, and dwelling with him forty years, learnt them among the Midianites; and Job, who lived among their neighbours, the Edomites, mentions the writing down of words, as there in use in his days; Job, xix. 23, 24. And there is no instance of letters, for writing down sounds, being in use,, before the days of David,' in any other nation besides the postërity of Abraham. The Egyptians ascribed this invention to Thoth, the secretary of Osiris, and therefore letters began to be in use in Egypt in the days of Thoth; i. e. a

little after the flight of the Edomites from David, or about the time, that Cadmus brought them into Europe. Sir Isaac Newton's Chronol. p. 210.

See this opinion of Sir Isaac's argued against in the Divine Legation, vol. iii.

It appears, from the express testimony of Moses, that God did indeed teach man language, Gen. ii. 19, 20; yet we cannot reasonably suppose it to be any other than what served his present purpose. After this, he was able of himself to improve and enlarge it as his future occasions should require, consequently the first language must needs be very poor and narrow. Warb. Divine Leg. vol. iii. p. 108.

On the whole we see, that, before the institution of letters to express sounds, all characters denoted only things; 1st, by representation, or curiologic hieroglyphic. adly, by analogy or symbols, i. e. tropical hieroglyphic. 3dly, by, arbitrary institution. But it may be worth while to consider more particularly the origin and intro-duction of these arbitrary marks, the last advance of hieroglyphics towards alphabetic writing. We may observe that substances and all visible objects were at first very naturally expressed by the images of the things themselves, as moral modes and other ideal conceptions of the mind were more aptly represented by marks of arbitrary institution. For, as all nations in their ruder state had hieroglyphic images, or analogic or symbolic figures, for marking things, so had they likewise simple characters or notes of arbitrary institution for mental conceptions. Warb. Div. Leg. vol. iii. p.

88, 89, 95.

But, if they had from the beginning characters of arbitrary institution for mental conceptions, how can this be called the last advance towards alphabetic writing? And, if they were made use of for this purpose, why might they not for the purpose of conveying any other idea? especially as the learned author observes before, "that the first language must be very poor and narrow, and therefore the fewer marks or notes of arbitrary institution would be necessary." For, as he remarks farther, "when men had once observed (and this they could not but observe early and easily, by the brute and inarticulate sounds which they were perpetually hearing emitted) how small the number is of primitive sounds, and how infinite the words are which may be formed by varied combinations of those simple sounds, it would naturally and easily occur to them, that a very few of those marks, which had before casually excited the sensation of those simple sounds, might be selected and formed into what has since been called an alphabet, to express them all. And then their old accustomed way of Combining primitive sounds into words would as naturally and easily direct them to à dike combination of what were now become the simple marks of sound, from whence would arise literary writing." p. 153. One would think, then, that, as language was coeval with mankind, that letters were of a very early date, and prior to the invention of hieroglyphics, which were confessedly the institution of the Egyptians; and, if detters were abbreviated characters from the hieroglyphics and symbolic figures, it ight be imagined that at first they would have been very numerous, and gradually

lessened

lessened in time, whereas it is certain that the first alphabets contained the fewest num ber of letters; and this learned author observes, from Irenæus, Antiqua et prima Hebræorum literæ, quæ sacerdotales nuncupata, decem quidem fuere numcro." p. 158. And, again, he takes notice, "That Moses increased the number of the letters, which he brought from Egypt, from sixteen to twenty-two, and that he altered the shape of them to take off their resemblance to the hieroglyphie characters, and reduced them into something like those simple forms in which we now find them." P. 164. If this was the case, there can be but little drawn from the analogy between the hieroglyphic forms and the shape of the letters.

He goes on, p. 166: "To this let me add another consideration. The vowel-points (as seems now to be generally agreed on) were added since the Jews ceased to be a nation. The Hebrew language was originally, and so continued to be for a long time, written without them. Now, if God first taught Moses an alphabet, can we believe that the vowels would have been thus generally omitted? But, suppose Moses learnt his alphabet of the Egyptians, and only made it fuller and altered the form of the letters, we may easily give a good account of the omission."

Here the learned author is certainly guilty of a mistake in supposing that the vowels did not exist before the vowel-points; for, it is past a doubt that the 8, 7, 1,, which, answer to the a, e, i, o, u, were as much vowels in the Hebrew as they are in our language or any other, they having the two powers of o and u.

For my part, says Mr Bryant, I believe that there was no writing antecedent to the law of mount Sinai. Here the divine art was promulgated: for, if the people of the first ages had been possessed of so valuable a secret as that of writing, they would never have afterwards descended to means less perfect for the explanation of their ideas. And it is to be observed, that the invention of hieroglyphics was certainly a discovery of the Chaldæans and made use of in the first ages by the Egyptians, the very nations who are supposed to have been possessed of the superior and more perfect art. They might retain the former when they became possessed of the latter; but, had they been possessed of letters originally, they would never have deviated into the use of symbols, at least for things which were to be published to the world, and which were to be commemorated for ages. How comes it, if they had writing so early, that scarcely one specimen is come down to us, but that every example should be in the least perfect character? Bryant's Myth. vol. iii. p. 123.

But, if the hieroglyphics. were the sacred mysterious, 'character, as they seem to have been, may not this account for their being so particularly preserved? See hiero glyphics, alphabet, vowels, and writing.

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Letters seem to have been invented much earlier than the days of Moses; for, the Israelites, at the giving of the law upon the two tables, do not express their surprise at all; and the people must have been inspired to read the law at first sight, which they probably did, had not letters been invented before; and Vossius, de Arte Gram

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ma. observes; "Liquet, cum Phoenices sint Cananæi,, rectissime dicere, quibus lite ræ Phonicum sint antiquissimæ. Vere enim Hebræicæ sunt, quibus Abraham, Heberi inclyta progenies et posteritas ejus usa est. Sunt vero ista Cananææ sive Phæniciæ, &c.

That the art of writing, or the invention of letters, was imparted or discovered to Moses by revelation is made good by two arguments, which are these: that it is never once mentioned before the giving of the Law, and that it is scarce ever omitted on any natural occasion after the giving of the Law, in all the books of Moses. Winder's

Hist. of Knowledge, vol. ii. p. 33.

The first language was most probably from revelation, by which divine gift the first men were capable of correspondence with each other: and the first alphabetical writing was also imparted to Moses by revelation, which was the means of correspondence with different ages. And, by the best conjectures from antient history, sacred or profane, compared together, it appears that the knowledge of letters could not be capable of a transition to any other nation, from the Hebrews, till about the reigns of David and Solomon. That there were no Letters in Egypt before Shishak, and none in Greece before Cadmus. Id. vol. ii. p. 339.

Quoties unaquæque litera in lege, prophetis, et hagiographis, usurpetur, cognoscere est ex Hebræis Rabbi Saadias versiculis, qui hodieque exstant. Numeros eos notis barbaricis subjecimus.

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Hæc curiosa nimis opera videtur, nec tamen penitus inanis est, quia nonnihil facit ad integritatem Scripturarum observandam. Vide Vossius de Art. Gram. lib. i. p. 33.

But, unless it could be made appear that the copy which Ben Saadias made use of was pure and genuine, it could answer no purpose.

Walton, in his Proleg. from the same author, makes the whole number 815280, which exceeds this 191.

LEX

LEX MOSAICA non in Judæorum gratiam duntaxat Introducta fuit, aut propheta ad solos Judæos missi, a quibus affligebantur, sed in hoc destinati, ut universi orbis: Magistri ac pædagogi essent, et pro publica schola ef sacrosancta, tam in iis quæ pertinent ad Deum, quam in iis quæ spectant ad animæ disciplinan. Sic Athanasius de Incarn. Dei. Voss. Hist. Pelag. lib. vii. p. 1, thes: 4.

..Dr LoWTH, afterwards Bishop of London, was a man of learning and ingenuity, and of many virtues; but his friends did his character no service by affecting to bring his merits, whatever they were, into competition with those of the Bishop of Glouces ter, Warburton. His reputation as a writer was raised chiefly on his Hebrew litera-ture, as displayed in those two works, his Latin lectures on Hebrew poetry and his English version of the prophet Isaiah. The former is well and elegantly composed, but in a vein of criticism not above the common: the fatter, think, is chiefly valuable as it shews how little is to be expected from Dr. Kennieoft's work, (which yet the learned bishop pronounces to be the greatest and most important that has been undertaken and accomplished since the revival of letters,) and from a new translation of the Bible for public use. Hurd's Life of Warburton, p. 94.

But see the letters which passed between Lowth and Warburton, wherein the former has the advantage.

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The stupendous acquisition of the knowledge of the properties of the LOADSTONE may, in my opinion, be safely assigned to divine revelation, vouchsafed to Noah, that it might be an unerring guide to that holy and favoured patriarch when enclosed in the dark bosom of the ark. The momentous secret, thus intrusted to the patriarch, might be transmitted down to his immediate posterity, and by them inviolably prescrved, till the period arrived when the enlarged population and increasing commerce of mankind rendered its divulgement necessary towards fulfilling the benevolent designs of that Providence, who constituted man a social and an inquisitive being. And the magnet is mentioned by the inost antient classical writers, under the name of lapis IIeraclius, in allusion to its asserted inventor, Hercules. Maurice's Ind. Antiq. vol. vi. p. 191, 192. That wonderful property of the loadstone, (or magnet,) by which it communicates such virtue to a slender, rod of iron or needle, as to point towards the poles of the earth, was discovered by Flavio Givia, a citizen of Amalfi, in Naples, about the year 1902. : Robertson's History of America, vol. i, 5i

JACOB'S LADDER, according to the best interpreters, is an emblem of the divine. Providence, which governs all things.. Its being set upon the earth, denotes the steadiness of Providence, which nothing is able to unsettle; its reaching up to heaven signifies its universality, or that it extends to all things; the several steps of the ladder are the motions and actions of Providence; the angels going up and down, show that Da

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