fate. It is a two-edged weapon unskilfully handled for if the whole earth, in one line, means only a particular province, it must clearly have the fame limited fenfe in that which follows: "Therefore is the name of "it called Babel, because the Lord did there "confound the language of all the earth: "and from thence did the Lord scatter them "abroad upon the face of all the earth." Now, if the Confufion of Speech was confined to the Cuthites, and to the region about Babel; the Difperfion must have also been confined to the fame diftrict. This judgement, he must allow, was either general or limited. If general, all mankind must have been interested in the building of the Tower: and all mankind muft, of confequence, have been difperfed. If limited, and the Cuthites were the only objects of divine vengeance, their flight must have been limited alfo to the dif trict of Chaldea: and their whole fanciful wanderings prove, of course, a baseless fabric : a mere caftle of cards, pompoufly reared upon a ftratum of chaff. P

I

SECT. IV.

Of Sanconiathon, Manetho, Berofus.

HAVE confidered Sanconiathon, Manetho, and Berofus (p. 106) as remote fablers: and this, among other things, has much offended Mr. Bryant But as his arguments have not given me a more favourable impreffion of those writers, I fhall here beg leave to offer a few reasons, upon which I ground the opinion I have formed of the histories, which pass under their names. *

As the learned author does not build fo much upon the two first, my notice of them will be proportionably fhort. But, as Berofus feems to be viewed as a corner ftone, I fhall confider him more at large. These histories, it may be observed, as we go along, if they ever did exist, which I will not positively affert, now exist no more in their original tongues. Many of thofe even, to whom the tranflations have been attributed, are now known only by name and their fragments

broken, corrupted, and juftly fufpected, are handed down to us only by Eufebius and other writers pofterior to the Christian era *. The fubjects of which they treat, are, at the fame time, chiefly antediluvian; extracted from materials heaven knows where depofited; and, in general, fo wild, fo impoffible, and fo little refembling any circumstance of our world, that, like dreams, they may be interpreted even precisely as we list.

SANCONIATHON, fuppofed to have been cotemporary with Gideon, drew materials,

* In the first ages of Chriftianity, when the fathers of the Church, the Jews, and the Heathen philofophers, were fo warmly engaged in controversy, there is reason to believe, that pious frauds were not uncommon: and that when one party suspected forgeries, instead of an attempt at confutation, which might have been difficult, they had recourse perhaps to a countermine : and either invented altogether, or eked out some obscure traditional scraps by the embellishments of fancy. When we confider, amongst many literary impofitions of later times, that Pfalmanazar's history of Formofa, was, even in this enlightened age and country, confidered by our most learned men as unquestionably authentic, till the confeffion of the author discovered the fecret; I think it is not difficult to conceive, how forgeries of remote events, before the invention of printing and the general diffufion of knowledge, might gain an authority, and efpecially with the zealous, hardly inferior to that of the moft genuine hiftory.

we are told, for his Phenician antiquities, from the writings of Taaut, Hermes, or Mercury; the whole of which are fo completely antediluvian, that there is not a fyllable to be found in them relative to the deluge. They were pretended to have been discovered and tranflated by Philo of Byblus, in the reign of the emperor Adrian: and, if they are not the entire forgeries of that writer, which has been much fufpected, it is generally allowed, that he has taken fuch liberties with the original, that we have no criterion left, by which we can difcriminate the true from the false."

с

THE fame observations will pretty nearly apply to Manetho. He was, we are informed, an Egyptian priest; and lived about 260 years before Chrift. His dynasties of Egyptian kings, which even thofe who use them, confider, in a great measure, as his own invention, are faid to have been taken from pillars of ftone erected in the land of Seriad the latitude, longitude, or even the probable existence of which, no geographer or traveller, I believe, has ever yet been able to discover. The infcriptions on these pillars were, we are informed, made by the antediluvian Thoth or Mercury. They were, fome time after the Flood, tranflated into hieroglyphics by

;

Agathodæmon or Thoth the fecond: and from fuch refpectable materials has Jofephus framed his aftronomical pillars of Seth, his abfurd theory of the Shepherd kings, and half his improbable legends on ancient Egypt.*

BEROSUS, we learn, was a priest of the Babylonish deity Belus, and cotemporary with Alexander though his fuppofed Annals of Chaldea were not published, as we are informed, till fifty-five years after the death of that prince. His materials, we are told by fome authors, were compofed partly from hieroglyphics, and partly from written records, preferved in the Temple of his God for a period of 150,000 years *. But here we unfor

It is evident, though mention is made of other records, that there could be nothing but hieroglyphics, from whence Berofus, or any writer, could compile a hiftory of the times, of which he is fuppofed to have written. Yet Mr. Bryant fays, (Vol. III. p. 108.) " And in respect to "what is more fully transmitted to us by Alexander Poly"hiftor from Berofus; we may upon a close inspection "perceive, that the original history was of a two-fold na"ture; and obtained by different means from two separate << quarters. The latter part is plain, and obvious: and "was undoubtedly taken from the archives of the Chal"deans. The former is allegorical and obfcure; and "was copied from hieroglyphical representations, which "could not be precisely decyphered." Now I wish the