fyftem, the prefumption is great that the governing body was at least coeval with the bodies governed : Therefore, as the chaos revolved upon its axis during the feparation of its component parts, may we not thence infer, that as the atmosphere was progreffively freed from its grofs matter, light and heat must have gradually increased, until the fun became visible in the firmament, and fhone with its full luftre and brightnefs on the face of the new-formed globe. Hence it appears, that feveral days and nights preceded the fun's appearance in the heavens. How far the refult of this reasoning may illuftrate the Mofaic account, of the fun being created, or becoming visible, on the fourth day of creation, is most humbly submitted to the confideration and candour of the learned world. It is further to be observed, that as the feparation of the chaos was owing to the union of fimilar particles, it seems to follow, that as the central parts of the earth were sooner at reft than the more fuperficial parts thereof, that the former would begin to confolidate before the latter, and therefore it appears repugnant to the laws of nature, that the central part should confift of water only, and the more fuperficial part of a fhell or cruft, as fome writers have imagined.' After delineating the operations of nature in feparating the chaotic mafs into air, earth, and water, he proceeds to examine the formation of the primitive islands. Supposing the moon to be coeval with the earth, he obferves, that its attractive power would greatly interfere with the uniform fubfiding of the folids. For as the feparation of the folids and fluids increafed, fo likewife would the tides increase, and remove the folids from place to place, without any regularity. Hence the fea becoming unequally deep, and the inequalities daily increafing, the dry land would at length appear, and divide the fea, which had before univerfally covered the earth. In the fucceeding chapters the author enquires into the formation of marine animals; the fuperficial and interior parts. of the earth; and the alterations afterwards produced on its furface by fubterranean convulfions. He next treats of fubterraneous fire, and its effects, from the first increment of heat to its full maturity; of the origin of mountains, continents, &c; of the deluge, and the improbability of a fecond univer fal flood. These fubjects are fucceeded by an inquiry into the temperature of the air, and feafons in the antidiluvian world; and into the cause of animal and vegetable exuviæ being found -remote from their native climates; with remarks on the longevity of the human fpecies before and after the flood; and obfervations B b 2 servations towards afcertaining the æra when the rain-bow first appeared. The various difficult fubjects examined in this volume are treated with much philofophical precifion, as well as ingenuity; and though a great part of the author's reafoning must still remain hypothetical, we must a knowlege that he has extended not a little the bounds of rational theory in thofe abftract fpeculations-An Appendix is added, containing fome general obfervations on the ftrata in Derbyshire with,jections of them, reprefenting their arrangement afficities, and the changes they have fuffered at different periods of time. A Letter to Nathaniel Braffey Halhead, Ejq. containing fome Re- T 'HIS is a liberal and learned criticifm upon Mr. Halhead's ingenious preface to the Code of Centoo Laws, of which we have spoken in our Review for Sent. 777 *. Mr. Coftard expreffes his dilappointment at finding that his friend's book was not a tranflation of a fingle treatise, but what certain pundits had picked up Jentence by jen ence. The laws of Nuina, Solon, Lycurgus, and thole of the Twelve Tables, were not, he obferves, picked out fentence by fentence.--Many of thefe Gentoo laws Mr. Coltard discovers to be frivolou, others abfurd and cruel; thence he argues that they are not all of equal antiquity. For the conformity between feveral cuftoms in ufe in the Eaft and those of the Jews, Mr. Coftard accounts, by ob- ' ferving that Solomon's fhip filed as far as the island Ceylon of the moderns; and that he fent to Tyre for perfons capable of navigating his fhips to thofe parts; which latter circumftance plainly fhows the Tyrians had failed thither before.Upon the undeviating confidence of the Hindoos, Mr. Coftard remarks, that it is no uncommon thing for perfons to be most mistaken when they are moft confident.' Our readers will imagine this is neither the moft liberal nor the most learned argument in the pamphler before us. The principal intention of this Letter is to prove, with what little fhow of juftice the Hindoos can lay claim to that remote antiquity, to which we are informed they pretend to have an indisputable right.-If Mr. Halhead wrote with the credulous pen of a young man of quick parts and lively genius, Mr. Coftard appears in the character of a truly orthodox clergyman of the church of England. We may at least be allowed * Vol. xliv. p. 1777. to fmile at the furprize with which the pundits will hear that the vicar of Twickenham has proved their ancestors were impoled upon from one generation to another; and that the world is an infant, if we compare Mr. Coftard's chronology with the tales which they tell of its longevity. Our readers may judge of this publication from the fubfequent extra&. The whole doctrine of the Jogues I look upon as fictitious and abfurd, especially the three firit. The fourth period, called the Colle Jogue, approaches nearer to the confines of probability That this period is to laft 400,000 years, depends upon no proɔt, as ar as appears. Bot, that nearly 5000 years of it are already paft, is confiftent enough with our prefent chronology For, accord eg to the chronology in the margin of our Bibles, reckoning to the prefent year 1777, the flood was about 4126 years ago. And with this agrees Petavis within 20 years. That the Shafters, or Gentoo feriptures, were compofed about the beginning of the Collee Jogue, or 5000 years ago, will ftand in need of great proof. For that books were copofed, or, indeed, that there were any writings fo old as. this, doth not appear. We hear of no writings before Mofes, and the giving of the law at Mount Sinai And, indeed, the forming of an alphabet feems a wok beyond human invention. And this, perhaps, wil beft explain that expreflion of that law being wrote by the finger of God. From the Jews the ufe of an alphabet might be communicated to the Phenicians, and they, under Cadmus, might introduce them into Greece. That, according to the Oxford Marbles, would be about the year before Chrift 1520, or about 820 years after the flood, and but 21 years after the giving of the law. This alphabet, I imagine, was very fimple at first, and confifted but of few letters. And fo doth the Hebrew now, the Syriac, and the old Arabic, commonly called the Cufic. Thofe alphabets that confift of many letters, as the modern Arabic, the Perfic, and the Æthiopic, I look upon as modern. And the fame kind of reafoning, I think, will hold good with regard to fuch whofe characters are complicated. So that the difficulties in learning the Shanfcrit language, and its alphabet eontaining 50 letters, are, to me, strong arguments that both its grammar and letters are, comparatively, modern. The fame kind of reafoning likewife will prove against the antiquity of the Shafter. And fo far will it be Bb 3 from from having been compofed before the Deluge, that it was not compofed till the Hindoos had loft even the traditionry account of it. • What traces there may be of it in India must be left to future examination. In this Western part of the world there are evident marks of it. The Indians never feem to have applied themfelves to the study of natural philosophy." You fay they have no geography." And, I think, I may add no aftronomy. The very names of the planets there, the Jefuits fay, are of the fame import with those of the Greeks. And the names of the twelve figns of the zodiac, they fay, are the fame with thofe in Europe, and exactly in the fame order. From whence I am apt to conclude that they were borrowed from the Greeks, when, under the Ptolemies in Egypt, they began to navigate thofe feas. "You fay yourself that the days of the week in the Shanfcrit language are named from the fame planets to which they are affigned by the Greeks and Romans." From one or other of these people, then, they moft probably had them. And as this was not till late, it will naturally make us fufpc& their pretended accounts of antiquity in other cafes. "Rajah Prichutt, you fay, is known to have lived at the beginning of the Collee Jogue, and to have ordered a learned Bramin, called Sukeh Diew, to write a Hiftory of India through the preceding Jcgues, with the fucceffions of the rajahs, and the duration of their reigns." That is, to com pofe annals during the space of 7 millions 200,000 years. But, when you ask what we are to think of fuch a work as this, the shortest and best answer, perhaps, will be that it is not worth thinking of at all. And Shukeh Diew, when he was about it, might have compofed the annals of 17 millions of years, as well as feven. The whole, in either case, must have been the creature of his own brain. And fo palpable a forgery in one inftance, would make one fufpe&t the Bramins to be capable of others of the fame kind. I am no ways concerned for their reputation; but, I own, I am furprised to hear you fay "that the world doth not now contain annals of more indifputable antiquity than thofe delivered down by the ancient Bramins." But, if fo, how will you reconcile this with that unfhaken reliance on revelation which you speak of in the fentence immediately before? Lucretius, though his fyftem was atheistical, very properly afks how it came to pafs that, had the world been eternal, no history went higher, as far as he knew, than the war at Thebes, and the fall of Troy. And the fame kind of reafoning is applicable in the prefent cafe. Had the world lafted fo long long already, as is here fuppofed, mankind must have made a greater progrefs in fcience than we know they have done. We admire, and juftly, the indefatigable and fagacious Kepler, and the almoft divine difcoveries of fir Ifaac Newton. But could the laws of gravity, magnetifm, and electricity; could the defcription of equal areas in equal times by the planets, and even thofe amazing bodies the comets; that the fquares of their periodic times are as the cubes of their mean distances; could all thefe, and many more inftances that might be produced have been concealed, and unfufpected for above feven millions of years? Or were men asleep all this while, and never thought at all? A Bramin, how fond foever of the marvellous, will not venture to affert fuch a paradox as this.' Remarks on the Prophetic Part of the Revelation of St. John: efpecially the three laft Trumpets. By Thomas Reader. 8vo. 45. in boards. Buckland. THE HE authenticity of no book in the New Teftament has been more contefted than that of the Apocalypfe. It has been obferved, that there is not a fingle trace of it in the feven Epiftles of Ignatius, the difciple of St. John; that it does not appear among the books, to which Papias gave his teftimony; that Caius, a Latin author of reputation about the end of the fecond century, believed it to be the work of Cerinthus; that Dionyfius of Alexandria alleges feveral reafons to prove, that it was not written by St. John; that Eufebius fays, people to this day still doubt of its genuineness, just as the ancients had their doubts concerning it; that the council of Laodicea, about the year 367, in the midft of those seven churches, to which it was directed, left it out of the catalogue of canonical books; that Sulpicius Severus *, about the year 400, fays à plerifque non recipitur.' On the other hand it is afcribed to St. John by Juftin Martyr, Irenæus, Tertullian, Origen, Hippolytus, and many other writers. It was inferted in the lift of facred books by the council of Carthage in 397; and has at laft triumphed over all opposition †. Sacr. Hiit. ii. 45. Crit. Rev. vol. xxxix. p. 20. Tandem fummo totius ecclefiæ confenfu, tanquam genuinus apoftoli Johannis foetus receptus eft. Cave.-See Sir Ifaae Newton's Obfervations on the Apocalypfe.-Here it may not be improper to obferve, what did not occur to us, when we reviewed Dr. Horne's Difcourfes, that fir Ifaac Newton calls the ftory of St. John's being thrown into a veffel of hot oil, an ancient fable.' p. 236. |