Untih J/iveiituviof k-lUcna u{\\ai /J/J. 7 ///; c bay upotiyyUutfwre&tt aa &^cuuj 'aibj'VasucitLF.RS. Chaplcuu /t/wwaj il ' '. /><*$<) l^utU (fiesta tfr&Srco lX-?ArL\// cay Uftqvo {¥c-o- £ rfo&cA lawk* ihtlOofoUpwk ft* 2f/oj4 o J 'line i taiipt^t rvtrcaj fau-r/ie*%r% fedes JofU* m^eunhlp&ayjh,^ i t \ %?l vpr ESSAY UPON LITERATURE: O R, An Enquiry into the Antiquity and Original of LETTERS; PROVING That the two Tables, written by the Finger of God in Mount Sinai^ was the firft Writing in the World j and that all other Alphabets derive from the Hebrew. With a fhort View of the Methods inade ufe of \>j the Antients, to fupply the want of Letters be- fore, and improve the ufe of them, after ther were known jitpp*^t*6* unM-&* t>y f& flztmtu «> <*<% ^ ,i/ f ...,.,« +£ & tLtyal ta*t*qU&b£li •Teeter «V * rr nrnf^tnyn »>»»^j ?yi A N ESSAY On the Original of Literature, &c. T is fomething ftrange, that among the abundance of Writers in the World, and the multitude of Au- thors who have publinYd their La- bours for the inftrudtion of Man- kind in this Age, not one has thought it worth while to give any lignificant Account of the Art by which all their Works are per- form' d -, and by which indeed all manner of Science is convey'd from Age to Age, and hand- ed down from our Anceftors to this Day ^ I mean that of Writing, B Print- Oil Printing and the Knowledge of Types imprefling their Forms on Paper by Punction, or the work of an Engine (for fab is tb e Print- ing -Pre fs) is a Modern Invention born of Yef- terday •, and bow ever advantageous to the World, is what the World it feems, made fhift with- out, and was wholly ignorant of for above SoooYears, and it is not yet full 300 Years old ^ that Art being the Invention of a Soldier, as that of Gunpowder and Guns was cf a Scholar; the Dutcb affirming that . Lawrenths Cojterus, of Harlem, was the firfb Author of Printing -, tho* others fay, that John Fanjius of Mentz. inveated it, and from thence was taken for a Conjurer, and gave Birth to the Stories we have going under the Name of the Famous Doctor FauJIus. But Writing, is of a very ancient Date, and has been the moft ufeful of all Arts id the World, as it has been the pre- ferver of Knowledge, and has handed down the firft Principles of Science in the W T orld, from one Generation to another - 3 by which we,to this Day ftand,(and all the Ages before us,for many hundreds, nay, fbme thoufands of Years, have ftood) upon the Shoulders of our Fore-fathers Learning, and have improved upon their In- vention ^ carry'don progrelliveKnowledge, up- on the foot of their Difcoveries, and brought ex- perimental Knowledge both in Arts and inNa- ture, to that Prodigy of Perfection to which it is now arrived. If there was fuch a Time when Men had not the Knowledge of Letters, as no doubt there was, t^o' fome qucftion it to this Day : I fay, if there was fuch a Time, Knowledge and Difcoveries in Philofophy, or in Mechanick Arts, with Hiftory and the Knowledge of Things [3] Things paft, had great Difficulties attending them, and particularly this, that they were preferv'd only in the Repofitories of thofe un- decayM Memories when Men were living Re- cords of a Thoufand Years Handings which by the way, is full as long as moft Writings or ftanding Regifters remain in the World *, at leaft fuch as are of any fignificance to us -, the facred Records of the Scriptures, and fome part of the Roman and Grecian Hiftories excepted $ which yet (the latter efpeciallyj leave Things very uncertain and ill attefted to us, and To as fills us rather withDifputes about what was, or was not Genuine, than with a true Account of things. But in the Antediluvian World, if they had not the ufe of Letters, and a written Chronology, which yet I will not aftert -, yet Oral Tradition, had fo juft an Authority, the Authors living fo many Years to perfect their Pofterity in the Particulars of what they re- lated to them, that we have no Reafon to doubt the Truth of what was handed down from Father to Son^when Moses, the firft Hijlorian that we know o/,was not fo remote from the laft Days of Noah, as that the Particulars could be loft, but being conveyed from Father to Son$ he might be well able even without the help of Divine Infpiration, to write the whole Hi- ftory of the ftate of things before the Flood, Noah having without doubt, made a perfect Relation of them to his Sons. A s to Writing, and the knowledge of Let* ters, the firft we meet with in Scripture, and Scripture is the oldeft as well as the trueji Account oj tbefe Things in the World, was the two Tables of Stone, written by the Finger of God himfelf 5 containing the written Law of God, the fame B 2 * which T ) ulcJ*ro.C#nc/ttJt'0x£pr(*'&** tl '^^W i 4#p&4~Jet**^ [4] which we call the Decalogue, or Ten Command- ments. I know it will be anfwer'd, that tho' it was written by the Finger of God, yet there mull certainly have been fome Writing among Men before that, how elfe could the Children of Ifrael read it ? But to this it may be as rea- fbnably objected, if there had been any fuch thing as Writing, or the ufe of Letters before, what need had there been for God himfelf to have written the Ten Commandments with his own Hand ? And what need had Mofes to carry two New Tables up into the Mount, to have the fame Words written again > Why cou'd not Mofes have written the fame Words over again, which 'tis very likely were left legible enough, notwithstanding breaking of the Stone. It is true, neither of thefe Ar- guments are Conclufive •, but I think, both .of them weigh much in the Cafe, and import, that thofe Tables were the firffc Writing, or written Language that was feen in the World. But further, Tho' the JEgyptiavs, were efteem'd, and juftly too, the Magi of the Earth at that time-, and had made Difcoveries in many ufeful Parts of Science, in whofe Wif- dom Mofes is faid to be very Learned, we yet know of no knowledge of Letters among them, but that they wrote all by a Way par- ticular to themfelves, (yiz.) by Hieroglyph! cks or paintings of Creatures and Figures, which at beft, and however Ingenious the Egyptians were in fuiting thofe Hieroglyphich to their own Underftanding, it muft be allowed that it was but a poor Shift, compared to the prefent improvement of Letters, and the Writing and Printing thofe Letters in Books as is fince practis'd in the World. And [* ] A N d To ignorant has the World been of the ufe cf Letters, even fince thofe Times, that we find upon the Difcovery of any of the Unknown Parts of the World, and parti- cularly in America, they had not only no knowledge of Letters, but they had no No- tion of forming Speech into any intelligible Defcription, but by meer Sound and fpeaking with the Mouth, which by Cuftom they learn'd from one another 5 and hence it was, that they had fuch an infinite variety of different Lan- guages (if it be proper to call them Languages) or rather differing Dialects of the fame Lan- guage, that you were no fooner pafs'd from one Tribe to another, but you found they un- derftood little or nothing of the other's Speech. Nay, fo ignorant were the Americans of the ufe or meaning of Letters, and writing Words upon Paper, which mould be intelligi- ble at a Diftance, that they tell us the follow- ing Story, which happen'd at our firft plant- ing of Virginia: Viz. Captain Smith, one of the firft Adventurers, happening to be taken Pri- foner among the Indians, had leave granted him to fend a Meflage to the Governor of the Englifi Fort in James Town, about his Ranfome-, the MelTenger being an Indian, was furpriz'd,when he came to the Governor, and was for kneeling down and Worfhipping him as a God, for that the Governor could tell him all his Errand be- fore he fpoke one Word of it to him, and that he only had given him a piece of Pa- per : After which, when they let him know that the Paper which he had given the Gover- nor had told him all the Bufinefs, then he fell in a Rapture the other Way, and then Capr. A 3 Smith Smith was a Deity and to be Worfhipp'd, for that he had Power to make the Paper /peak. Nor was the reft of the World one jot wifer than thefe People, as to this particular of ha- ving Letters formM to exprefs their Speech, except that which the Egyptians attain'd to, who were accounted the wifeft People in the Earth, and thofe by their utmoft Wifdom arriv'd to little more than this, that they were fenfible of the Defedt, had a Notion of fomething wanting, that when they had fpoken to one ano- ther Face to Face, they cou'd know nothing more : They cou'd not preferve the Memory of things but in their own Minds, or fend any In- telligence from one to another in remote Places, but by exprefs Mefiengers retaining the whole Meflage they went about in their Memories. But the Knowledge of the Defedt, or the Senfe of the want of fuch a thing as a legible Character, did not at all put xhzModits&x Manner of doing it into their Thoughts, they had no Notion ofex- preihng Sounds by Words without Speech, or that any Character to be form'd, cou'd fignify, and di- rect to the Repetition of the Words fpoken ^ it wou'd have been as Eafie for a Man deaf and Dumb, to entertain a Notion of what found Meant, or of what it really was to fpealc, as of having any Set of Figures, to direct the Tongue to the found of Words from them. But thofe Egyptians being cunning and ftudi- ous Artifts, and Receiving their Knowledge from the Arabians, who they fay were the firft Aftro- nomers \ they invented a way of Writing by Hi roglyp ticks y that is to fay, by figures of Beafts, and painting of the Creatures, which they were fpcaking of fo as thereby to underftand the Thing [7] Thing they intended : For Example, if they had order'd a Perfon to carry a Sheep to fuch a Town, they would paint a Man with a Sheep on his back going into the Gates of the City, or Town, and the like, if a Man would fay in Eiiglijli, I faw an Ox upon a Bridge, the writing was an Eye, a Saw an Ox upon a Bridge and the like. I t cannot be deny'd, but that they carried this Art of (peaking a great length, and abun- dance of Ingenious things were done that way ^ but all was Circumlocution, going round the Bulh, and round the Bufh, and indeed to very little Effect, for the World was not able to form any Method fully to Exprefs themfelves to one another at a Diftance. I t might be very well worth while to enquire here whether they had any Commerce in thofe Days, and how that Commerce was carry'd on ? How they kept their Accounts, and what Equi- valent they had for writing to maintain Corre- fpondence, which to us in thefe Days would feem impomble ? Nay, I do not fee, I Confefs that they were able to fend a MeiTenger of an Errand, tho' it were but into the Market, or from one part of the Town to another, for more Buflnefs, or with more particular Orders, than the Bearer could carry in his Head^ as to keeping Accounts, tho Figures indeed are a kind of univerfal Cha* rafter in theWorld,andunderftooda-like 3 over(at leaft) all the Chriftian World, yet we do not read that Figures were in ufe before Letters, or that Arithmetick, (tho'nowan eminent Part of Ma- thematick Knowledge) was known or underftood any fooner than Letters •, or that the forming them, and Numbering things by them, was known before writing was known : All the ways that I meet with, by which Men caft up Numbers of B 4 things [8] things, were prefcribed by pointing to their Fin- gers, and confequently reach'd only to the De- cimal Point, to Number Ten, which they could tell upon their Fingers ^ if they went any far- ther, they did it by telling the fame Fingers over again, and fo making two Tens, and three Tens, and four Tens as they had Occafion •, and by this Means they cou'd cafl up tho' with Diffi- culty as far as Ten Tens, which we call a Hun- dred, but which they knew no Name for, till ma- ny Ages of the World were run off. Some are of Opinion that this Numbering upon theFingers was the true original of all Arithmetick, and that from thence it was that the firft Inventi- on of Numbers and Figures ftop't at Number Ten, and carry'd on all Ennumeration by Repetition of Decimal Periods, from Ten to Twenty, Thirty, Forty, Fifty, which is no more or lefs than as above Two-tens, Three-tens, Four-tens, Five-tens, and fo on to a Hundred, and then as the Things to be Numbered, or added encreafe, Counting thofe Hundreds, up by Tens, as One Ten Hundred which they call a Thoufand, and then by Two ten Hundreds, and Three ten Hundreds, and the like to a Hundred, ten Hundreds, that is a Hun- dred Thoufand, and ftill keeping to the firft way of Numbering every Ten : Of thefe Hundred Thoufmds, Ten was calfd a Million, and fo over and over again, ad infinitum, and ftill every Tenth of one or another Denomination or kind, had a new Denomination, fo that by Doubling, and Redoubling, all kinds of Numbers may be reck- oned, at leaft all that are pradticable^to Men ; there being a kind of Infinity in Arithmetick beyond human Capacity of accounting, or leaft of ex- preihng- no Number of anything being Co great, but that it may be doubled, or reckon 'd over a- gairi [9] gain to a Tenth of thofe Doublings, and fo on again till every Ten adds Ten-fold to what went before, 'till we come to Innumerable, and even then to ten Hundred Thoufand Millions of In- numerables, if fuch a Term was agreeable to Senfe. What Method the wife Egyptians had to fup- ply this Defect of Numbers by their Hierogly- phicks, I can by no Means meet with in any Au- thor •, but what Notions they have of it "them- felves, and which they mnft entertain from the Traditional Relicksof their Fore-fathers, is this, (viz.,) They us'd certain Bundles of Reeds, which lay open in fbme publick Place in every City, each Bundle confifted of ten Reeds, which Reeds, excepting thofe of the firft Bundle, had each of them ten Knots like a Bamboo Cane, and perhaps was made of fome Cane that grew in Joints, like that we call a Bam- boo h the Reeds of the firft Bundle, only flood for Units, and when reckoned over, numbered but Ten, whereas, the other Reeds which had Knots in them, flood every one for Ten $ and the Number of one of thofe Bundles was equi- valent to our Hundred. There was a Mark placed to feparate betweeen the Reeds that were in Tale, from the others, for in reckon- ing any Number, they removed the Reeds one by one from the Right to the Left Side of the Mark, (counting their Knots) till they had compleated the Number their Eufinefs requir'd. But with all their reckoning, it feems they Lad no Numeral Sounds ^ they had no Numerical Letters, or Words, fuch as One, Two, Three, four, and fo on to Ten $ no Words for a Hun- dred [ ,o] dred or for a Tftoufand, much lefs had they any Figures to exprefs them by. As to their Hieroglyphicks, which were their Types of Expreftion, we have nothing confider- able, extant that ever I have met with •, what is pretended to of that Kind I fhall (peak to by it felf : There have been Obelisks and Monuments difcover'd indeed in the antient Thebes, that is to fay, in the Ruins of it, or in fome fuch Remains of Antiquity,which have been found among the JEgyptians, on which various Hieroglyphick Figures have been found •, but we have no Rule left, by which to interpret them, or to underftand in the leaft what they figni- fy'd • fo that the Art of Writing by Hieroglyphicks, if there was ever fuch an Art, I mean to write in- telligibly one to another at a diftance,is fo entirely Loft, that it remains a Queftion, whether ever it was really Intelligible in the fame manner as our Writing is, or no - 5 that is fo Intelligible as to furnifh Miilives from one to another ; and if not, we need not fet fo much by the Wifdom of thofe Ages, and of the People in thofe Coun- tries as we have done, or think it fo much a Lofs to the World, that the Memory of them, and ufe of them is not preferv'd § feeing they were not able to find out by all their Penetration a Method to convey the Mind, without fpeaking, much lefs able to hand Words from one to ano- ther, by fuch an Equivalent to Speech as we do now by Pen, Ink, and Paper. N e x t to the JEgyptiatts, the Thenlciam are e- fteem'd the antienttft People in the World, who were of any Fame for Wifdom, and Knowledge •> and they are fam'd for two Things, in which they certainly did out do all the reft of Mankind, at that time ; thefe are (firR) the Knowledge of Na- ["■] Navigation (2.) Of Commerce : The Syrians and Sydonians, and the Inhabitants of all that Coaft, which was then call'd Phenician, and extended from that we now call Scandaroon, almofl: to Alex- andria in &gypt, were all Merchants, and ve- ry great Merchants too, as we find in the Pro- phefies of the Ruin of thofe Cities by Ifaiab, E^ekiel, Zephania — — and other Prophets, where it isfaid that their Merchants were Princes, that is very confiderable Merchants, Trading to India, ELthiopia, and as we may fuppofe, to all the Coafts of the Red Sea, and by Land over the Defer ts, to the Gulph of Perjia •, I fay we may fuppofe this from the faid Prophets, who in reck- oning up the prodigious Wealth of their Mer- chants defcribe the Countries they Traded to, by the feveral Sorts of Merchandizes, they Traded in, and which they had it feems vaft Stores of always by them ; fuch as Gold, and precious Stones,which they are fuppos'd to have from Ethiopia, on the Weftern Bank of the Red Sea, and which came by Shipping to Ezion Gebar } or Baalzephon, and from thence by Land Carriage, or as they now call it by Caravan, to the faid Ports of Tyre, Sidon, &c. Then the Silks, the Purple, the Scarlet, and fine twhVd Linnen 5 thefe denote their Trad- ing into Perjia, which as it was, and is to this Day, the Country of the World, where the beft Silk is naturally produc'd ; fo were the Per pans fam'd for their rich Manufa&ures of all kinds, the Workmanfhip of which was, and is to this Day, admirably fine -, and this we read of far back as the BabyloniJI) Garment, which Achan found among the plunder of the City of Jericho and which he thought of fo much value, that next to the Wedge of Gold, he was tempted [ » 1 tempted by it to run the hazard of his own Life, and of God's Curfe, pronounced hyjojlma his General. These Things, I fay, prove the Pbeni- cians to be a kind of univerfal Merchants, and that they correfponded with the whole World in Trade • for befides their Trade to Africa and the Eaft-hdies, and to the Iilands which the Scripture fpeaks of, we find in our own Hiftories that they traded to this very Ifland of Britain, which was at that time fteem'd the utmoft Bounds of the Earth. And yet even thefe expert Merchants, thefe skilful Navigators, knew nothing of Letters ^ their Money, which was fouud here many Ages after, had no Infer iption upon it, but con lifted chiefly of Rings of Copper, and Brafs, and Iron, with onty a Stamp of an old Tower or Caftle, which, 'twas fuppos'd, reprefented the ftrong Caftle of Sidon, faid by the Prophet Ifaiah to be built in the midft of the Sea, and on which her Pride of the ftrength of her Situation was founded. Next, the Arabians claim to be not only a more Ancient Nation than the JEgyptians, or than the Pbenicians, but to have taught them all their Knowledge, as particularly their Skill in theArt of Navigation to the Pbenicians •, and the motions of the Heavenly Bodies ^with the know- ledge of Aftrology, and Judgment in hidden Caufes in Nature to the Egyptians^ whence the Wife Men were call'd Sontb-fayers, the People of the (South, which were the Arabians by their Situation, being efteemed the Author's of all that kind of Knowledge -, and thefe Arabian* pretend to have Peopled Egypt, and even Etbiopa itfelf, by Collonies tranfperted over C 13 ] over the Red S'a from Arabia, which lies ex- tended on the Eaft-fide, as the other do on the Weft-fide of that Sea •, for which Reafon it is to this day calPd the Arabian Gulpb. Yet thefe Arabians themfelves, fo far as we can learn, had not the ufe of Writing, or the leafi: knowledge of Letters ^ nor do we find any remains of fuch a thing among them, or any Pretences to it, tho' their Pretences to their being Originals of all Learning in the World, run very High in the Writings of their antient Authors, and higher by far than we have Reafon to believe they have any Au- thority for. Yet thefe I fay, had no knowledge of Letters, and cou'd never form to themfelves an Idea of Writing, or marking a Sound of Speech down in legible Characters, or as that poor Virginian exprefs'd it, to make a piece of Paper fpeak. W e have indeed an Account of the Inven- tors of Mufick and Mufical Inftruments in the Scripture, even much antienter than NoaVs Flood, but we do not know any thing of the invention of Mufical Notes by that fame Ante- Diluvian Artift} for as the Notes by which we prick down, as it is calfd, our Tunes, are a kind of Univerfal Character, being underftood alike by all Nation s, 'who underftand Mufick, fo the doing it was a kind of Writing, and will unde- niably b^ fo efteenrfd, of which hereafter. But we have reafon to believe, that this par- ticular piece of Knowledge alfo is much more Modern, and even more Modern than Orpheus himfelf, to whom fome will give the Honour of that Invention, and had it not been Modern, the fame Hand who had found out the Way to makg [ <4] inalce Marks upon Lines fpeak in the Language of Mufick, and fing or fay, FA, LA, SOL, &c. would certainly have feen it pomble to have form'd other Words upon the fame Foot, and have brought the World to a Method of under- Handing one another much fooner than they did. The pricking down of Tunes therefore by Marks which we call Notes, and to which we give Tones, or Sounds of Art, is certainly a Mo- dern Invention 5 as indeed the Names of the Figures or Notes do evidently imply,whichare Latin Originally, and moftly now Italian, a Speech which, we know is but theBaftard-child of the Latin. Some fay the Emperor Nero, who as much a Tyrant as he was^ is allowed to he the great- ejt Matter of Mufick of the Age he liv'd in^ was alfo the Inventor, or at leaft the Finifher, of that Part of Mufical Knowledge which re- lates to the pricking down the Notes of Mufick upon Paper ^ and particularly, that tho 1 the wiiole Notes might be mark'd before, and that many Ages, even back to Apollo himfelf, or to Orpheus, yet that the Divifionsof Notes in which our Modern Mailers fo much excell,were the Work of that Emperor •, and that he brought them to the great Perfection which they re- main in to this Day. I do not affirm this, nor am I enclined to Compliment fuch a Monfter of Nature as that Emperor was, at fo high a rate, as to advance the Probability beyond what it ought to be : That JSero was a good Fidler may be true, and he was certainly fo; but that he had any thing elfe good about him, I never heard, except this, of improving the mufical Notes. I fee I fee no part of the World, which we can ap- ply to, farther than we have, for the original of this Art of writing, except to China and Japan, whofe claim to Knowledge of Letters, and to the Art not of writing only, but even to that of Printing too, is as extravagant, as that of the World's being created iiooo Years ago, and their Claim to a Chronology of their own Monarchy for 7000 Years paft. These People pretend to have known Let- ters, and have had a written Character for many thoufands of Years ^ and perhaps before that ac- count of Time, when according to our Regifter, the World was created •, what Authorities they have, they beft know,nor is it at all worth our in- quiry 5 we are well aflur'd that we have Divine Authority for our Account of Time, from its Be- ginning to this Day, and that by Confequence their pretences to fuch Antiquity are Fictitious, and to the laft degree Ridiculous, and on the fameAccounr, their pretended Knowledge of Let* ters muft be fo too. I know it is fabl'd of Cadmus that he invent- ed Letters, and others fay the Pheneciam were the Authors, but thefe are uncertainties, and have little more than what I juftly fay is fabl'd of them, for even who this Cadmus was, is a doubtful thing, and whether really there ever was fuch a Man, in the World, or no • but of that hereafter. Upon the whole, as we are fure the two Ta- bles of Stone, were written by the Finger of God, that is to fay, Divine Power imprefs'd, by what Method we know not, thofe Words on the two Tables of Stone, and at the fame time no doubt inftructed Mofes in the reading of them, and in the Knowledge of their Sounds ^ fo we have an unqueftion'd Authority to affign the Know- [ ,5 3 Knowledge of Letters, and the Art of wilting them to a Divine original ^ that is to fay, that the Knowledge was immediately dictated from Heaven, and that Mofes was enabled to Inftrudt the Children of Ifrael in the Knowledge of them, by an immediate Divine infpiration. Now if we look upon the Face of the World for fo many Ages, and how notwithstanding fo many Arts were known to them, and difecver'd by their own fearch, that yet they had no Notion, nor ever could have of Letters, and Writing 5 I fay, if we look thus on the real difficulty of ma- king any Difcovery of that kind, we may de- pend upon it, that if God himfelf in Favour to his Creatures, and to his own People of Ifrael in the firft Place, had not infpir'd them wit 1 this Knowledge, all the Power of Invention that was everbeftow'don Man before, could nor, nor would to this Day have been able to do it. Ma nkind had no Idea of fuch a thing among them, it was not in them to make a peice of Pa- per fpeak, and to ftamp a Voice and Words, which were neither more or Lfs than meer Sounds to ftamp them on a Paper, and empower other People to fpeak over again, by the help of tho(e dumb Figures, the fame Words that the firft Per- fon had uttered at a hundred or a thoufand Miles diftance 5 no Man could imagin fuch a Thing fea- fible, nor did it ever as I have Reafon to believe'^ enter into any Man's Thoughts to contrive any thing of fuch a kind. But God from Heaven giving Laws to Men, gave not an oral, but a written Law, and it was from him, that Letters were cloathed with Sounds, to be convey'd to any diftance, and by the light, and upon any occafion that requir'd it repeated Articulately as often as was requir'd, by which the Senfe C «7 3 Senfe of things was convey \1 from Man to Man, and from Age to Age, it was his own do- ing, and from him alone it derivM. Here I place the true Original of Writ- ing, and indeed of all Literature if there was any thing known before this, 'tis more than we have any Account of in Hiftory or Monument among the Antiquities of the moft antient Buildings: The Ruins of the moft antient Cities mow no Infcriptions, the old Babel i part of which remains to this Day has no ap- pearance of any thing Written ^ the JEgyptian Pyramids the next peice of Antiquity to Ba- bel, at leaft that we know of, which are Fair, and prefervM entire, have yet no Figures or Semblance of Letters left upon them. The great Men of thofe Ages frequently eredted Columns and Pillars to preferve the Memory of their Actions, and to preferve their Names -, but without any Letters to fignifie whofe they were. Oral Tradition preferv'd their Names from Generation to Generation. The great Nimrod, the mighty Semiramis, Ju^ piter himfelf, however, deify'd for great Actions s I have great Reafon to believe of them, what would be very fcandalous to fay of a great Monarch in our Days, that none of them could write their own Names. Nay, to carry it farther, had Writing been in ufe, had the World known Letters, and could thereby have written down a true Hifto- ry of the Lives of the Great Men of the fir ft Ages of the World, as well the Poft Deluviau Heroes, as thofe before the Flood, their Tyran- nies, the horrid Deflations, the inhuman and unnatural Lufts,theMurthers,and other Crimes C they [ ,8] tfiey committed, would have recommended them to Pofterit}r in other Figures, and Ihown them in different Colours from \vhat the next Ages law them in $ Inftead of placing them among the Stars, and worihipping them as Gods, they would have been rank 3 d among the blackeft Devils •, their Memory would have been the Abhorrence and Terror of future Ages, and not the Subject of their Admira- tion firft, and at laft of their Adoration. What fliould we have underilood of Jupiter, who is faid to have made War upon, depofed, and murthered his Father Saturn, but as an accursed Paricide, juftly doom'd to a Station in eternal Darknefs, for one of the firft Ufur* pcrs and King- killers in the World ? How would Noafrs Drunkennefs , of which it plea- fes Heaven, by the help of Writing, to give us a Part, (at leaft) of the truer Hiftory, been abhorrM and detefted by the Ages following, and recorded to his Shame, if a true Account of it cou'd have been written down and pre- ferved to Pofterity ? Inftead whereof, he is by the Mits-underftandings of the People carrying the Story but from Tongue to Tongue, made the God of Wine, extoll'das a Patriot to theWorld, by furnifhing them with fo excellent, fo deli- cious a Liquor as the juice of the Grape ^ and hence he is made the Idol of all the Revels of Mankind, Father of Drunkards, and has Tem- ples rais'd to him where t\izBaccbinalia ox Feaits to this drunken good Man, are celebrated with all manner of ExcefTes, Lewdnefs. and infi- nite Debaucheries-, and all this for want of the- knowledge of Letters, and the skill of writing a true Account of the iirft Crime of Noah, which he good Man afterwards re- pented pented of $ had he known the abufe that wou'd have been put upon the World in his Name, he wou'd no queftion have left fome Monument of his abhorrence of it, tho' he cou'd not write it down. iV. B. He is fuppofed to be the Bacchus of the Antients. I t is the Opinion of fome, and the Jews had fuch a traditional Notion, whether True or not, that Noah did not flop at once drink- ing Wine to excefs, as is fignifyM in the Text-, but that he grew a grievous Drunkard, a kind of habitual Sot • and that he expos' d himfelf by it in the vileft manner, to the Contempt of his Pofterity •, that efpecially his Son Ham, and his Grandfon Canaan, made a Sport of him, and ridicul'd and expos' d him for it, which is lignifyM, fay they, by his being Un- cover'd in his Tent, and by their feeing his Nakednefs •, and that he continued in this ha- bitual Drunkennefs a Hundred Years : But that Shem and Japhet being religious, fober good Men, left not their Father in this Excefs and Extravagance, but by their Prayers and Entreaties to him, and to God for him, con- vinc'd him at length of his Sin, and brought him to be a moft iincere Penitent : Thus they cover' d his Nakednefs, concealing his Infirmity as much as poffible, and reftoring him by Degrees to his Senfes *, for which he afterwards gave them his Blelfing, and on the contrary, heartily Curs' d his Son Ham and all his Pofterity *, but efpecially young Canaan, who, 'tis fuppos'd, had a great Hand in ex- pofing and making Sport with his Grandfa- ther's Infirmity and Wickednefs: But this is a Digreifton •, I ihall not affirm that this Story is true in Fad, but rather adhere to the Letter C 2 of .C 2 ° 3 of the Text, which feems to point it out as a fingle Offence. Either Way it ferves to the Purpofe in hand : J Tis moft certain that the want of Letters, and the World not being able to col- led and write down the true Lives, (or Hiftory of the Lives) of thefe firft Great Men, has been the main Reafon of their Names and Memories being fo .grofry abus'd, and the World ib much more abusM about them, as to exalt for their Adoration the vileft of Men, call the Stars by their Names, build Temples to their Honour, and Worlhipthem as Deities' who were here on Earth the word of Men, meer incar- nate Devils, Monfters not fit to live, and who had nothing but flagrant Wickednefs to re- commend them; as JUPITER, a Paricide, King-killerandUfhrperof his FatherYfhione. MARS, a Fury and outragious Monfter for Murther and Rapine, and therefore made the God of War. MERCURT, a Sorcerer and notorious Wizard, a Fortune-teller, and dealer with the Devil. VENUS, a beautiful Wo- man, but an everlafting Whore, an infatiate impudent Strumpet, an infamous notorious She-Devil, the vileft and worft of her Sex. BACCHUS, (if Noah really was the Man) the firft of Drunkards, tho' other wife, and afterwards, a good Man and a Penitent, which they that Worfhip'd him never heard of -, or if they did, never pl-acM that Part among theVertues, for which they a- dor'd him. O ! had they known the Ufe of Pen and Ink in thnfe Days, and had they had a Juvenal to have SatyttVd and Recorded the immortal Crimes of thofe Wretches, who they rall'd the Immortal Gods, how would they ha* been been fet forth in their True Colours ! and how wou'd the World have made their very Names a Curfe,and an Execration to Posterity, rather than Idoliz'd them for Vertues and for Hero's > But all this miftaken Opinion of thefe Men, is owing, under the Difpofition of Providence, to the want of the Ufe of Letters, and of Faithful Writers, to have recorded the Hifto- ries of thofe Times, free from Fable and Ro- mance, and to have fet the Actions of thofe Men in a true Light. Since the ufe of Letters, flnce Writing came into the World, and fince Hiftory has prcferv'd the true Account of the Actions of Men, we have had no new Gods fet up •, no Statues have been nick-nairfd, nor infamous Men exalted after their Death to the Rank of Deities : Some of the Roman Emperors indeed afpir'd to the Title, and impioufly accepted of what, in thofe Times, they calTd Divine Honours ; even Alexander the Great had the Vanity to approve of it, being fond of bei/jg ftiFd the Son of Jupiter : But Hiftory has done Heaven Juftice, and the Ages when thefe Men liv'd having had the bleiling of Pen, Ink and Paper, or the Equivalent to them, (of which I mall fpeak prefently) have branded the Names of thefe Men with a juft Mark of In- famy for the Attempt^ and by leaving the Memory of their Deeds upon Record, have rcgifter'd their Names amongft the worft of Men • the Great Sir Walter Raleigh hints this, when fpeaking how the moft Wicked among mortal Men, were made Immortal among the Heathen, He fays, it is not to be wonder'd at that ' Alexander Magnus, Tiberius, Nero, Ca- • Hgula, and others, ought to be numbered a- C 3 mong c mong them, being as Deform'd Monfters as c any of them •, and he adds, how cou'd the , c fame Honour he denyM to Laurentia and * Flora, which was given to Venus, feeing they * were as famous Harlots as ihe. Vid. Sir < Walter Raleigh* s Hifi. of the World, fol. 52. This is one of the Benefits of Hiftory ^ we have now no more dependance upon Tradi- tion or the oral Hiftory of Men and Things,the Writings of the Antients are our Foundation to fly to for the Characters of Things, and of Men • and tho" 1 it is true, that even fince the ufe of Letters and of Writing, there has too much Fi&ion and Fable enter'd into the Writings of the Learned, efpecially their Poe- tical Works, as Homer in particular, who has fung the Wars of the Greeks, and the Siege of Troy from a Reality, into a meer Fidtion •, yet even among thefe we find Room to pick out Fragments of Truth, enough to make a Judg- ment both of the Times, and of the Actions of Men performed in them. Part II. HAving thus advanc'd a Propofition in Honour of the Subject I am upon, name- ly, that Wiiting and the ufe of Letters is of divine Original, and that there was no know- ledge of Letters, much more of Writing, be- fore that of the two Tables of Stone written by the Finger of God in Mount Sinai : It feems need/":? 1 'hat I fhould examine Antiquity a ~~ little i>3] little and fee what Pretences are made in the World to the original of Letters, the know- ledge of Sounds in form of thofe Letters, and the writing or imprefling them upon the Ma- terials prepar'd for that purpofe, of all which in their Order. The Time when Mofes brought the Chil- dren of Ifrael out of Egypt, and Encamp'd them at the Foot of Mount Sinai, was the Year of the World 2515;, Mofes being then 80 Years old, for he was born in the Year 2434. I f we look back, we fhall find this was fo fhort a Time, even after the Flood itfelf, or efpecially after the Death of JS/oab, who died in the Year of the World 2005, that as firft, it is not likely that Letters came into the World fo foon, being by the general Opinion of all Writers, not above ?oo Years after the Confufion of Languages. So (2.) It is more Antient, and far beyond all the famous Men, to whom Hiftory, or even Fable itfelf, would give the Honour of being the Authors of Learning, and of bringing the knowledge of Letters into the World. Cadmus is the mofl: antient of thefe, and who, Pliny fays, brought the knowledge of Letters into Greece, from whence others have ignorantly enough made him the Inventer of them : But all we have of Cadmus is, that he brought 16 Letters of the Greek Alphabet in- to Peloponefus, that is, into Greece, where he built the City of Thebes, and from whence all the Learning and learned Writings of the Greeks had their beginning. Some would have us believe this Cadmus to be a Great Grandion of No.ih, and to have come diredrly from Ajfyria foon after the Confufion of Languages : But C 4 this Cm] this is all Fiction, and we find by more au- thentick Accounts, that Cadmus was not born till after the Year 2600, or thereabouts, which was Eighty-fo Years after the Tables of Stone were written in Mount Shiai, and that he was a Vbemaan born, being the Son of Jigenor, a King of the Vbeyiicians. Now, as the Phenicians, who were Canaanltes, might eafily learn the ufe of Letters from the Hebrews, and make fbme improvement in that Knowledge in 86 Years, Forty of which was after the Israelites were planted in Canaan, be- fore Cahius was born, and Sixty Years more before he went into Greece: This is not impro- bable at all. Th 1 s Cadmus, Fame tells us, carry'd with him 16 Letters of the Greek Alphabet into Greece, to-wit, a.fiyAsiHKKvo'&^trTv Four more, "'tis faid, were added by Valamedes, but not till the time of the Siege of Troy, which was not till 220 Years after. This Cadmus alfo lived fome time in Egypt, at a Town call'd Thebes, from whence it feems his Anceftors came to Tyre, a City of the Fbenicians. Now, after the Children of Ifrael had by the Finger of God, been inftrudted in the knowledge of Letters, for Mofcs infpir'd from Heaven, no doubt taught them firffc to Read, and then to Imitate that Heavenly Scripture the Law, otherwife it had been of no Ufe to them : I fay, after this, and after it came to be look'd into by other Nations, who Con- vcrs'd with the Ifraeliees, it is no Wonder that thofe Nations form'd Letters alfo of their own making, and gave them Sounds proper to their rwn (peaking, after the manner of the He- hews, with whom they Convers'd. I T ['* ] I T is alfo to be obferv'd, that this feemscon- firm'd (atleaft to me) in that the firffc Nations which we read of, who had the life of Letters after the Hebrews ,were thofe who were the near- er!: to them in their Habitations • fuch as the Egyptians* from whom they came, and who at the firft Time of appearance of this Heavenly Art, liv'd not above two Days Journey from them, and the Phenicians to whom they came, that is, when they (the Israelites) Con- quered Cayman* and who then liv'd not 'near them only, but even among them* for the Phe- vicians were the very Canaamtes, which the Ifraelites fhou'd have deftroy'd, but did not. The Phenicians then having made a begin- ning, (for 'tis apparent they had then form'd but Sixteen Letters of Four-and- twenty,) Cadmus with what Knowledge was then in theWorld, went into Greece* and there taught his Citizens of Thebes the ufe of thofe Sixteen Letters, which for that Reafon they pretend he Invented : But 'tis evident,that he only brought them with him into Greece* but did not invent them in Greece ^ the Phenicians having the Ufe of them before the Thebans -, and thus alfo otherWriters not allowing themfelves to think, or perhaps not blowing the Hiftory of the Tranfadtions at Mount Sinai, and of Mofes his inftrudting the Ifraelites* give the Honour of the firft know- ledge of Letters to the Phenicians ; and others again to the Egyptians, both which bring it fb near to the Ifraelites y as ftill confirms the Pro- bability of what I have here advanced, and which, I think, ftands now almoft beyond the reach of Contradiction, We We ought then a little to enquire what kind of People thofe were, to whpm all the Great and Wife Actions of thofe early Ages of the World are afcribed, that we may fee when they liv'd, and whether they afTumed to them- felves any thing that may contradict our pre- fent Thefis, or entitle thofe Men to the Ho- nour of introducing this Knowledge into the World. Apollo, a Name underftood in various Manners by the Antients, in the Heaven he is call'd the SUN h in Hell PLUTO y on Earth APOLLO , and who was indeed but a Minftrel, or Fidler, in Englifh a Ballad- finger, a Tumbler, or a Merry-Andrew, or Mountebank, or what you pleafe ^ yetisfaid to be a teacher of Science, and judge of Wit, and rectifier of the Under Handing among the People. ATLASy the Brother of Prometheus, was rather Prior to Mufes, tho 1 he liv'd in fome part of the time of Mofes, but Prometheus him- felf was King of Armenia, and reign'd in the time of Mofes. This is that Prometheus of whom fo many Fictions are made by the Poets, as of his making a Man of Clay \ Sealing Fire from Jupiter , as alfo of his being Chain'd on the Top of Mount Caucafus by the Hands and Feet, and a Vulture all the while devouring his Bowels. All thefe Fables are Conftrued to fignify no more than the Greatnefs of his Wifdom and Knowledge, as that of his Brother Atlas carrying the World upon his Shoulders, was, to fignify that he fupported the Government of the whole World, by the Wifdom and Juftice of his Laws. W St, [ V ] (a) St. AuguJTine fays, That Prometheus was feign'd to have form'd Men out of Clay $ that is to fay, he formed the Minds of Men, by in- ftilling Principles of Knowledge, and of Wif- dom into them, and was an excellent Inftructor of Mankind. So Theophrajfus and others inter- pret him ftealing Fire •, or as it was called by fome, the invention of Fire, whereby he gave Life to his Men of Clay, or of Wood, which he had made •, that is, fays he, that he infpir'd the Minds of Men, or nYd their Minds with earned Defires after Knowledge : And that whereas, before him, Men were but filly igno- rant, and blind, he enlighten'd their Minds with Knowledge : And by that Vulture gnaw- ing his Bowels on Mount Cancafus, is fignify'd the gnawing, earneft, anxious Defire,he had to compafs the Syftem of Aftronomical Know- ledge, and the Motions of Heavenly Bodies, not then attained to by any of humane Race. All this I mention, (tho' fomething re- mote) for this Reafon, and fo I bring it down to my Purpofe, (viz,.) That fome have made this Prometheus the firft inventor of Letters in the World. But this is evidently contradicted \ for that before him,Mofes had the written Law in the Mount, as above *, fo that whatever Pro* metheus had, he muft, or at leaft might have from Mofes many Years after. (b) Dr. Goodwin y in his Collection of the JemJJ) Antiquities, agrees with my propofed Article, (viz.) That Mofes firft taught the Ufe of Letters to the Jews • that the Pheniciam learn'd (a) sfuguft. de Civit. Dei. lib. i3. (b) Goadwin, Civil. & Ecclcf. Rites, p. 1 \ [,8] learned them from the Jews, and the Grecians from the Pbenicians •, that Mofes learned them bvlnfpiration, having the firft writing of them from the Hand of Godhimfelf, this the Scrip- ture pofitively afTerrs •, and thus my deriving the knowledge of Letters from a divine Origi- nal is, I think, fufficiently fupported. • The next Perfons who Authors would en- tile to the Invention of Letters, are, i. fa) la~ lamcdes, who the Greeks talk very much of - y but this Palamedes lived no fooner than the Siege of Troy, 163 Years before Homer -, whereas the written Law of God was given to Mofes Sixty Years before the City of Troy was built, (viz.) Anno Mund. 2514, and Troy was built, Ann. Mund. 2)74, and was de- ftroy'd again by the Grecians, Anno Mimd. 2870. 2. Memnon -, the fame Author tells us, this Memnon brought the ufe of Letters into Egypt. But again, as above, even Memnon is by Others faid not to be the Inventor of Let- ters to the Egyptians, only of forming a kind of Intelligence, by Figures, or Hieroglyvkich^ and knew nothing cf an Alphabet of Letters to form Words from by Prolation. As for the other Memnon he was too Modern, being kill'd by Achilles at the Siege of Troy : And as to the Egyptian Figures or Hieroglyphicks, I fhall fpeak of 3 em afterwards. The Arabians are the next who claim the Invention of Letters •, but they who pretend to it in their behalf, can bring no Authorities [a) SefvTus, L'b. 1. Csodwin, Pa^. 27;. for t*9j\ for it • nor do we meet with it f Hirtorv, but fbme Writings of the Sarazem and Ta/-ita, k Credit is too low with me, to give any ;g for Air k, upon :' authority. Antiqpity tftcn gives u3 no Light into an g, at leaft, that I tret met with, to en, much left to contradict the F: p I have advanced, namely, That the writ- ten Law of God, gave the firft appearance of Letters in trie World 5 the progreilion of Kr ; ge, and the ufe of Letters I fhall ac- count : er war ds ; thus, fjBzJ] Hut from e ufe of Letters were ta the Ifraz- lite*, and by :hem communicated to the reft of the World, namelv. to the Pkevkians on one Hand, and :ks, and on the tc t&e Eg\ :::ans - and by them to - Ethiopians. ptiam fhould learn it from r Ethiopians ( for Mewmon 1 Ethiopian) is ftill more unlikely, the Ethiopians being never fam'd for communicating Knowledge to - W rid, or indeed retaining any valua'. Degree of it among themfelves : Befides, had Memxon, who liv'd in the Year of the World, : : : :. been the Inventor of Letters, and thofc Letters in Ufe among the Ejyi- no, Hjw came it to pa it the Egjptia - the unintelligible ae igmatick Me- thod of Figures and Hiercglvphicks, &c. and r feveral Hundred Years after the fup- pc :ie of Mewmmts Life. These Hiercglvphicks ha: Signi. tng to the receiv'd LTage of the Count: - j :s by a Circle was meant the 5xr* 2. Semi .:::'. I ~.:z: of a Haxk, [30] Hawk, being the King of Birds, Signified the King of Heaven h by the Figure of a Man, Wif- dom $ a Horfe haxnzisd, Strength 5 a Lyon, Cou~ rage and Fortitude $ a Horfe Un-bridl'd, figni- fied Liberty • by a Crocodile, Impudence *, by a Fifh, Hatred , and the like. And thefe Figures with many other, were ufed till after the Children of Ifrael went out of G often. All thefe Things concur to confirm, as far as a Thing of this Nature, and fo very Anti- ent, can be expetted to be confirmed, that the "World had not the ufe of Letters, till the exhi- biting of the written Law of God at Mount Sinai. I fhall add but one thing more, and that is the Improbiiity that Letters could be in ufe in the World much fooner than that time, as the W r orld was then ftated - y The Nations were not lb fettled as to be very well Improved, or indeed very Populous at that time : Sir Walter Raleigh obferves, That even fome Ages after this, Men were advanced to the Government of Nations upon the meaneft Terms of Ex« cellence that could be imagin'd. Atlas was chofen King of Mauritania, becaufe he had knowledge of Heavenly Bodies. Her stiles, be- caufe of his great Strength was Deify' d : Mer- cury for Magick and Cunning : Pelafgus was chofen King of Arcadia, becaufe he taught the People, but how to build fimple low Cottages, to defend them from Storms and Rain, and learned them to grind Acorns, and make Bread of them for their Nourishment, who liv'd be- fore upon Roots and Herbs. Is it likely that thefe rude Ages, when Wit and Knowledge was at fo low an Ebb, mould invent fo Noble, fo fublime a Thing, as the ufe of Letters ? Form- [3« 3 Forming Sounds by the help of Characters which Ihould fpeak, and be repeated from Mouth to Mouth. How falfely then have the Grecians boaft- ed of their antient Learning, and of the anti- quity of their Knowledge, their Plnlofophy, and the like, when this was the poor Ignorant People who inhabited the Arcadian Plains, where afterwards all the Learning of this Part of the World fprung up. Then as to the time of Mofes, let us con- fider that Mofes gave this Knowledge to the Ifraelites before the planting of any of the Grecian Common-wealths •, confequently, it muft be long before the antient Learning of the Greeh began •, for as I have obferv'd, it was long before the building of the City of Troy, above 146 Years before the Building ofTbebes, and frill more befqre the firft ufing of Letters among the Greeh. I fay, Again, Let us go back to the time of the Flood itfelf, and of Roab, who Re-peopled the World by the Pofterity of his three Ante- Diluviau Sons. The Flood was in the Year of the World, 1656. being the next Year after the Death -of Metbufelah : After the Flood, According to Sir Walter Raleigh's Account, it was 170 Years to the beginning of the build- ing of Babel h This Building having been begun fofigU*//* upon the m pft ignorant Notions o£j&iiigs r that /««* '">/ /" w rational Creatures, and fliews an immenfh/i/u^i'^ ' , Dulnefs in the People of that Time, to think/W*'"/^ that a human Building could reilftan univer^^^*^ fal Deluge * hit that by the way. 6 This Building, with the digging the Foun- dation, which mull be a prodigious Gulph for V* *-* ^ - * fei rr^fsSS */ fo vaft a Fabrick, which was fbme Miles in Circumference, the preparing and bringing the Materials, and making the Bricks, &c. is fuppofed to take up 130 Years more, which is in all, 300 Years. Now, from the Confufion of Languages to the Birth of Jacob, was but 213 Years, according to his Account •, and it can hardly pafs for probable, that the Confu- iioii which that divifion of Languages made among them was fo recover'd, that they mould have advanced to any Inventions in thatTime^ much lefs to fo Glorious an Improvement as this of writing down their Speech by the help of Letters, and as the poor Indian faid, mak- ing rfo Paper or the Tables they wrote upon, to Speak. From Jacob then to the exhibiting of the Law on Mount Sinai, which was about 34? Years ^ was indeed no extraordinary length of Time, the Confulions and Dulnefs of thofe days confidered, for introducing fo noble a Part of Knowledge into the World. But let us go back to this Story of the Egyptians, having the ufe of Letters before the Israelites \ where is the proba- bility, that God himfelf, who gave the Israelites the written Law, and wrote it with his Own Hand, fhould imitate the Egyptian Magicians? for this Memnon was a famous Sooth -fayer, or Magician, a Negro by Nation, born in Ethiopia : Or whether was more probable, namely, that it mould be true that the Gcd of Heaven fhould write after Memnotfs Copy •, or that Memnon rather hearing that the difcovery of fuch a wonderful Knowledge was brought into the World by Infpiration from Heaven, went immediately into the AVildernefs among the Israelites, to learn t 33 3 learn the Method from them, and carry'd it fcack with him into Egypt, from whence he was to them the firft Inventor, and might pafs for fuch in the Efteem of the future Ages of the World • as Cadmus did, by going on the fame happy Meflage into Greece. The only Difficulty to be darted here, is the Time of this Memnon, when he liv'd ? which they pretend, but without any certainty, was the 23d Century of the World's Age^ fo that he muft probably be in his Grave, before Mofes, or muft have liv'd above 250 Years. Now, as to this, we have not, I fay, the leaft Authority of Authors to be depended upon, for the time of Memnotfs Life, any more than the length of it 5 and therefore I do not conceive that Part to be of Force enough, to contradict the Au- thority I have brought for the Original of Letters *, and efpecially, becaufe we read of no Writings extant in all that time, either there, or in any other Part of the World. The great Library of Ftolemy, King of Egypt, which had in it fo many thoufand Books, that is to fay,Manufcripts, if that Story be not all Fa- ble, yet had it not any Books, as we find rea* fon to believe that were written before mofes : In a word, we find no certain Notice, even in^o- fephus, or any other Author, of any Writing, of Gods or Men, before this one glorious difcovery of Knowledge, made by the True God, among his Cholen People the Jews : So that really all Argument from Probability feems to be a- gainft them. O n the other Hand, there is the higheft Probability, that all the other Nations, efpeci- ally the Egyptians, deriv'd their Knowledge of Letters from the Ifraelites, as above. D Again, C 34 1 Ac a in, the firnilitude of the Writing it felf in all thofe Ages and Countries Jntiraates the fame Original-, the Hebrew Character was then, and is ftill written from the Right-Hand to the Left, and the Egyptians in their firft Language, wrote after the fame manner, as wefiallfee in our next Difcourfe, till many Ages afterwards h Then the Greek Tongue was fpoken in Egypt as the Univerfal Language, as it was alfo among the Jews, notwithstanding their being firft taught the Hebrew. Thus, I think, it is as clear as any thing can be made, whole Proofs are fo remote, that the Knowledge of Letters was of Divine Ori- ginal, brought down from Heaven •, for fo, what was brought jrom GOD himfelf might jufily be faid to be, and that it was brought to the Jfraeiites by Mofes, the Servant of God, who was divinely infpir'd, to inftrudt the Peo- ple in the Ufe, in the Pronunciation, in the Reading, and in the Writing of them 5 and this made me fay, that Writing is almoft as antient as Letters. This alfo brings me to fpeak of the Nature of Letters themfelvcs, (viz.) That they were not only meer Figures, call'd by parti- cular Names •, for as fuch they were ftill, but Hieroglyphicks, as the Images of living Crea- tures were before $ thofe Images were meer Independent Marks, defign'd to direct the Miivi as any particular Mark might mean : But this was quite another thing, here was a certain ftrange anc!,/>wt by Divine Infpiration, an incom- prehensible way of giving Diction to thofe Let- ters, which not only diitinguiihed them from oneanother, but made tiiem capable alfo of be- ing* C.35 3 ing joined to one another, by Prolation^ and Sound, by which means thofe Letters forming a diftinft Syllable, or Sjpilablcs, had again, a diftindt Compound Mote, and thofe Syllables being farther join'd, compounded other diftindt Sounds, forufd from or out of feveral of the compound Sounds which went before «, out of that far fetch'd Va- riety, forming the concording Sound of what- ever Word or Words the Tongue could ex- prefs •, Thefe Sounds had fuch an infinite Vari- ety, that as the found of fix -Bells may be chang'd 720 times, fo the Sounds of 24 Letters are capable of an innumerable reflux, fufficient to form Words enough, and thofe of differing Sounds, to exprefs the meaning of Mankind in all Languages now in Ufe in the World 5 nor would there be need to invent any more Letters, if there were ten Thoufand differing Languages more than there are. "lis hardly to be conceiv'd, how a Man making a certain Figure upon a Table, mould frame his Mouth to make a Sound for that Letter or Figure - y or how when he had fram'd his Mouth to form a Sound, he could fuit a Figure to exprefs that Sound by > For Example ^ Why muft an A reprefent fo many Things as we fee it does, being the firft beginning in Sounds, and the firft Singular in Speech? Why muft a Circle exprefs our Exclamati- ons, when we cry out for Pain and the like > These feem to me to be Difficulties not in the Power of Human Invention ^ befides the innumerable Arcana that I have not Time or Room to mention here. Three Things in Na- ture, feem to me to Claim an immediate In- D 2 fpiratioa fpiration from Heaven, as being above the reach of Human Invention, I mean meerly Hu- man h Thefeare (i.)Musick. (2.; Numbers'. (jj Letters. And thefe I call the Three In- finites below. 1 b thefe did not come immediately from Heaven, Whence then did they come, and who were the Authors ? To fay they were Ante- diluvian, is to agree them to be Divine, becaufe the confummate Knowledge of that State of the "World, feems alfo to have been all from de* vine Original. But in all the Account of Things, all the Hiftories of Time and Perfcns, taking in the J "acred infpir'd World and all, we find no- thing recorded of the Original of any of thefe mighty Three-, till this of giving a written Language from Heaven, by which the Tables of Stone might be faid to Speak, and the Ifra- elites were taught to Read and Write. Of Numbers I have fpoken fomething 5 of Mujick I fhall fay no more than this, that we have an Account of him that invented mufical Inftruments, and perhaps not that without di- vine Direction neither : But he invented only the Inftrument, to improve the Knowledge, and Delight Mankind : But Harmony, and the Beauties of Sound, which are the Foundation of Mufick, thefe are the Daughters of God •, Unaccountables, beyond the reach of Human Invention $ forrrfd in the Air, and directed by him that made that Air, in the proper di- Tiiions and proportions of Notes, for the fur- ther improvement of Sound. Nor are thefe three Heads very remote from one another 5 they feem to be a Chain of Things of Affinity to one another, and are all apply 'd E37] apply'd in Conjunction on many'Occafions, de- riving from the fame Principles, and blended one with another * there is Mufick in Words, and there is Harmony in Numbers •, particularly Numbers run thro\and are theMeafure of Sound, which make Mufick : In a Word, they are equal- ly defcended from above, and were equally a- bove the Power of Nature to invent. Some have been of the Opinion, among who?n I confefs I am in din d to be one, that all Learning, as well as all literature, as promul- gated in the World, began in Mofes • to whom all Knowledge, and Science was communicated from Heaven, either by Infpiration, or Re- velation • to whom all Precept alfo was given, either by Tradition from the Patriarchs, or by the immediate Voice of God. Hence the Hi- ftory of the World was written by him, as de- riv'd from Adam, and the Antediluvian Patri- archs to Noah, and from Noah eaiily tranfmit- ted to Mofes, who was not fo far remov'd from Father Noah, as that the Accounts tranfmitted from Father to Son might not eafily be hand- ed on inunalterable Truth. Upon this Foot it was that the Scripture fpake of Mofes, that he was learn'd in all the Wifdom of the Egyptians $1 which may be under- ftood, either asfome, that he was learn'd above all the Wifdom of the Egyptians-, Or, as 0- thsrs, that he had eafily made himfelf Mafter of all their Traditional Knowledge, which to him was but poor trifling Stuff, as indeed it was • conlifting chiefly in their Magick and Con-' jurations, things which fome think they were both inftrufted and afliftedin Perfonally,by the D 3 Devil, T)evil h ' and in Aftronomical Obfervations of the Motions of the Stars, wjiich laft they borrow'd from the Arabians^ and they as it was fuid from Ifbmael their great Anceftor, who al- fo was inflnicted by Abraham, and he by Di- vine Revelation. Others fnggeft that Job was fir ft Aftrono- mer, that he form'd the Stars into Conftel- latiors, and gave thofe Conftellations their Names 5 whence in the Book of Job, when God fpeaks to Job out of the Whirlwind, he is faid to make ufe of the Karnes of the Conftellati- ons, and of the word Ma^zaroth, which to this Day is not well under flood, and leaves u$ doubting whether it be an unknown Conftel- lation,and was then only call'd fo, and may be kn/'Wn flnce by other Names • or the whole Zodaick including all the Signs put together. And this may be the Reafbn, why fome think that Job was Contemporary with M§- fes 9 in the latter part of his Life efpecially *, and that he wrote his own Hiftory, having receiv'd the Knowledge of Letters from the Ifraelites, by the hand of Mufes. When I mention thus the Introduction of Letters by Mofes, I might again Quote the Words of the "learn'd Lnd, Vives, in his Com- mentary upon St. Auftin, de Civit. dei, lib. 18. cap. 39. St. Aiigvjivs's words are fhort, thus, Ibe Hebrew Letters began from the Law given by Mcfes : To this Liid, Vives, adds thus, The vulgar Opinion of us Chrijiians, fays he, and alfo of the Hebrews Is, that the Hebrew Letters had Mofes for their Author \whicb Eupolemus, men- tions the fame thing alfo, in his Treatife of the original of the Heb. Letters, where he faith that Mofes was ftiled Mercury by the JEgyptians, be- caufe he taught them Wifdom, and the Know- ledge of Letters : vid. Dr. Gales Court of the Gentiles, pag. $ 6. The fame learn'd Author tells us, that Plato in his Ph&drus contends, that the firft Invention of Letters was in Egpyt, by one Theutch, of whom it was a great doubt, whether he were a God, or a Man ^ and other Authors bring this Theutch to be the fame, that the JEgyptians calFd Mercury, and that this Mercury was Mofes, is affirm'd, " fays he, " by Atrapanns, in Eufebius Prepar. Evang. lib. " 9. cap, 4 3> . His words are thefe, " Whom the " Hebrews call Mofes, and the Greeks Miifaus, u the Egyptians call'd Mercury • and hence " Mercury was faid to be the God of Learn- tc ing, becaufe he was fuppos'd to be the In- " venter of Letters. Now the fame learn'd Author infifts that all the Oriental Languages derive from the He- brew, and that therefore all the Nations, who fpolce thofe Languages muft derive their D 4 Let- [4°] Letters from Mofes, who taught the Hebrew] and that the Similitude, with t^e Manner of Printing, and the feveral read ings of the Letters effectually acknowledge their Original. I know Monfieur Du Pin is of another Opinion; but as he touches it but in a Summary and fup- pofitious Manner : I fhall refer what he fays to another Place. What is faid already, fully confirms me in the Opinion, as before, that the Exhibition of the two Tables in the Mount, written, as the Text affirms, by the Finger of God, was the firft Specimen of Letters ever known in the World ; and why elfe could not the Coppy be done again in the Camp, as I have obferv'd al- ready, after the firft Tables of Stone were broken by Mofes, without carrying new Tables up to have the fame Hand at that time i7ii?nita^ lie perform the Operation? Some have entertained a Notion, whether from the old Jews, fruitful in Fi&ions, or from fome other Brain given to Invention, that upon the Tables of Stone before, or immediately after the writing of the Law, was an Alphabet of the Hebrew Letters, as a Key toinftrudt the If raelites in the writing part for the future ^ but thisalfo I give the World, as indeed it is a peice of Invention -, but it intimates that the Ifraelites had occafion of fuch a Direction, having prob- ably never feen any writing before. Certain it is, that we do not meet with any writing, or any Alphabet in thofe Ages, before the Hebrew ; what has been advanc'd of AntiJilur vian Alphabets, of Noahs Alphabet, and the like, I fhall confider by its felf. We C 4* ] W e are indeed told of a great variety of antient Writings, particularly Trifmegijius is faid to have written 30000 Vol urns, and that he lived before, or was at leaft as antient as Mofes h but then there is an unfurmountable Difficulty in the word Volume, how it fhould be underftood in 2fter times, whether a Book, as it is here Suggefted, or the Leaf of a Book, as in the 40 Pfahn v. 7th In the Volume of the Bool, is it written, Lo,I come, where Volume rn 1ft be underftood only a Leaf-, here then is a Difficul- ty in the word Volume, and what Tranfla- tors muft call it in different Languages-, for we are certain there were no Bonks in Mofes time, no, not Rolls, as we find was afterwards the ufuage in the times of the Prophets, Ifaiah, Jeremiah, Eaekiel, 8cc. Either then it muft be fuppos'd that Trifmegijius wrote 50000 Tables of Stone, or Leaves of the Papyri, or that the Tranflators mean, that he wrote as much, as was when Coppyd, or Tranflated, made up into 50000 Rolls, or Volums. So we read of the five Writers in the Apocryphal Book of Efdras, Book 11. cap. xiv. v. 44. In Forty Days they wrote Two Hundred and Pour Books, what thefe Books were, is perfectly delcrijbed in the fame Chapteri Vcrfe the xiv, Look thou prepare thee many Box-Trees, and take with thee &?rea, Da~ bria, Selemia, Ecanus, and Afiel. Thefe five, which are ready to write fwijtly. In the Margin its faid, Box-Tables to write on, inftead of Box- Trees • fo that thofe Books were only fo ma- ny Tables of Box-wood a of which I mall fay more in its Place, but as to the 30000 Volums of Trifmegijius, tho' if they were written, 'tis probable they were no more than fo many Tables C 4> 3 Tables of Wood, yet I muff: not forget that the whole Story of the 30000 Yolumns or Ta* bles is treated by good Authors aslfabulous ^ and indeed I think, deferves to be fo treated. For this Trifmegifius , which fome call Mer- cury, and the Egyptians Thauut, was an Egyptian, and at the moft is fuppos'd to be but Contem- porary with Mofes, and fo might have all his Knowledge of Letters from Mofes, that is to fay, from the Hebrew original. He is alfo faid to be the Inventor of all the liberal Arts and Sciences $ all which might be after he had attain'd the Knowledge of Letters, and even without it, for 'tis manifeft that the Egyptians, and before them the Arabians were Aftronomers, Magici. ans and Wise Men, as thofe Ages calVd them, or to fpeak in our Modern wav, Learn d Men, and yet they wrote only by Hieroglypicks, not by Letters 5 and if Trifmegijlus us'd Letters, 3 tis more than probable that he had them from Mcsfs, as above • and yet of all his 30C00 Volums, which 'tis faid he wrote, we know of no mere, than of two Dialogues, preferv'd to the World under his Name ^ One call'd P&~ wander, and the other Afdephs., that is, the Per ions fpeaking to one another, by way of Dialogue, are fo calFd. The firft of thefe Dia- logues, is concerning the Will of God, and the 0- ther the Power of God ■ and thefe are Quoted hy (a) fcveral of the anrient Fathers, to prove the Truth of Religion from the Authority of fo antient a Writer, Du Pinn Bibliothcc. Pa- trum, or Ecc. HiJL of the fir ft Cent. Vol. 1 .Fol. 3. (n) By St. Clement in lib. i jfromat. By St. Jugttjlin in T ad and if thefe were remaining, How comes it to pafs that fo glorious a Monument of Antiquity was not preferv'd, that the Words, or at leaft the Characters were not copyed, and taken off, and by fome artful, careful Hand, preferv'd for the life and Information of Pofterity ? Strange! that thePillar fhould remain, and the Reafon of it be told, and not a Word of the In- fcription preferv'd. as the juft Authority for Proof of the Facts, faid to be, or intendedtobe preferv'd by that Column. But fo it is, Jnfe- pbus himfelf does not fo much, as intimate that any Copy of the Infcription, or En- gravement on the Pillar had been preferv'd, or does he fo much as give us any of the Words, or Letters made ufe of in it. • What then is the Authority of Jofepbus, to prove there was fach a Column, or what the Column it felf? If it had been really preferv'd as I am fully fatisfy'd it was not, and could not ? I fay, What is all this to the proving the Knowledge of Letters in the Antediluvian World-, Unlefs the Infcription, or any part of it, which was faid to be engrav'd on the Column, had been alfo fhown us, that we might know what Letters they ufed, and in what manner the Sound of Words was drawn out from them ? I t is True, the learn'd Rugt, in his Trea- tife, entitl'd, Exercitationum Liter ari arum ^ Col- lects all that was advanc'd by thofe antient Writers, concerning thefe Letters, and gives us, or pretends rather to give, the feveral Alphabets of Adam, Enoch* and Noah, and his Authors, or Authority for this, which are principally, Angela* 1^1 'Angelas Boccha a Camerino, in Bibliothc* Apnjlolics, Vatican* Cornmentario, quem Ro?na, Ann. i?9i, edidit. Claudius Durretius, in Hiftoria de Unguis Uni- verfi, Colonic, 1613. The feus Ambrojius, in Appendice Introducti- on is ad Chaldaicam linguam, Syriacam Armenicam, atque decern alias linguas quas Papia? in Italia evulgavit, 1559. Jacobus lonaventnra Hepbitrnus Scotus, Ordi- nis fancti Francifci de Paula, qui Pon- tificis Pauli v. privikgio 8c Superiorum licentia conflrmatus forum extruxit Roma?, 16 1 6, 8c Anrcam Virgam infcripfit. From thefe feveral Authors, are collected the feveral Alphabets call' d by them, as in the following Tranfcripts, from the faid learn'd Author are to be feen, and to which I refer, thinking it fufficient to give the Tranfcript, with the Authority, from whence I bring it - y without any Suggeftion of 'the Truth of it, which indeed, I conceive is not to be found, otherwife than in the fruitful Invention of thefe Authors, which I leave the learn'd Reader to Judge of. Qu EST. I. Qttinam AuSlores hiteris Antechluvia- nis patrocinentHTy de iis tefientnr^ &> quibus jiguris ill* expreff* extent ? ORdiemnr a primihominis, Adami, Alphabeto, qn\Jigenuii:um effet, ajitiquius prodi aut pro- ?ni nequibat) humana qiiiiemindnjir'id & folertid flaboratum. Hnjm Adam^i Characters origi- E 2 7iem vem qtwd fpeUat, yion heri aut bodie vat a, ante Jecithm viguit, diwj h in animis credulis fedem fixit, Vehiti verb h cepior rpilus Adami Razitl, &c. Secundo af- fer'n Epiphanium ad Panarium facer e vier.tio- item : ibri, cujus titiius, A?x Revelatio quan- do Deus immifit fbporem ju illu 11. Tertio tra- dit Auguftinum contra Faujhim Manicb&um vie- minijfe Libri Adarr.aei, cujus infcript'io & avgu- Tnentum fuit de Genealogia filiorum & fllianim AJx- Quarto ait Librum quendam Razielis An- geli extilijfe, qui bunc pr&tulit titulum, Chavs five omnium viventium Matris admirabiles 8c fuper omnes doctrinas mundi fecundum cvaii- gelicam Vetcris & Novi Ttftamenti veritatem ampleclenoas Prophetic, oonferiptee a Raz.ele A-ia? primi parentis* Arjgelo ex Libro Bei n, id cft ; Lucis puriiliirwe excerptae. Quinto de* tiique memorat Sanctum Thomam libro de Ent$ & Ejjentia ajjirmare ab Abele filio Adami libmm fuijje compojitum, &c, Univerfa Dureti DiQ'er- tatio eb collimat, nt e Libri s, qui Adamo tan-' quern autori affignantur^ Literarum Libras fcri- b;re non potuit Adamus. Quamobrem ncutiquam fe aberrajfe putat,quando Thefei exemplum fequu~ tm } tale Literarum genus, quale Jupa a ?wbis ex- prejfuitl [ 57 J prcffum efl, Frotaplajlo Ada? tribuit. Sed ab Al- phabeto Adamceo, ad Literas 'flits Seth afcrip- tas lujlrandas progredxemur. Alphabetum filiis Setb fgiilat'nn tribui von ob- fervavimus viji ab Angelo Roccha in Comment. BibliotbecA Vatican* p. 8, Schradero in Monu- vientis ItaV*, & autore infcriptionum, qu& vijun- iur Rovis. in parafaticis columnis Bibl.' Vatican*, quern ducem feqmiti junt Roccha £sf Schradenis,fed difpari fiiccejjii. Hie en'wi Liter arum or din em confundit jpfofque Character es rudius ac impolitiiis formandos cuvavit : Me vero in celebri Juo Com- ment ario, Ciijus jam aliquoties veminhms, eundem plane Jitum & habitum Liter arum filiis Seth, nt ipfe loquitur, aj/ignatarum exhibet, quern ipfe in Adamao Alphabeto videndum propofuit, & quern nos cdandum fupra curavivms. Hoc Al- phabetum pofteris Seth tributum nulla alio fun* damento julcit Roccha, viji geminh illis columnis, qu.xrum meminit Jofephus. lib i. Antiq. Jud. Ha- rum una, ait Roccha^ lateritia erat, altera senea five marmorea : ilia contra ignis Conflagra- tioney, hsc contra aqua? alluvioncs erecta, ut monumenta ipfa diutius confervarentur 8c per- manerent. His in columnis liberales artes, 8c eas prefer tim, qux ad obfervationem fiderum pertinerent, conferipferunt. Jofephus autem ad fuanl ufque oetatem Columnam illam mar- jnoream in S)^ria durafle teftatur. Hac Roc- cha, qui porru addit opinandum cjfe, quod hoc Alphabetum filiis Seth pr&monjiratum ft ab Adamo. Jzetzes Chiliad, ?. Hilt. 26. K<& 2*$ iCpctlot Kiyuxjiv ItpdLpzrVjj ypcty.y.zruv^ quamvis Setb Hebrau dicant inventorem literarum : J^ud lo- co ipfijtarenti Setbo literarum inventum tributum obfervat. Cccterum ab Alphabeto fiiiorum Seth cd Lireras Henoch a?as defcende mus. Henoch! ... t V J Henochi Literas, quoad invejligare Ytciiit\ primus publicavit Joannes Auguftinus Panthe- os Venetus Sacerdos. Is Libro y t quern miro ri- tulo & bybridd voce infcrijit Voarchdumi- am contra Alchimiam, & Venetus edidit T530. Initio quidem vjitatas & hodiernas Ebrseorum Literas fpeelandas propo7iit pag. 12. Deinde eaf- dem ornatiiis excufas ob oculos ponit, atq^ illos CbaracieresfuiJJe a/ferit, quos in Monte Sinai Deus Mofi concejferat, pag. 1 3. Tcrtio Figttras litera- rum Abrahse traditarum exbibet, pag. 14, Quar- to dsnique Henochaei Alphabeti typum exprimit Pag. 15. Has Literarum Henochsarum umbras, quibus formidolofe fu& Voarcbdumix arcana (myjlerio enim Ebra'uarum Literarum, in primis qitatuor, 1)pl artis fua fecreta tegit) cbfcuravit Pan- iheus, feftnus captat Duretus pag. 127 ci- tatifupra Libri, edfq^ pro verts Henochi Lite- rarum ant'iquhate venerabilium figuris orbi lite- rato obtrudit. Ns vero plane tacuiffe videatur, pojlquam bos Charatteres ob oculos pofuit, hac fubjungh: Nobis, qui hoc fascul 6 vivimus pro- be innotuit extare in jEthiopia Librum magna? authoritatis & pro Canoni'co habitum, qui res divinas comple&itur & Enocho tanquam au- £tori tribuitur. Cetera, qua addit, plane funt dhhoTpia,, quare ea adfcribere opera precium havt putamus. Veriiin enim vera a Pantheo & Duretho abit Jan. Bonaventura Hepburnus Exprejfurus He- nochi charadleres, & in fua Aurea Virga bodu emos Cbaratteres Ebraicos, fed elegantiufcule fculptos & puntlulis in medio injlar rbomborum pulcbcrrime calatos pro Henochseis Literis ag~ yofcit. Quia vero nudas faltem Literarwn Ft* $uras L *9 J guras exhbet Hepburnus frnflra ab ipfo ratlines & didnttiorem coiifirmationem Alphabeti Heno- ch si expellaveris. Sed mifis Litcris Henochi, ad Noachi cbaraBeres veniemus. <%ui in colligendis ac c&landis variis Litera- rum generibus omnium hidullriam fuperare covet- tus eft Bonaventura Hepburnus in magna & fplendida oclo & Jexagfvta cbara&erinn Tabula, Virga Aurea dicta ^hi fee fequentibus figurisfculp- turn exbibct NOACHICUM ALPHABETUM. Heic plane filent Thefeus & Duretus, auda- ces alias Antediluvianarum Literarum promt & patroni, Joins Hepburnus loquitur • fed quo fucceffu, mox ghicftione fecund J oftendevius. jtfeq- alibi in antiquis Monumentis Literarum quic- quam obfervare bactemis potuimus, quo talis Noa- chi fcripUva conjirmctur 7 niji cuipiam placuerit ad partes vocare Noachi Librum, quern Cabalift* *s> *> •*» * fl „*> SlJSL ooo : Nay, if we may Cre» dit Nocbolam Trigaidtim, Hift. Shienjh, lib. I. cap. v. he fays thus, Non pauciores Sinenjibvs literas effe quam voces mimerantnr, can tamen it a inter fe componere, nt lxx ant lxxx miUia non ex- cedant. This indeed refers to the Japonefes, as well as to the other *, but 'tis fo that they per- fectly underftand one another both in Writing and Reading. If it be true alfo, as Paciano Barcellonenjl fays, That at the Confufion of Languages they were from one univerfal Speech or Dialect, divided into 120 •, or into Ixxxii, as Eufebiu/s Opinion delivers it, and Abundance of other Authors-, then the Variety of Writings, and the Number of Words, Stamps, Marks and Characters among them all, when the Know- ledge of Letters and of Writing came to fpread it felf among them alfo, mutt be infinitely great. I might proceed from this to that Fart of the. Art of Writing which the Learned call c 74 : call the otfoywU, that is to fay,of right placing the Letters, whether feparate or in Syllables,, and joining them as they ought to be joyned -, this we call in a more vulgar way* of expreffi- on, Spelling; but of this hereafter. It would be neceflary now, to mention fome of the various Characters, that is to fay, forms of the Letters of the Alphabet, or of the various Alphabets which are in nfe in the feveral Languages, and the manner of their "Writing them: There were at firft, generally fpeaking, three ways of Writing, and no more, I mean, that were practised when the Know- ledge of Letters came to fpread it felf in the World, fur at firft, 'tis certain, there was but one Method, and one Language. The firft of thefe, and the moft antient, is f.om the Right-hand to the Left $ and this very Thing flrongly confirms what I faid before, namely, That the Ifraelites were the firft who had the Knowledge of Letters, feeing we find none of thole Lan- guages which would be fuppofed to be of Antiquity, writing any other way but in a plain Imitation of the Hebrews, reading all from the Right to the Left, except the Hieroglyphicks of the Egyptians, which are faid originally to ftand prcmifcuous, and to be read in the Position which they were to be found in, without Order, or with cut any Sequence, except as the Na- ture of the Creature (deft rib'd,) intimated to them. For Example, if a Bird was painted flying upwards, then they read from the Head of the faid Bird, to the Tail of the Creature which was next above him, and fo if it were a Beaft, or a Fifh, whether, L 75 J whether walking or Swimming and the like: This, however Cuftom might have made it familiar to them, was m it felf very confufcd, and intimated in the plaineft manner imaginable, that they were infinitely at a lofs fnr a Rule to make the Marks or Figures they ufed more intelligible. Thus in their manner of Accounting, of which I have made mention before, and which, as I faid, was by Sticks or Reeds bundled up, it feem'd perfectly indifferent to the Perfon ac- counting, whether he reckoned from the left to the right, or from the right Hand to the left, according to which Hand he laid out the Numbers of Reeds which he made his reckon- ing by. But after the Hebrews had received the Knowledge of Letters from Heaven, as I have obferv'd, the Egyptians who not only convers'd with them more intimately than any other Nation, but even among whom a great many prcfelyted Egyptians liv'd, and others that went with them as Servants, for it is not to be doubted but that the great Wonders wrought by Mofes and Aaron, in the Name of God, in the Egyptian Court, and among the whole Na- tion, muft make a greater Lnprefiion upon fbmeofthe People of the Country, than it did upon Vbaraob and his Courtiers • and that many of them were fo convinced that the God of the Hebrews ivas the only true God, by thofe terrible Judgements, that they became Believers, and embraced the Religion and the God of the Hebrews, and followed them, or rather went with them, into and thro' the Red Sea ^ as we fee afterwards, the Kenites, the Po- fterity llerity of Jethro Mofes Father in Law, were found in the Camp of Ifrael, and had their Portion and Inheritance with them in the pro- niis'd Land. Thus the Egyptians, who, being profely ted as above, went with the Ifraelites into the Wildernefs, foon with the reft learned the Knowledge of Letters at Mount Sinai ^ and by the fame Rule correfponding afterwards with the Egyptian Country communicated that Know- ledge to them in the firffc Flace ^ and therefore we find the Egyptians were the firffc, who fol- lowing the Example of Ifrael, tho' they might corrupt the Pattern, as without doubt they did, foon had an Alphabet and Letters of their own ^ from which afterwards the Syriack no n and to Hiftory \ nor do I meet with any Thing material that is offered againft my Opinion : All that the Writers of a different Opinion have yet faid againft it, amounts to 110 more than this * that they do not think it probable, that the World was for fo many Ag-:s without fo ufeful, and indeed fo necefla- ry an Art \ and that the Antediluvian World, v -had fnch a Perfection of Knowledge, as t : Ibirie think we are not yet arriv'd to an cj Degree of Improvement with them to t i Day, could not be fuppos'd to be Igno- 1 1 to fuch a Degree as this. But But this is all begging the Queftion. The Patriarchs of the Antediluvian State, were without Queftion Matters of Science, and had great Difcoveries made to them, or were in- fpir'd, let us call it what we will, with great Knowledge and Underftanding ^ but this only proves t at perhaps they might be, and 'tis poilible they were bleft with the Knowledge of Letters . but it does by no means prove that they really were fo, and therefore we are but Hill where we were, in all they can fay for the Fathers of the old World. I t is fufficienr, after all, that we have an Original, a Pattern hi the Mount, which we know was handed to Mofes, from the Finger of God, and that no Hiftory gives any Account that can be depended upon, or is more ratio- nal than this, that all the pretended Know- ledge of Letters before it, is without Ground, or fo much as Probability 5 and fo far were they from having left any Remains behind them, of that Knowledge, that their Pofterity valued themfelves infinitely upon, thatjdullun- performing, and as we ma) r call it, Dumb Lan- guage of Hieroglyybich, and Images of Crea- tures, making the Brutes Speak for them, when at the fame Time they knew not how to form any proper Character for Words, or to which the Sound of Words might be appropiated. A N d if this was not the Cafe, how came it to pafs, that whereas before this great Difco- very from Heaven, they were driven to fuch Shifts for want of an Alphabet, and for want of the Knowledge of Letters, on the contrary as foon as the Hebrew was once dictated, and the Children of Ifrael were taught to write, immediately all the World follow'd the Ex- ample, [8o] ample, and every Nation borrowing the gene- ral Syftem, or the Idea of Writing from the Hebrews, began to Write, and tfyo' they pro- ceeded to forming different Alphabets to them- felves, as if they were for improving after that the Invention, and had every one their differ- ing way of Writing, yet the Thing it felf it was apparent came all from this happy Original. A n d as the very firft Thought came from hence, fo did the Method of it, (viz.) the Prola- tion and joyning the Letters to form Syllables, and then rejoynin^; thofe Syllables to form Words of many Syllables, alfo the Manner of Writing or ImpreiRng thofe Letters and Words to make them legible to others, (viz.) by Ex» coriation, or Incifion, or Impreilion, which we come next to confider. Part VI. Having thus fpoken of the Original of Letters and of the Method of Writing, it comes of Courfe to fay fomething of the Ma- terials of Writing and Printing, not as they were us'd in the Infancy of the Art only, for that has been mention'd, but as they have been ufed fince Men came to an ordinary Skill and Improvement in the Art of Managing, Placing, Coupling, and Spelling the Letters, call'd as I have faid above From the Papyri, a Weed growing as I have faid on the Banks of the Nile, came the Word Pager in our Language, not that this was E«i i j was really made into Paper, fuch as we now ufe, as fome think* for the Leaves were at leaf!: a Cubit or a Cubit and half in Length, and nnequal fhape and Subftance, and were as I have fhewn, pull'd in Pieces, and feveral 'ope- rations about them perfbrm'd before they were fitted for Ufe : But as from hence, for ought we hww, the true Method of Paper-making was derived, which is it felf very antient$ fo frojn hence all Compofitions of any kind made to form any Thing to write upon, were, when fhv'flvd, call'd Paper* But let me examine then, by what Me- thods, and by what flow Degrees, the Know- ledge and Ufe of Paper to write upon came into the World : From Tables of Stone, and from the Leaves and Barks of Trees, as I have •noted above, they came to the Ufe of Tables of "Wood, that is to fay, thin Boards cut out of the Body of a Tree 3 thefe were either Tabell* Nuda, plain naked Boards, or Boards covered or polinYd over with Wax or Rofin, or fuch other Subftance as they ufually cover'd them with, in thofe Days. There were many Sorts of thefe Tables aifo, fome very thick and coarfe, upon which the Boys at the Schools ufually wrote or learned their LefTons. Others they made thin and fine, and polinYd them* to be the fitter for receiving the Impreffion of the Stylus or Pen. SeSa %'ifiin tenues ejfemus ligm tabellas] Mart. lib. xiv? This isfully explained, in that memorable Text of apocryphal Scripture, Q 3 Efdras [ 8, ] 2 Efdras, chap. xiv. ver. 24, 2<$\ 26, But loch thou prepare thee ?najiy box-trees, and take with thee Sarea, Dabria, Selemia, Ecanus, and Afiel, thefe five which are ready to write fwiftly 5 and come hither, and IJball light a candle of un- derfianding in thine heart, which fiall not he put out, till the things be performed which thou /halt begin to write. And when thou haji done, fome things fialt thou publifi, and fome things fialt thou Jl:ew fecretly to the wife : to morrow this hour II: alt thou begin to write. Ver. 42, 44. The Bighefi gave wtderflanding unto the five men y and they wrote the wonderful vijions oj the jiight that were told, which they knew not : and they fat forty days, and they wrote in the day, and at right they eat bread. In forty days they wrote two hundred and jour Booh. By this it appears, there were "Writers in thofe Days who wrote fwifter,by which I underftand alfo fhorter,than others : What Books they wrote is evident from the 24th Yerfe, where he is bid to bring many Box-Trees with him, as well as Writers-, this in the Margin of fome of our Bibles, is ex- plained in direct W T ords to be Box-Tables to write on, or Tables made of Box-Wood, which confirms alfo what has been faid of thofe Ta- bles in the former Part of this Work; What the Books were, of which two Hundred and Four, our Margin fays nine Hundred and Four, could be written in forty Days by five Men, is not fo eafy to determine. There were alfo fmall Pieces of Boards fmooth'd and polifh'd for Bills, or other fuch fmaller Occafions, which did not require whole Tables, thefe were calltl Codices^ and fmaller yet Codicils, as we at this Day call a fmall Piece of Parchment annext to a Will ^ and thefe C«3 3 thefe were call'd fo beeaufe made out of the Body or Stump of a Tree $ and hence from Caudex a Book was call'd Codex, and the Col- lection of Laws by Tbeodojius, Jnjlinian, and others are callM Codes. The Danes, in Confirmation of this, call Books in their Language Boger, which indeed is the Original of the Word Boke or Bnok. and which fignifies in High Dutch, a Beech-Tree, becaufs the publick A£ts were imprefs'd, or ftamp'd, or mark'd, or written, call it ivhich we will, upon Boards made of Beach and po- liftYd very fmooth : See Olaus Wormius, in Fa- Jlis Dayiicis, lib. I. cap. 6. Thele were call'd Wax'd-TablfS, beeaufe t^e Beechen Boards were crufted over or poliuYd with Wax, and to thia Day our Faniering Artifts or Cabinet-Makers, poliih over the Olive- Wood, Ebony, and Wal- nut-Tree, which covers and a forns their Work 5 I fay, they poliih it over with W^x, and the fame may be written on very legibly and well. Next to Books and Tables tins made of the Wood or Bark of Trees, the Antients came to write upon Linnen, and rather before that upon the Skins of Beads, which we now call Vellum and Parchment-^ but this la ft was a kind of Accident, and never came into general ufe for the making of Books. This Linnen was rai- led Lint cum from Linum, the Flax, of ivhich it was made ^ this Linnen Pliny tells us, was put into, or dipt in Oil, as the Cloths are which the Limner or Painter irnw prepares to draw a line Pi&ure on, Fliny lib. xiii. cap. xi, Of thefe, when they were very fine, feveral large Volumes of Books were made, on which the Qracula Sibyllina were written, Sy?n??iachus > lib. jv. Epift. xxxiv. G 2 Also 'Also the publick Leagues between Pniw ces and States, were written in this Manner, that is to fay, upon that Linnen Cloth dipt in Oil, fee Tit. Livius lib. xxxi. Alfo, Conjian- ti?ie caufed the Laws of iht Empire to be thus written $ as alfo Epiftles of private Princes one to another, Flav. Vopifcits in Aureliano -, his Words zre,Inveni Nnper in Ulpia bibliotbeca, inter linteos libros epijlolam D. Valerianic Others wrote upon a Paper made of a Subftance like a Caul taken from the Bowels, or Gut of any Beaft •, they were calFd Elephan* linos Libros, which alfo fome took to be Leaves of Ivory -, but it was taken both ways •, for it was a Book or Paper made of the Skin of a Beaft r whether Sheep, Goat, or Calf 5 or of a Gut, or other thick glutinous Subftance, fuch as the Caul was, and which being dried by the Heat of the Sun became hard and folid, and on thefe they frequently wrote •, and fuch were thole Manufcripts In the Hebrew Tongue, which Eleazer, the High Prieft of the Jews, fent to Ttolemy pbiladelphus, and which were curioufly written on Parchment or Vellum, as Jofephus fays exprefsly, lib. xii. Antiq. Judaic. And yet Pliny fays, as I have obferv'd before, which is a little Arrange, that the King of Pergamos invented Parchment to write upon, becaufe Ttolemy Pbiladclpbus prohibited the Carrying the Papyri out of his Dominions. But to leave that, let Jofephus anfwer for the Inconfiftency ij there is any^ for 'tis equal- ly ftrange which we read in Varro, that the Battles of Alexander were written on Paper and carried to the Egyptian Alexandria-, and this Paper was in Ufe long before thofe Times 5 tut then it was the Paper only which was made made of the Egyptian Weed Papyrus, that is to fay, it had the name Paper, but was nothing of the Kind now in Ufe, or lb much as like it. From thefe Times, therefore, when Parch- ment came to be in full Ufe, "Writing encreaf- ed and improved exceedingly : and then they foon came from the linnen Cloth, to make Pa- per of the Subftance of the linnen Cloth, (viz.) the Lint or Flax itfelf, prefTed, and bruited, and beaten fine in an Engine or Mil), and then mixed up again with Gums, and fuch glutinous Subftance, as brought it to be a firm Leaf as we fee at this Day. For tho 1 much of our Paper, in this Country, is made of the Rags of old Linnen beaten to Pumice-, fo the Paper alfo now, that is to fay the great eft ghian- tity of it, is made of Flax, which is one of the rfirft Principles in the making Linnen, and this Flax is efteemed to make better Paper than that of Rags. From the Paper, we come next to fpeak of the liquid Subftance which we call Ink -, and with which thofe, who make Ufe of Paper, Parchment, or linnen Cloth, write upon them $ of this there has not been much Variety*. The firft Ink we find in Story, was made of the Blood or Juice which was found in the Fifh called Loliga, which fome call a Calama- rji others more vulgarly the Cuttle- Fijh, and whofe Blood cafts a fix'd Black Colour, tiuge- ing the Paper or Parchment with a durable Black ; this is by fome call'd Niger Siccus, a Black Juice 3 by others the Blood of a Fifh 5 and this was ufed inftead of Ink, whence the Germans call this Creature in the old Gothick Language dTNTENFiscH, orinEnglifh, the InkrFiJb. Plivy tells ps alfo of a Fifh call'd G 5 the tfie Sepia, whofe Blood is as Blade as Ink $ du$ he does not fay it will tinge or dye any Thing Black as the Loligo does, Per'feus mentions this in his 3 Sat. Sepia lymph a Dilutas querimur geminet quod fijiula guttas' This Sepia, or hik-Fifi, is found on the Coaft of LancaJJrire in England, and formerly was more frequent there than it is now ^ of which the learned Dr. Leigh, in his natural Hiftory of Lancajlrire and Chejlrire, gives the following Account. 1 The next remarkable Fifh, fays he, is the Sepia, or Ink-Fiji), of which I have feen fe« vcral upon theft Shores. It has ten Horns, nor much unlike thofe of a Snail, and with thefe, as with Oars, it rowes it felf for- ward in the Water ; It has two full Eyes, Its Subftance feems to be a Kind of Pulp, and one Half of it is inverted with a Mem- brane like a Leg within a Stocking ^ and therefore by fome it is call'd the Hofe or Stockhig-Fijh. It has only one Bone, and that upon its Back, thin, flat, and pellu- cid. From its Mouth defcends two pellucid Ducts, which terminate in a Vefica which contains its Ink ^ by preffing this, the Ink quickly afcends, and as fome Naturalifts af- firm, when they are in Danger of being Ta- ken, by contracting this, they difcharge fuch a Quantity of Ink as blackens the Wa- ter and fecures them from Difccvery. I have a Letter by me, written with this Ink about ten Years ago, which Hill continues. This Liquor was the Ink of the Ancients 5 hence ? came [87} ' came that ExprefTion of the Poet, Nigro dif- x tfflan* Sepa nodo. It has no remarkable ■ Tafte,and by Reafon that the Whole feems to ' be a Kind of Pulp, it is hard to determine ' whether this Liquor is its Chyle, or perhaps c the Juice of fome Sea Plant which it lives c upon, or elfe a Liquor feparated from its nu- ' tritive Juices $ for what elfe to term it I e know not, fince I could not obferve in it ei. 1 ther Veins or Arteries $ jet doubllels there • are other Veflels adequate to thofe. This c Fifh, fometimes, the People eat ^ and it is c obfervable that it will mildly Purge them ' like Cajfia, or fome fuch Lenitive. 3 To go back from thofe, farther to the com- mon People, thefe, as alfo the ordinary School- Mafters and Students made their ufual com-r mon Ink of the Soot out of the Chimneys ^ but States Men, and Men of better Sort, ufed the Blood of the Sepia as above. Again, the Ink with which they often wrote Books, but efpecially the Titles and capital Letters in Books, was of another Sort, and was of a Red colour inftead of Black, but this was lefs ufed than the Black. Thefe Things they made fhift with, for ought I can find in any ancient Writings, 'till they found out the proper Ingredients for Ink as we now ufe it. As for Printing Ink, which is a Thing by it felf, and quite differing from the write- ing Ink, as it was a modern Invention, and arrived to with, or fince the Knowledge of Printing it felf, whi'Ji is much more modern than the Times we are now fpeaking of, I leave that to be mentioned again in its Place. Before the Ufe of Ink, they wrote by Way of Racing, or Cutting, or Scratching G 4 the [ 88 j the Subftance which they wrote upon," which I mentioned before, where I tefm'd it an Ex- coriation ; and this as it was clone in various Forms or Methods, fo by feveral and very dif- fering Inftruments. While they wrote upon the Barks of Trees, and upon Tables, and efpecially on the wax'd or polifrYd Tables -, as alfo w ile they wrote on the Ttli a they ufed the Stilus, a Pen or In- ftrument made fir ft of Iron, fometimes of Bone, fometimes of Ivory • this was ufed I fay in "Writing on fuoh hard Subftances as re- quired an Incinon or Cutting, and was called Graphhmi, and as afterwards the Writings on Stone or Tables of Wood required it, this Stylus or Graphium was the only InftrumentBut' there follow' d great Inconveniencies upon this,for the Stylus beingmadeof Iron,and fome of them being fork'd and having divers fharp Points, the Boys who learned to W T rite would often quar r rel and wound one another with 'them, and even Men alio, for they were really very dan- gerous Weapons. The Accidents which happened on this Oc- cafion, were fo many, and fome of them fo fatal, that the Rowans were oblig'd to forbid the life of them, that is to fay of Iron ^ after which others were invented made of the Teeth of Fiilies and of the Bones of Beafts, and laft- ly, as above, of Ivory. As to the Authority given for the Report of Mifchief done with the Stylus, the Perfons writing with them having frequently Wound- ed others with them, Plutarcb exprciTes it ful- ly in Gracchis, and among the Romans, Mar- tial, and feveral other Writers of thofe Times. Baa C *9 ] Bac tibi erant annata fuo Grapbiaria ferra. Si puero dones, non leve minus erit. Mart. JEpig. xxl But beyond all this, Suetonius and Plutarch alio in feveral of their Writings fay, that Cafca wounded C&far in the Senate Houie, not with a Dagger but with a Stylus or Roman Pen of Iron, or perhaps of SteeL Plut. in Appianum. Cafli Brachium arreptumgraphio C&far trajedt. Suetonius in vit. Jul. Ca?f. 82. It was a Felicity to the People of Eome 7 that thefe Inftruments for Writing grew ufe- lefs in a few Years, by the Improvement o£ the Age, and the better Materials they had to write upon •, for in a few Years they wrote no more by Inciflon or Impreffing, by Raceings and Excoriations, but by moift Juices tin- ging the Materials, and on proper frnooth Sub- ftances fit to receive the Tincture, fuch as thofe I have mentioned, (viz.) the Blood of Fifties, and Decoctions of Soot and other In- gredients. As the Ufe of Parchments, and of the Fa- jjri, and of the Tilia, which feme have mis- taken for Tilea, but was only a thin Sub- ftance, or 3 Kind of Skin lying between the outer Bark and the Body of 3 certain Tree ^ I fay, as the Ufe of thefe came into the World, the Stylus, a,nd all other Inftruments which work'd by Incifion or Impreflion were laid by, and in a little more Time became ufelefs •, and how many Kings and Emperors foever have been ['<*■] been ftab'd by the Pen, a dangerous Inftrument In its kind ^ yet none more will ever be ftabb'd by it, as an offenlive "Weapon, ask feems had been the Cafe before. Some think it was of this Manner of Writ- ing, by Incifion, and of the Stylus of Iron which Job Speaks, Chap. xix. Oh that my words were wow written ! Oh that they were printed in a Book ! That they were graven with an iron pen and lead, in the rock for ever ! But I think that thefe were only tranflated according to the Author that wrote the Book •, for as to the beft Account we have of Job himfelf, he lived and died before the Knowledge of Letters was in the World, and the Pen-Man of his Hiftory might be allow'd to Exprefs the Senfe of the Good Man in the Manner of the Age in which he then wrote. From this Time, the ingenious Part of the World, having found feveral Ways for the Writing of Books upon Materials foft and fmooth, which required no Incifion, the life of thefe Inftuments grew obfolete and fit to be for- gotten ^ and they now ferve for no more than to be remembred among the Monuments of Antiquity, as we now fpeak of them. A « •>£ A C| ■** ■£* * t3t *y «■ « 4 Part VIL Having thus given an Account, or rather fome Account of the Writings of the An- cients, and brought them out of the Infant Days of this Art, it will not be amifs to fpeak a [9- 1 a little of the general Ufage of the World, from the Time that they came to the plain Ufe of Pen, Ink and Paper, to the Time when the Invention of the Printing Prefs, and the Ufe of Types for impreffing the Letters as Written, was found out in the World, taking up an Interval of above 1 500 Years at leaft ^ for the Writing with Pen and Ink was faid to be known the latter End of the Reign of Au- guftns, tho' not in Perfection 'till fome Years after •, (for in St. Luke, we find Zacharias cal- ling for a writing Table) whereas the Art of Printing was invented to the Year 1420, by one Lawrence Coffer a Soldier of Harlem, who after he had found the firft Font or Foundiary of Types or Letters, and had not fully put them in Ufe, had them ftollen from him by his Servant, who carried them into Germany, and there claimed to be the Inventor of them, and having fet up a Prefs, Tully's Offices was the firft Book that ever, was Printed in the World. But this by the way. All Intelligence, Commerce, and CorreP pondence in the World, was now managed by the Pen, Ink, and Paper ^ the Works of the An- cients were all written by their own Hands, or by the help of Clerks and Amanuenfts 5 infi- nite Numbers of thefe People we now call copying Clerks, were employ 'd to make Cop- pies of valuable Books •, and if it be True, that there were 12000 Copies of Virgifs JEneid, made in Augujius's Days, and twice as many of Ovid's Metamorphofis,what innumera- ble numbers of Hands had been employ'd in thofe daily Works, and of what Labours, and what multitudes muft that Alexandrian Libra-? xj be Compofed, if there really was fuch a Thing i I>3 Thing •, for the doubt is far from being refolv'c* to this Day. The Regifters and Records of Rations muffi be all written in the fame Manner ♦, all the Works of the Ancients, and all the Copiers of thofe valuable Works which were in them- felves innumerable, muft have been made in the fame manner It would be endlefs to reck- on them up, but let us Name a few. The 1 •' rks of Homer, Hefrd, Herodotus, of Livy, °f fofephw of the feveral Plntarchs, of Cicero, Jniiim C&far\ Commentaries, of the Poets, Ovid, Tibitlhis, Perjins, Juvenal, Lucan and Virgn, with innumerable more : Among the JF : ^nws, the Bible, the Tahmids, as well the Babylonian as the Jerufahm Talmud. To what jMirpofe fhould we enumerate the Particulars, ancient Hiftory is full of their Names and "Works, how voluminous they are, and yet how often were they written over. In the Exercife of fo much Writing, it is no "Wonder if fome were very dextrous, and were as much Mafters of the Pen as their Authors were of the Tongue. And as we have feen fome Things moft accurately done in the Art of Writing, within Five or Six hundred Years Lack from the prefent Time, there can be no Room to doubt, but that there was the like in the World many Years before that. And it mull be acknowledged, that 'tho the Manner is much different, and there are very fine Things done with the Pen in this Age, yet that in the former Ages they greatly excell'd us. But I ihall have occafion to fpeak of this Part again more fully in its Courfe. Next to the Manner of Writing, and the Materials, it becomes neceiLry to enquire a little I9i1 little into the Meafure of Words, which we? call Prolation, the giving proper Sounds and Quantities to the Letters, either joyncd toge- ther or apart. This certainly came from Heaven with the Letters themfelves, and the Power which in- fpir'd Mankind with the Knowledge of the Letters necefTarily adapted them to theis Sounds, and empowered thofe Sounds to . ry with them the Signification of the Letters. Hence came the Diftinftion of Letters into Vowels and Confonants, which are fb married together in the Art of Reading, that no Man can feparate them : The Vowel like the Hus- band to the Wife, giving Cadence of Sound,' Didion and Exprefliou to the Confonant 5 and the Confonant being Capable of no Sound without the Conjunction of the Vowel to go- vern the Voice and make a Harmony, and is therefore callM Confonant or agreeing, joyning and aififting to the Sound of the Word. It is fomething furprizing, to think how this Cadence of Sounds, and how the Joyning of Syllables, in compounded Words, came to be formed in the Under Handings of Men 5 no- thing but the being fatisfy'd that it was form'd above and came down from Heaven, could reconcile us to the Wonder of it. The writing Words, in all Languages, a-, greeable to the Idiom of every refpettive Tongue, joining them in Monofyllables, join- ing the Monofyllables again into compounded Words, and giving every Letter its right Place, with its Accent or Emphafis, is a furpriiing Thing in the Nature of it, and if fully and ferioufly coniidered, carries us be- yond C P4 3 fond Nature It felf, ending only in Aftonifh- merit and an unrefolv'd "Wonder. This is what the Greeks underitand by the Wojd 'O?Q y ?&$;&, and which from them we call to this Day Orthography. To enter far into this Part, would be to en- quire into the Grammar of every Tongue, and with Vojfms, to write de Arte Grammattca y which is not my Bufinefs here $ but to fpeak of correct Writing feems abfolutely neceffary, feeing if there was cxx feveral Languages into which the firft univerfal Way of Speaking was divided •, there are for oustfit we fee now, cxx thoufand Ways of Speaking, (viz..) fo ma- ny differing Idioms and Dialedts of Speech which Men now make Ufe of in t^e World 5 fome Languages, nav moft Larguages hting again fubdivided into many differing Ways of Expreifion ; in all which, 'tis Evident, that long living in any one Country, generally naturalizes the Speech of that Country fo to our Ear, that we foon make it our own, and even forget that which was formerly our Mo- ther Tongue. But we have in Great-Britain, Befides the real and folid Variety of Tongues, fuch as the Welch or ancient Britain*, the Cornijh, the Highland Scots and the like $ I fay we have fuch a Variety in the Expreifion of our own Mother Tongue, as that in fome Counties of England, they can very ill underftand one a- nother - 5 how the Orthographifts can manage this in all Languages is not very eafy to def- cribe. On the other Hand, many Tongues, as the Englitb we now fpeak for Example, having no Grammatical Syntax, no Rule for the Mea- fureg fores or Quantities of Words or Letters, by Confequence have no Authorities for the Ufa* ges of their Speech h but all is AiTumption,legi-. timated only by Cuftom, which is Judge of the Orthography, as it is of the Propriety of Speech ^ and were it not that this Cu- ftom does as it were legitimate the Orthogra- phy, we ihould be confounded in writing ma- ny Words in the Engli/h Tongue, where Words bearing the fame Sound, fignify various Things •, as particularly in the Words, Two, Tow, Too, To, Then, Than t Bow, Bow, Bough 7 and many others. Two, Signifying 2 in Number. Tow, Flax or Tow, made of Flaxl Tm, Too much or too long. To, To go to any Place, or give any Thing to a Perlbn. Bow, To Bow in Compliment, or make a Bow,or to bend any ftraight Thing into a Curve or Arch, differing its Pofture from what it was before. Bow, A Bow to flioot an Arrow. Bough, The Bough of a Tree, Bough, The Barking of a Dog, Right, The right Hand. Right, Juft or to do Right. Right, Oppofite to, or over againtt. Wright, A Wheel Wright, or a Ship (viz.) a Carpenter. Wright^ Write, To write a Letter. Then, Time, as then it was Jb % Than, A comparifon (viz..) tetter thaH another. As C 96 1 As thefe are the Ufages of Speech, and that no Rule is to be found for the Dire&ion t)f the Speaker, other than that fo it is accu- ftonVd to be, a Stranger has notlhing to truft to for the Learning thefe Things, or how to write them, but by the Strength of his Me- mory. The more Grammatical Languages, fuch as the Latin, the Greek, and other Eajiern Languages, having eftablifh'd Rules by which thefe are all regulated, the Difficulty is not fo great, and they have no more to do than to place thofe Rules before them. But, as I faid, it is poilible for People to forget even their own native Speech, and like- wife to forget the Manner of Writing it. They tell us that the Hebrews who were captivated Tby the Chaldeans, and continued fo Seventy Years, loft fo much of the Original Hebrew 9 that except the Priefts and learned Men whom they call'd Rabbies, the common People ne- verrecover'd the Ufe of it ^ and therefore the Hebrew which theRabbies retain'd in its Purity, is call'd, by Way of Diftinciion, the Rabbinical Hebrew \ and this is taught to the Children of the Levhes and others at their Schools, where- as the Jews in common ufed the Cbaldaic or Sy- riac Tongues, and at la ft the Greek ^ and to this Day the Rabbinical Hebrew is no where found but in the Writings of their Rabbies, and in fome ancient Manufcripts of their Law •, and whether any of thofe are now extant, which if they are, mult be above 220© Year old is ve- Ty hard to determine. The Orthography then of every Language, as the Tongues in Ufe now are governed by received Cuftom, is fo uncertain, that nothing can inftrutt the Writing t 97 3 Writing of thofe Languages, but a thorough learning and acquainting tbemfelves with the ffemguagefc "themfelves, and the Cuitoms aftc! L T fages which are allowed in them. In this Difficulty we find the Writings or MSS. of divers Languages iii huroyc, not only- written after a different Manner, but that the Several Inhabitants fpell thofe Languages, or *f£veral Wordsin them, after a different Man- lier from one another • and this I mean not of. the unlearned- Common People, for they leldom are able to fpell their own: Country Language, and oftentimes not to pronounce the words of it, which isthe Reafon of fo many different Brogues upon their Tongues, and of To -many different Dial e£rs in one and the fame Speech^ and even in one and the fameCountry : For Example, T ft E Nonnans arid J^alloom hi France, and ■ the Gafcoigns, between France and Spain,, the People of Beam, and the People of Bretaign^ all of them have & different Way of Speaking, and fb'me fo different from the other, or from all the Reft, as not eaiily to underlland one another, tho 1 the Language is ft ill all of it caird French . The like it is in Spain, the Bifcayners fpeak one Dialect, the Ca JIM am another, the Cata- lans a third, and the Navarrois a fourth, the Ahdalujiam a fifth, and yet all is calTd Spanijb. Even iir Italy itfelf, as the Italian is a grofs Mixture of Tongues, as well as a Corruption of the Latin, fo What a Mixture of Diale&s.is there among them ? The Calabrians fpeak one Kind of It aliajt % the Gcnoefes another, the Sa« ' v ovarii a third, and the Venetians a fourth. H Nor N o r is this all, but the Writing of thefe languages differs in itfelf from what it was in former Years : The Authors in French In the Time of CharUmaigne, or in Englifo in Edward the Confeflbr's Time, nay, and even to the Time of Henry the VII are fcarce to be underftood now, and their Words are called old trench and old Eitglifi. I might give Inftances of the like Changes in all the Languages in £«* rope, they being all refin'd a and render' d more polite fince thole Times than they were theft. With all thefe Improvements the ..Ortho- graphy of the Languages has alfo taken its ihare,to the bettering of the Speech, and per- haps may be like to do the fame in the Ages that are to come, Speech being ftill capable of farther Embellifhments. It remains then, in order to clofe this Dif- courfe, that we only enter a little upon the Manner of Pen and Ink Writing, and its fe- veral Ufages, Improvements, and Excellent cies in the World *, the Beauties of it, and the Perfection it was brought to, till it re- ceived a fatal Baulk in the ftill more exquifite, tho' lefs difficult, Art of Printing : And tho' this will not require fo laborious a Search into Antiquity, nor fhall I have an occafion to quote fo many, or indeed any, Authors for the Enquiry •, yet there will be found a certain ferret Excellence in the Art of Penmanfhip, which will never fail to recommend it to the Ingenious part of the World, and caufe the Artifts in ir to be valued in all Countries, and in all Ages j of which in its Place. PART [ 99 1 Par t VIII. BEING now come to the Manner of Wri- ting, and the Ufe and Improvement of it as air Art, I muff, according to the Method of the- teamed VoJ/ius, obferve, that there were aritiently two Sorts of "Writing, Apertus an&Opertus $ Apeftuspx common and apparent, or OpertUs^ih^t is hidden and occult, or fecret: I mention" this to ftoie 7 that the latter of thefe, *vhich fome pretend to, as a rare or a new Dis- covery, as if it was born with them, and had no other Parent but in their ingenious Brain, as they would have it bethought, was yet as antient as ; the fir ft Ages of Paper "Writing 5 which I (hall fhew prefently. ; Thi-s occult Writing was at firft ufed upon the Opcafion of Publick Difpatches, and Buft- nefs of' Moment in the State only, and was called Steganograpbyi being kept as a Secret among fome particular Perfons^ and this was of two Sorts, (1) Vijjble y but written in un- 'known Figures or Characters 5 or new made Words, contrived on' purpofe for the Occafion ^ this Steganbgrdtpby We now call Cypher, of which all the Perfons to or from whom fuch Writings are fent, muft have the Counterpart, which in fome Cafe's is calPd the Key, to write by, or read it by 5 This is as antient as Writing itfelf, and more antient than the Ufe of Paper. (2) The other Sort of occult or fecretWriting^sJtfvf/^fe,, or unfeen at firft> being written with certain H 2 JLi^uids L *5 3 part: ix. IN fpeakingof the Marnier of Writing in a ftricter Senfe, I confine my* Telf rftrthe Eu- ropean Writing •, for of die Waiting in the He- brew, Greek, or AraVick Tongues, there is now io Room fo much as to fpeak, except it be to lote the miferable Degeneracy of the Writers' n thofe Countrys^ occafioned, ■principally, f heirDifcouragements in all Science, andArts in rhe- Parts of the World -which-' are now over- run by the Turks : But of that, in its Place. I fay, I am now conftVd to difcourfe of the feveral Ufages of the Pen in the Chriftian World, and more elpecially inEvglcmd, where theArt of Wri- ting is carried to thehighefl: Perfection 1 of any Part of the Globe* not the Dutch excepted, the/ the Dutch really \vrite very well too.' In England we divide our' Manner of Wri- ting into feveral Hands, and thefe we give fe- veral Names to, all with the Addition of the Word HAND, as a general Term of Art vfuch as Text -Hand, Court - Hand, Italian -Hand, Round -|Kand, Running- Hand, and the like : Mixt with thefe are a Text Italian-Hand, and the Lawyers Hand $ add the Ingroiling Hand, which is, indeed, but a kind of Text, and that, in General is a Kind of Gothick, which had its Original from the German, or High Dutch Way of Writing, who, to this Day, print all their Jr^ooks in that Character. Before [ ***] Before I come to fpeak of the ordinary Writing, or the Writing the ordinary Hands ufed in England, I muft mention Jwo Extraor- dinary: One is. particular to the Lawyers, and has its Ufage only in the Proceedings in our Courts of Juftice, and from thence is called Court-Hand. As our Laws, fince theConqueft, were ufually written in the French Tongue^ fome would have it, that the Court-hand was alfo introduc'd by the French ^ but as we have no Authority for faying fo, and do not find that the French, or, indeed, any other Nation ufe any fuch Writing, fo I fhall not do it the Honour of fo much Antiquity ; and if the Gen- tlemen of the Long Robe would bear with me for ufingfb much Freedom with them, I mould rather fay it was a Kind of Cant in Writing, fuch as the Gy pfies and Thieves are faid to ufe in Speaking to amufe • and tho" I do by no means compare the Gentlemen of the Law with thofe People I laft mentioned, yet the Reafbn of the Thing might be juft the fame. The Lawyers v perhaps, found it neceiTary that their Clients mould not always be too knowing in their Pxoceedings,and in the Particulars of the Methods they took in Solliciting $ alfo the Law Terms, ufed in their Indictments and Declarati- ons, were Things, which for fundry and various Reafons,the Lawyers were unwilling theirCli- ents mould fo well underftand as themfelves. There may be other Reafons given alfo why this Hand was made ufe of, but who invented it at firft we have no Account of. As for Tachygraphy, or Short Writing, it has been fuppos'd to be a modern Invention, and firft found out by our Sermon Writers,* few Years fince, when Writing Sermons from the Mouths Mouths of the Preachers was firft in Ufe in England : But there are good Reafbais to be- lieve, that this Way of Writing was* in ufe a- moog the Romans alfo, and. that the* Speeote o£ their Orators, their funeral OratUm^ and .their Pleadings at their Tribunals were-, often, -if 'fcot always, taken in Writing from their Mpi$ths.by theArtifts in this way of Writings- which Xvas then call'd Writing by Notes or Marls,- and probably this may be uhderfto.od iiVthe Scrip- ture by what is. cali'd, The Fen of a re#fy Wri- ter. W r e have, indeed, no Remains of. the Characters which they: made Ufe of in thofe Times, nor do we fee any fuch Writing *as that we call Short Hand among the Nations.. round US} and thofe who firft invented the prefent Short Hand which we now prac^ife, .doubt- lefs are to be efteemed as Men of Merit, be- caufe they firft formed it into a per feci: Syftem of Art, and placing the Vowels in & Circular, or rather a Semicircular Pofition about the Confonants, made, the Connexion fp ,exa&, that they could not only write Short, but read what one another Wrote, which in other Short Hands could not be done. By this Art the Tongue has indeed been out- ftript by the Hand, and I jhave feen fome who have been able to write fafter than Men ordina- rily.fpeak $ by which means Speeches in publick Auditories, Pleadings on Eminent Trials, Speeches at the Places of Execution, and ma- ny valuable Things which would ctherwife have been loft to the World, have been pre- ferved, even unknown to the Speakers them- felves. This Invention, as it is in moil fuch Cafes, has been followed with many others, pretend- ing [,o8] ing to Improve it •, but it may be find, wfc at is not often faid of any Inventors, or Inventions, (viz.,) that the firft has been the beft, and that ho Improver has gone beyond them or, per- haps ever will. There feems, indeed, to be lefs Occafion now for this Art than ever was in England, and the Occaflon leflens every Day, for as to Ser- mon Writing, that is quite laid afide, (as Sermon Hearing indeed feeins alfo likely to be in a little more Time *J and as to Trials in extraordinary Cafes, and Speeches, People have fo often been reproved for "Writing on fuch Occalions, and put 6ut of the Courts^ and Places where they have attempted it, that this alfo feems to be left of •, and as to Dying Speeches, Djring Men have been fo often injured by the falfe and imperfect Accounts given from thofe that have pretended to write from their Mouths, that fuch People generally give (what they defign to fay) in Writing to theSheriffor Officer, aj> pointed to attend the Execution, and defire it may be made Publick * leaving Coppies with fome of their Relations, in order to be (ure that nothing Ihould be added, or omitted, and lb that no Wrong be done them. These Things, I fay, make this Art of Snort Writing, or as tis commonly call'd wri- ting Short Hand, grow out of Ufe in England,, and as for Scotland, I fcarce ever met with any that underftood it there, neither in France nor in Spain. There is another Art or Method of Wri- ting which has been of very, antient Ufage^ and tho' it is not now much in i ufe,yet we have the Equivalent to it riow, which we call a Cy- pher, and they are indeed the fame thing that the C l °9 ] iheAntiepts calPd Stegawgrapbyp* above. I (hall give a