roglyphics was twofold; the one popular, and obvious made known to all, as poffibly geometry, arithmetic, and music; the other fecret and accounted holy, whereby the most im portant subjects of theology, physiology, and civil policy were represented. Whence originated the ιερατικα γραμματα, or sacred letters, which Mofes eertainly learned either when he was educated at the court of Pharaoh, as is most probable, or else, as Sir Ifaac Newton' says, from his father-in-law. Pliny says, " Literas semper arbitror Affyrias fuisse, sed alii, apud Egyptios a Mercurio, ut Gellius : alii apud Syros repertas volunt. Anticlides in Egypto inveniffe quendam nomine Menona tradit." The opinion of Gellius is taker from Sanchuniatho in Eufebius, and also from Plato: Philo says, that Taautus was the first who found a method of assisting the memory by the art of writing. Socrates is represented by Plato as saying, I have heard that a certain ancient God, to whom the bird Ibis is confecrated, αυθω δε ονομα το δαιμονι εκ δε πρωτον αριθμοντε και λογισμον εύρειν,

και

Θουθ.

γεωμετρίαν,

και

δ. γραμμαλα, and whose name is Thoth, was the first who invented numerical computation,

the play of chess and dice, and also letters.

The fame author also says, that Thoth made

the

the distinction between vowels and confonants, mutes and liquids; and Kircher says, that this discovery was the consequence of symbolic representations: omnes tamen in hoc confentiunt, plerafque ex sacrorum animalium forma, incessu aliarumq: corporis partium fitibus & symmetria defumptas. Ita Demetrius Phalereus, qui septem vocales affignans septem diis confecratas ait, cæteras ex animalium forma desumptas. Eufebius astruit idem. Thus it appears, that it was a very universal opinion, that from the figure of Animals, or the different parts of them, letters were invented; and that their antiquity must have been very great; when they have been imputed to the wisdom of Thoth.

και

That letters were known in Arabia before the time of Mofes is almost demonstrable from the writings of Job, who is the most ancient of all authors, whose works have been transmitted to us in any tolerable degree of preservation. Job, πολυκλείτα πολυμαίης, that illustrious and learned Arab, in whose hiftory many vestigia of ancient literature occur, is accounted more ancient than Mofes, and this is evident in a variety of instances: A few remarks on this subject cannot be confidered as foreign from the point in queftion.

The first reason assigned for the great antiquity of Job is, that in his writings there is not the smallest trace of the written law; that the precepts of Noah alone are by implication refered to, as thus:

1. Of Idolatry." If I beheld the fun when it shined, or the moon walking in brightness." This species of idolatry was by much the earliest, and in Arabia was called Sabeanism.

2. Of Blafphemy. - " And he rose up early in the morning, and offered burnt offerings, according to the number of them all; for Job faid, it may be that my fons have finned, and cursed God in their hearts."

3. Of Homicide.- " If I rejoiced at the destruction of him that hated me, or lifted up myself when evil found him, neither have I suffered my mouth to fin, by wishing a curse to his foul. If the men of my tabernacle faid, oh that we had of his flesh, we cannot be fatisfied."

4. Of Adultery.-" If my heart hath been deceived by a woman, or if I have laid wait at my neighbour's door.

5. Of Theft, of illicit Gain." If my step hath turned out of the way, and mine heart walked after mine eyes, and if any blot hath cleaved unto my hands."

6. Of Judgment.---(Job himself acting as a judge.) " Because I delivered the poor that cried, and the fatherless, and him that had none to help him."

Another corroborating circumstance is, that the age of Job being upwards of two hundred years, denotes a time previous to Mofes, who is faid to have died at a very great age, at one hundred and twenty; it being obferved as a very peculiar circumstance, that his eye was not dim, nor his natural force abated. And it is the opinion of Chryfoftom, από τε μακροβιωθαλον τουτον γεγονεναι, διακοσια ετη βεβιωκεναι έδεις γαρ μετα τον νομον τοσαυτα ζησας ισοφήται, " from this argument, that there is no instance on record, that any person, after the law, had lived so long as two hundred years." Besides, it was reckoned highly criminal by the law of Mofes, that any person should offer facrifice any where, but before the Ark of the Tabernacle of God.

και

υπερ τα

The conduct of Job was not, in this instance, agreeable to the law, and yet he was accounted blameless. At what time Job lived, we may form some idea from this circumstance; That Eliphaz, the Temenite, (companion to Job) was fon to Teman, the grand

fon

son of Efau; and that he most probably lived about the intermediate time between the end of Genesis, and the beginning of Exodus.

Mr. Warburton, in his Divine Legation, endeavours to reduce the Book of Job, that venerable work of antiquity, to a state full worse than that of Job himself, in the midst of his accumulated misery; and for no other reafon, than because it is so full of sentiments of immortality; for no other reason, I fay, because his affertions are totally foreign from the point he meant to prove, which was, that a future state was not taught by Moses. For if, agreeably to his sentiments, references are made in the Book of Job to the writings of Mofes, it would be at least natural to fuppose, that those sentiments of futurity, which have given him fo much trouble to confute, were derived from the same source; which trouble he would have totally avoided, by embracing the opinion of Job's greater antiquity. But it would be rather treating Mr. Warburton ill, to pass by his arguments on this subject; and I am forry to say, that he has assumed a mode of reasoning exceedingly weak and trifling, and such as he himself would never have borne from an opponent:

an