repository of Egyptian wisdom; therefore the Egyptians were very learned even from those early times: the point to be proved.

And now, had this long discourse on the Egyptian hieroglyphics done nothing but afford me this auxiliary proof, which my argument does not want, I should certainly have made it shorter. But it is of much use besides, for attaining a true idea of the EASTERN ELOCUTION (whose genius is greatly influenced by this kind of writing), and is therefore, I presume, no improper introduction to the present volume, whose subject is the religion and civil policy of the Hebrews. The excellent Mr Mede pointed to this use: and the learned Mr Daubuz endeavoured to prosecute his hint, at large; but falling into the visions of Kircher, he frustrated much of that service, which the application of hieroglyphic learning to scripture language would otherwise have afforded.

A farther advantage may be derived from this long discourse: it may open our way to the true Egyptian wisdom; which by reason of the general mistakes concerning the origin, use, and distinct species of hieroglyphic writing, hath been hitherto stopped up. The subject now lies ready for any diligent inquirer; and to such a one, whose greater advantages of situation, learning, and abilities, may make him more deserving of the public regard, I leave it to be pursued.

But whatever help this may afford us towards a better acquaintance with the ancient Egyptian wisdom, yet, what is a greater advantage, it will very much assist us in the study of the Grecian; and, after so many instances given of this use, one might almost venture to recommend these two grand vehicles of Egyptian learning and religion, the MYSTERIES treated of in the first volume, and the HIEROGLYPHICS in the present, as the cardinal points on which the interpretation of GREEK ANTIQUITY should from henceforth turn.

SECT. V.

THE course of my argument now brings me to examine a new hypothesis against the high antiquity of Egypt, which hath the incomparable Sir ISAAC NEWTON for its patron; a man, for whose fame, science and virtue seemed to be at strife. The prodigious discoveries he had made in the natural world, and especially that superiority of genius which opened the way to those discoveries, hath induced some of his countrymen to think him as intimate with the moral; and even to believe with a late ingenious commentator on his Optics, that as every thing which Midas touched, turned to gold, so all that Newton handled turned to demonstration.

But the sublimest understanding has its bounds, and, what is more to be lamented, the strongest mind has its foible. And this miracle of science, who disclosed all nature to our view, when he came to correct old time, in the chronology of Egypt, suffered himself to be seduced, by little lying Greek mythologists and story-tellers, from the Goshen of MOSES, into the thickest of the Egyptian darkness. So pestilent a mischief in the road to truth is a favourite hypothesis: an evil we have frequent occasion to lament, as it retards the progress of our inquiry at almost every step. For it is to be observed, that Sir Isaac's Egyptian chronology was fashioned only to support his Grecian; which he erected on one of those sublime conceptions peculiar to his amazing genius.

But it is not for the sake of any private system that I take upon me to consider the arguments of this illustrious man. The truth is, his discourse of the empire of Egypt contradicts every thing which MOSES and the PROPHETS have delivered concerning these ancient people. Though some therefore of his admirers may seem to think that no more harm can derive to religion by his contradicting the history, than by his overturning the astronomy of the Bible, yet I am of a different opinion; because, though the end of the sacred history was certainly not to instruct us in astronomy, yet it was, without question, written to inform us of the various fortunes of the people of God; with whom, the history of Egypt was closely connected. I suspect, therefore, that the espousing this hypothesis may be attended with very bad consequences in our disputes with infidelity. The present turn, indeed, of free-thinking is to extol the high antiquity of Egypt, as an advantage to their cause; and consequently to urge scripture, which bears full evidence to that antiquity, as a faithful relater of ancient facts; yet these advantages being chimerical, as soon as they are understood to be so, we shall see the contrary notion, of the low antiquity of Egypt, become the fashionable doctrine; and, what all good men will be sorry to find, the great name of NEWTON set against the BIBLE.

It is, therefore, as I say, for the sake of scripture, and from no foolish fondness for any private opinion, that I take upon me to examine the system of this incomparable person.

His whole argument for the low antiquity of Egypt may be summed up in this syllogism:

OSIRIS advanced Egypt from a state of barbarity to civil policyOSIRIS and SESOSTRIS were the same. Therefore EGYPT was advanced from a state of barbarity to civil policy in the time of SESOSTRIS.

And to fix the time of Sesostris with precision, he endeavours to prove him to be the same with SESAC. But this latter identity not at all affecting the present question, I shall have no occasion to consider it.

Now the minor in this syllogism being the questionable term, he has employed his whole discourse in its support. All then I have to do, is to show that OSIRIS and SESOSTRIS were not one, but two persons, living in very distant ages.

And that none of the favourers of this system may have any pretence to say, that the great author's reasonings are not fairly drawn out and enforced, I shall transcribe them just as I find them collected, methodized, and presented under one view by his learned and ingenious apologist:-" He [Sir Isaac Newton] has found it more easy to lower the pretensions of the ancients than to conquer the prejudices of the moderns. Many of his opinions, that are in truth well founded, pass for dreams; and in particular his arguments for settling the time of Sesostris, which the Greeks never knew, have been answered with scurrility. I shall lay together here the evidences that have convinced me of the truth of his conclusion, because he has not any where collected all of them.

"1. That Osiris and Bacchus were the same, was generally agreed by the Greeks and Egyptians, and is therefore out of question; and that the great actions related of Sesostris are true of Sesac, and the difference between them is only nominal, is affirmed by Josephus.

"2. Osiris and Sesostris were both Egyptian kings, who conquered Ethiopia; and yet there never was but one Egyptian king that was master of Ethiopia.

"3. Both were Egyptian kings, that with a prodigious army and fleet invaded and subdued all Asia northward as far as Tanais, and eastward as far as the Indian ocean.

"4. Both set up pillars in all their conquests, signifying what sort of resistance the inhabitants had made. Palestine, in particular, appears to have made little or none, to them.

"5. Both passed over the Hellespont into Europe, met with strong opposition in Thrace, and were there in great hazard of losing their army. "6. Both had with them in their expeditions a great number of foster brothers, who had been all born on the same day, and bred up with them. "7. Both built or exceedingly embellished Thebes in Upper Egypt. "8. Both changed the face of all Egypt, and from an open country made it impracticable for cavalry, by cutting navigable canals from the Nile to all the cities.

"9. Both were in the utmost danger by the conspiracy of a brother. "10. Both made triumphant entries in chariots, of which Osiris's is poetically represented to be drawn by tigers; Sesostris historically said to be drawn by captive kings.

"11. Both reigned about twenty-eight or thirty years. "12. Both had but one successor of their own blood.

"13. Bacchus or Osiris was two generations before the Trojan war: Sesostris was two reigns before it. Again, Sesac's invasion of Judea in an. P. J. 3743, was about two hundred and sixty years before the invasion of Egypt in his successor Sethon's time by Sennacherib; and from Sesostris to Sethon inclusively there are ten reigns, according to Herodotus, which, if twenty-six years be allowed to a reign, make likewise two hundred and sixty years.

" In so distant ages and countries it is not possible that any king, with many names, can be more clearly demonstrated to be one and the same person, than all these circumstances and actions together do prove that Osiris and Bacchus, Sesostris and Sesac, are but so many appellations of the same man: which being established, it will evidently follow, that the Argonautic expedition, the destruction of Troy, the revolution in Peloponnesus made by the Heraclidæ, &c., were in or very near the times in which Sir Isaac has ranged them."*

I. Before I proceed to an examination of these reasonings, it will be proper to premise something concerning the nature of the system, and the quality of the evidence.

1. We are to observe, then, that this system is so far from serving for a support or illustration of the ancient story of these two heroes, that it contradicts and subverts all that is clear and certain in antiquity; and adds new confusion to all that was obscure. The annals of Egypt, as may be seen by Herodotus, Diodorus Siculus, Strabo, Plutarch, and others, who all copied from those annals, were as express and unvariable for the real diversity, the distinct personality of OSIRIS and SESOSTRIS, as the history of England is for that of any two of its own country monarchs. For they were not vague names, of uncertain or adjoining times; one was the most illustrious of their DEMIGODS, and the other of their KINGS; both fixed in their proper eras; and those vastly distant from one another. So that, I make no question, it had appeared as great a paradox, to an old Egyptian, to hear it affirmed that Osiris and Sesostris were but one, as it would be now to an Englishman to be told that Bonduca and the empress Matilda were the same. All antiquity acquiesced in their diversity; nor did the most paradoxical writer, with which latter Greece was well stored, ever venture to contradict so well-established a truth. And what wonder? The history of Egypt was not, like that of ancient Greece or Suevia, only to be picked up out of the traditional tales of bards and mythologists; nor yet, like that of early Britain, the invention of sedentary monks: it consisted of the written and authentic records of a learned and active priesthood. In which, the only transgression, yet discovered, against truth, is that natural partiality common to all national historiographers, of extending back their annals to an unreasonable length of time. Let me add, that the distinct personality of these two men is so far from contradicting any other ancient history, that it entirely coincides with them. Nay, what is the surest mark of historic truth, there is, as perhaps we may take occasion to show, very strong collateral evidence to evince the real diversity of these two ancient chiefs. So far, as to the nature of the system.

2. The quality of the evidence is another legitimate prejudice against this new chronology. It is chiefly the fabulous history of Greece, as delivered by their poets and mythologists. This hath afforded a plausible support to Sir Isaac's hypothesis; by supplying him, in its genealogies of the gods and heroes, with a number of synchronisms to ascertain the identity in question. And yet, who has not heard of the desperate confusion in which the chronology of ancient Greece lies involved? Of all the prodigies of falsehood in its mythologic story, nothing being so • Mr Mann's dedication to his tract of the true Years of the Birth and Death of CHRIST. monstrous as its dismembered and ill-joined parts of time. Notwithstanding this confusion, his proofs from their story, consisting only of scraps, picked up promiscuously from mythologists, poets, scholiasts, &c. are argued from with so little hesitation, that a stranger would be apt to think the fabulous ages were as well distinguished as those marked by the Olympiads. But the slender force of this evidence is still more weakened by this other circumstance, that almost all the passages brought from mythology to evince the identity, are contradicted (though the excellent person has not thought fit to take notice of it) by a vast number of other passages in the same mythology; nay even in the same authors; and entirely overthrown by writers of greater credit; the HISTORIANS of Greece and Egypt: which, however, are the other part of Sir Isaac's evidence; of weight indeed to be attentively heard. But this he will not do: but, from their having given to Osiris and Sesostris the like actions, concludes the actors to be one and the same, against all that those historians themselves can say to the contrary: yet what they might and what they could not mistake in, was methinks easy enough to be distinguished. For as fable unnaturally joins together later and former times; and ancient fable had increased that confusion, for reasons to be hereafter given: so history must needs abound with similar characters of men in public stations; and ancient history had greatly improved that likeness, through mistakes hereafter likewise to be accounted for. Indeed, were there no more remaining of antiquity concerning Bacchus, Osiris, and Sesostris, than what we find in Sir Isaac's book, we might perhaps be induced to believe them the same; but as things stand in history, this can never be supposed.

What I would infer therefore, from these observations, is this :-We have, in the distinct personality of Osiris and Sesostris, an historical circumstance, delivered in the most authentic and unvariable manner, and by annalists of the best authority. All succeeding ages agreed in their diversity; and it is supported by very strong collateral evidence. At length a modern writer, of great name, thinks fit to bring the whole in question. And how does he proceed? Not by accounting for the rise and progress of what he must needs esteem the most inveterate error that ever was; but by laying together a number of circumstances, from ancient story, to prove the actions of Osiris and Sesostris to be greatly alike; and a number of circumstances from ancient fable, to prove that the gods, whom he supposes to be the same with Osiris, were about the age of Sesostris. So that all the evidence brought by this illustrious writer, amounting, at most, but to difficulties against the best established fact of history; if we can, consistently with the distinct personality and different ages of these two heroes, fairly account for the similar actions recorded of them; and for the low age, as delivered by the mythologists, of those Grecian gods which are supposed to be the Egyptian Osiris; if, I say, this can be done, the reader is desired to observe, that all is done that can reasonably be required for the confu