man: how, or whence had he this knowledge?k

How should Adam discover the manner of his own creation, or describe the formation of the world, which was created before he had any being? Besides, if these things were discoverable by reason, and Adam, or any other person, brought them to light by a due course of thinking, and related them to their children, what were the traces of this reasoning? Where to be found, or how were they lost? "Tis strange these things should be so obvious at first; that an early attempt should discover so much truth, and that all the wit and learning, which came after, for five or six thousand years, should, instead of improving, only puzzle and confound it. If Adam, or some other person of extraordinary learning, had, by a chain of reasoning, brought these truths into the

Nec aliquid interfuit eo tempore, quo mundus certum diem habuit ortus sui, nec aliquid interfuit eo tempore quo mundus Divinæ mentis ac providi numinis ratione formatus est; nec eo usque se intentio potuit humanæ fragilitatis extendere, ut originem mundi facile possit ratione concipere aut explicare. Julius Firmicus Maternus. Mathes. lib. iii, c. 2,

world, some hints or other of the argument would have remained, as well as the truths produced by it; or some succeeding author would, at one time or other, have reasoned as fortunately as his predecessor: but nothing of this sort happened; instead of it we find, that the early ages had a great stock of truths, which they were so far from having learning enough to invent or discover, that they could not so much as give a good account of the true meaning of them. A due consideration of these things must lead us to believe, that GoD at first revealed these things unto men; that he acquainted them with what he had done in the creation of the world; and what he had thus communicated to them, they transmitted to their children's children. Thus GOD, who in these last days hath spoken unto us by his Son, did in the beginning in some extraordinary manner speak unto our fathers; for there was a stock of knowledge in the world, which we cannot see how the possessors could possibly have obtained any other way. Therefore fact, as well as history, testifies, that the notion of a revelation is no dream; and that Moses, in representing the early

ages of the world as having had converse with the Deity, does no more than what the state of their knowledge obliges us to believe.

SHELTON, NORFOLK,

Oct. 2, 1727.

STRICTURES

ON

DR. SHUCKFORD'S ACCOUNT

OF

THE HEATHEN GODS,

AND

EGYPTIAN DYNASTIES BEFORE MENES;

PRECEDED BY

A SHORT ACCOUNT OF THE MANNER IN WHICH

THE EGYPTIANS BURIED THEIR DEAD;

WHENCE ORIGINATED

THE GRECIAN FABLE OF CHARON, HIS BARK, AND THE

STYGIAN LAKE.

BY

THE RIGHT REV. DR. R. CLAYTON,

BISHOP OF CLOGHER.