SECT. III. The Hiftory of Midian, or Madian, 363 SECT. I. A Description of Syria, II. Of the Antiquity, Government, Laws, Re- Trade of the Ancient Syrians, 431 441 III. Of the Chronology of the Ancient Syrians, 455 IV. The Reigns of the Kings of the Ancient DIRECTIONS for placing the COPPER-PLATES, Map of Paradife, Mount Ararat, and City of Babel, Syria, after the Death of Alexander the Great, 43I Temple of Balbeck, View of the Ruins of Palmyra, 439 440 An AN Univerfal Hiftory, FROM THE Earliest Accounts, to the Present Time. CHA P. I. From the Creation to the Flood. SECT. I.. The Cofmogony, or Creation of the World. UR defign is to write a General History of mankind, from their original, to our own time: an undertaking of vaft extent, which would, perhaps, be fcarce practicable, were the hiftories of all nations now extant, and their feries complete. But as many nations entirely neglected their hiftory, at leaft for feveral ages; fo the hiftories of many others, who kept fome records of paft actions, have been either totally, or in part, destroyed by wars, time, mifguided zeal, or other cafualties. Befides, few nations have been able to give a tolerable account of their original, or early antiquities; the firft memory of perfons and facts having been preferved by the inftitution of feftivals, the building of cities, erecting of ftones, pillars, altars, tombs, and the like monuments, from whence a true feries of history could not be accurately deduced and collected, any more than from oral tradition. But if the want of records has, on the one hand, reduced history into a clofer compafs, it has, on the other, VOL. I. occafioned B Defign of the work, and the dif ficulties which at tend it. Creation of the world. occafioned great confufion and uncertainty. For the fre quent interruptions, and defects, which occur in the antiquities of nations, drive the hiftorian so often to precarious conjectures, and oblige him to have recourse to fo many fhifts, to connect and fupply them, that his labour feems to be increased by the fcarcity of materials; and he is unable, after all, to give his reader fatisfaction. Many other difficulties there are, which attend the execution of this undertaking, especially as to the hiftory of ancient times: fuch as the numbers of forged and spurious books; the fictions of poets, who were the first historirians; the contradictions and partiality of authors; the different computations of time in ufe among the fame, as well as different nations; the want of æras to compute from in fome nations, and the multiplicity of them in others; the variety of proper names of the fame perfon and place, and the corruption of them through ignorance, negligence, or defign. What adds to the misfortune is, that, if we except the Jews, not one of the hiftories of those ancient nations, whom the Grecians called Barbarians, written by the natives, or extracted immediately from their records, has come to our hands; nothing remaining of them befides fome few fragments, preferved here and there in other writers, which serve only to make us lament their lofs, and to fhew the inaccuracy of the Greek hiftorians, with regard to foreign nations. We have thought proper briefly to premise these observations, with regard to the ftate of ancient hiftory, in order to entitle ourselves to the reader's candour, in paffing his judgment upon a performance, wherein there are fo many difficulties to ftruggle with. But, before we enter upon the history itself, we fhall give fome account of the cofmogony, or the production and formation of this earth; according to the defcription of Mofes, the only account we are at liberty to believe, as the immediate infpiration of the divine Architect, leaving every other fyftem, ancient as well as modern, to the fate of idle fpeculation deftitute of proof, and unsupported by authority. In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. The earth, after its creation, was a dark, fluid, and unformed chaos, or mass of matter, which God, in the fpace of fix days, difpofed and reduced into the present form of the world; his Spirit moving or brooding over the furface of the water, or fluid matter. The first thing that appeared was light: the feparation of which from the darkness was the work of the first day. Then Then God made an expanfion (A), to divide the waters above from thofe below: which expanfion Mofes calls heaven; and this was the fecond day's work. On the third day, God caufed the earth to be drained, and the waters to be gathered together, chiefly into one great receptacle, the ocean; then the dry land appearing, the earth produced all forts of plants, herbs, and trees, bearing their several feeds and fruits, according to their 'various kinds. On the fourth day God made the fun and moon, and placed them in the heavens, to illuminate the earth; to diftinguish between day and night, and divide the feveral feasons of the year: the stars were also made at this period. On the fifth day God created all the fishes, and inhabitants of the waters; and also the fowls of the air, which were likewife produced out of the water. On the fixth day God made all the terreftrial animals, the cattle, creeping things, and beafts of the field. And laft of all, he created man, forming his body of the duft of the earth, and animating him with a living foul; and of the man he made the woman, taking her out of his fide, having firft caft him into a profound sleep a. This is the fubftance of what Mofes has delivered concerning the creation of the world; which, being short, and rather fuited to the capacities of the people he defigned to inftruct, than written for the fatisfaction of a philofophic inquirer, has left room for various explications, and produced feveral very different hypothefes, which it is not our province to particularife. Our defign is to give a fuccinct hiftory of the inhabitants, not a philofophical differtation on the first formation of the earth. Man then was, by a divine power, created on the fixth Creation of day, after the terreftrial animals had been produced; his man; body was formed out of the duft of the ground, whence he had the name of Adam (B), and his foul immediately |