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SEE no reason to entertain a doubt of Mofes being the writer of the first five books of the Old Teftament. It was the belief of all Jews and christians till of late years; and all that is alleged against this opinion is the infertion of certain paffages in which mention is made of events fubfequent to the time of Mofes. But they are all of fuch a nature as may well be fuppofed to have been added afterwards; being by no means neceffary to the narration, and generally interrupting it. And this was a circumstance almost unavoidable in fuch a cafe as this, and that of other antient writings, to which notes expreffing the different ftate of things in after times would be very ufeful; and being first written in the margin, they would in time be incorporated with the text.

Mofes lived fufficiently near to the origin of the human race, to be able to preferve a very probable account of every transaction that he has related, even fuppofing that he had no authority befides tradition. But it is probable that long before his time there were methods. of preferving the knowledge of things, especially of names and numbers, by means of writing. He does

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not speak of the art of writing as a new thing, but rather as what must have been well known, in his own time, and therefore probably in ufe long before; and the names and ages of the patriarchs before and after the flood at the time of their having children, and of their deaths, which are delivered not in whole numbers, but in the most definite manner, as also the notes of time in the circumftances of the deluge, could not have been preferved without fome affiftance of this kind. Exclufive

however, of these numbers and names, the events are not fo many,or fo complicated, but that they might have been tranfmitted with fufficient exactnefs by tradition. And while the hiftory of the human race lay in a small compafs, and comprized evente of great importance, highly interesting to all men, it could not fail to be often recited, and remembered by them all.

The firft of these books, called Genesis, from its containing an account of the origin of things, is a book of the greatest curiofity and importance. The hiftory of Adam in paradife is, no doubt, lefs to be depended upon than the account of transactions nearer to the time of Mofes, and has fomething in it that has the air of fable. But notwithstanding this, it is infinitely more rational than any account of the primitive state of man in any heathen writer.

Ch.1. The heathens in general looked no higher för the origin of things than the earth, and the vifible parts of nature; and thefe were the objects of their worship. In oppofition probably to them, Mofes begins with afferting the existence of a Being who created all those things, and who is, of courfe, the fovereign difpofer of

them.