the canon of scripture; when it was settled; by whom these or those books were particularly written; or what errata have crept into some copies in some texts. In all these, and many other disquisitions of a like nature, which might be started, we may find that the scriptures, in being committed unto men, have been a treasure so put into earthen vessels, as to furnish full evidence, that the excellency of them is not of man." And although the miracles done, to bear testimony to their contents, were done in an age long since past, so that we may carelessly overlook them; nevertheless, we shall be forced to allow, that the books of scripture are such as could not have come merely from man, but must be from God.

d See 2 Cor. iv. 7.

SECTION V.

The Origin and Nature of Language, &c.

THE origin and progress of language is a subject which has been treated by many writers. The learned seem mostly inclined to think, that God put into the minds of our first parents all such words, and a knowledge of their meaning, as might be necessary for their conversation with each other. They represent, that the allowing them to be made sociable creatures, implies necessarily that they were in actual possession of all words instantly to communicate a variety of sentiments. But I confess I do not see this consequence to be a necessary one. They began life, I apprehend, without any stock of actual knowledge: they acquired it gradually, and by like advances came to think of, and form words, to signify what they wanted to name, and converse upon, The allowing them to be able to do this, as early, and as variously as they wanted it,

and to improve it, as fast as their knowledge increased; answers every social demand we can suppose, as fully, and more naturally, than to imagine them full of innate words before they had acquired the sentiments, or observation of the things, which were to be intended by such words. But as I have at different times treated this subject, I do not see it needful now to add any thing to clear it. As to the opinion of some writers, that our first parents' minds were filled with original words, which expressed (what they could not otherwise know) the very nature of things, so as to enable them to speak, and thence to think philosophically of them; and that the Hebrew was originally a language of this sort -it is romantic and irrational. That there are words of a sound corresponding to what the ear hears, when the object denoted by them is presented to us, is unquestionable ; and the proper use of words of this sort is

a Connect. vol. i. b. ii. vol. ii. b. ix. See the following treatise, chap. iii.

thought an elegance in many writers. It is remarked, that Virgil has thrown the sound of the thing he writes of, sometimes over a whole line; thus, in the following verse, he is observed to sound, as it were, the trumpet he speaks of,

Ære ciere viros martemque accendere cantu.
VIRG. En. lib. 6.

And, in another place, to express the very beat of the horses' feet on the ground where he supposes them to move,

Quadrupedante putrem sonitu quatit ungula campum, Id. En. lib. 8.

Homer's-πολυ φλοίσβοιο θαλάσσης sounds to the ear both the hollow roar of the rising wave, and the crash of its waters breaking upon the shore. Single words may sometimes affect the ear in like manner. The Hebrew word [ruach], which signifies wind, may seem to sound the rushing noise made by that element; and many like instances might be collected from divers languages; but will any one say, that the phi

losophical nature of the things thus described, is in any wise indicated, by any word, part, or the whole of any such description? Words are but sounds; and it is easy to conceive, how, by arbitrary agreement, different sounds may come to denote such things as are intended to be meant by them; but to say that any particular sound has a necessary connexion or relation to the essence or nature of one particular thing more than another, is a confusion we could not fall into, if we did not overlook some particular in the train of thinking, which leads us into it. Allowing that the word create denotes the producing things out of nothing; Creator may signify Him who made all things, and is God. But the word can have no such reference from any thing in the nature of it; except merely from its being first established, that to create shall be the sound to signify this act of

making things to exist.

From such known

designation, 2 bara, in Hebrew; creavit in Latin; any other word in any other language appointed to denote the exercise of