duction of new words from those mentioned, then used by the defcendants of Ham; who firft peopled the regions of Affyria and Egypt.

BUT the facred hiftorian was more faithful; he directs us to the first and true names of the patriarchs, and the prophets Ezekiel and Jeremiah retain their appellations, many centuries after these opiniated Greeks, who were a mixture of the first nations in Africa and Afia, with the issue of Japhet in Greece, and who had established, in the Southern parts of Greece, the language which their poets and hiftorians used, and handed down to us, as well as their prepofterous fables: whilft the iffue of Magog, Mefbech and Tubal on the Northern, and thofe of Gomer on the South-western quarters of Europe, travelled weftward, and kept their original language uncorrupted to this day, in their ultimate refidence in Britain and Ireland; and the worship of the TRUE GOD, for feveral centuries, in both places.

I Now proceed to the enquiry I proposed, which, I hope, is naturally introduced by the foregoing anecdotes ; now, as we already know the original names according to Mofes, let us fee what were the appellations of them among the heathen authors, the chief of which are Sanchoniatho, Herodotus, the most ancient we know of, and the other Greek writers after them. The most ancient of the first inhabitants of Greece, according to these writers, were the Pelafgi, who, they allow, had overspread all Greece, or the greatest part of it; and these were subdi-vided into feveral countries under particular names, and avere the iffue of Japhet.

1. THE most ancient monarchy of these was that of the Sicyonians, and their country was called Sicyonia; fituated on the north-weft fide of the Peloponefus; but the name of this peninsula was firft Ægialea, which, in the opinion of the famous bishop Cumberland, was fo called, either from its first king, Ægialeus, or because it lay near the fhore of that peninfula. And although the Greeks do not seem to have been converfant with the Mofaic hiftory, yet several traces of the names of the patriarchs, as well as an abfolute concurrence with it in many parts of their histories, are to be found, upon a careful inspection of them; the name of Japhet, for example, is as clearly mentioned in the Greek Japetos, and the Latin Japetus, as Ham's or Cham's name is in Hammon or Chemia, the old name of Egypt, the land of Ham. And to speak with bishop Cumberland," it falls out well that Paufanias, in his Co“rinthiaca, p. 57, informs us that the Phliafians affirm, "that Arans among them was cotemporary with Prome“theus, the son of Japetus; and three ages (or 100 years "at least) elder than Pelafgus, the fon of Arcus or Arans,

or than the AutoEthones at Athens. This Arans, "the bishop believes to be the fame name with Abra"ham's elder brother, though not the fame perfon.

"THIS author values that piece of antiquity at Phlius "the more, because, a little before, Paufanias affures us, "that he would only fet down the things that were most "confeffed and agreed about them; and fays alfo, that "their neighbours, the Sicyonians, agreed with them about "their antiquities, which proves a great confirmation. Because, says the bishop, the Sicyonians were the eldest

"fettled kingdom of all Greece that we have any distinct "account of. Befides, fays he, he tells us these Phlifians "had a very holy temple, in which there was no image, "either openly to be seen, or kept in fecret. This is certainly a mark of great antiquity; for the corrupt practice "of worshiping by images grew very early in the world, "and to worship without images was certainly the oldest " and best manner of worship. And, he says, they had a "facred account, or reason, of this practice: but that was "not to be revealed." Now as to the Sicyonians, a divifion of the Pelafgi, which was the first and general name for all the original fettlers, their antiquity cannot be disputed; for Herodotus fays, in his Polymnia, that the Greeks affirm the people of this kingdom, Egialea, were called Pelafgi Ægialenses before Danaus came into Greece, and before Xuthus's time, whose son Jon is fabulously faid to have given the name Janes to fome of the inhabitants of Greece.

Paufanias, in the beginning of his Achaics, fhews us how the change of their name into Jones, and their removal first to Athens, and then into Afia Minor, in the fonic migration, happened; but the time of the beginning of the kingdom of the Pelafgi Ægialenfes, under their king, Ægialeus, is 1313 years before the first vulgar Olympiad, as bishop Cumberland mentions it, to be collected out of Eufebius's Chronicon, and Caftor's Tables of their Kings, put out by Jof. Scaliger; and is by the learned Armah, in his Annals, fixed to the year of the world 1915, about the middle of the third century after the flood. This was in the 259th year of the flood, and

by

by this time Greece was peopled with different states from the loins of Gomer; who. were, in general, called Pelafgi, yet were distinguished by these several appellations by Greek writers afterwards.

THE next divifion of the Pelafgians was in Phlius. This was an original dominion, called alfo Arantia, upon the borders of Sicyonia. And these were planted there much about the time of the Sicyonians, who were cotemporary with Ninus, or Nimrod, in Affyria, and with, or juft after, Mifraim in Egypt.

Arcadia was another fettlement, which was fituated on the south and southwest parts of Ægialea, about the middle of Peloponefus. And this dominion must have been established, as well as the foregoing, about the beginning of the Sicyonian kingdom. The famous bishop, with whom I shall travel through part of this chapter, as well as with others of equal authority, tells us from Paufanias, that the people of Arcadia were all Pelafgi, and their country called Pelafgia, before the time of Arcas, from whom the name of Arcadia was derived; and although he mentions a tradition out of Afius, an old poet, that the earth brought forth Pelafgus upon the high mountains of Arcadia, he adds, from his own reason, that there were other men there at that time, otherwife Pelafgus would have had no fubjects to reign over; and concludes, that they were Pelafgi before Arcas was born. With poets nothing is more common than to embellish their poems with allufions of this kind; and although Paufanias difcredited this, because he took it in its literal fense, yet I am inclined to believe that the poet, by faying the earth

brought forth Pelafgus, alluded only to the Pelafgians being the first people in Arcadia, fettled after the flood: for there are authors who, when they could not rife higher than fuch and fuch accounts, have fuppofed the inhabitants sprung from the earth. But if Dion. Halic. in the latter part of his first book, be compared with Paufanias, it appears that one Atlas, whofe former habitation was on Caucafus, was the first king in Arcadia; and Appollodorus fays, that he was the son of Japetus, and brother to Prometheus, (with whom Hefiod agrees) and fince Diod. Sicul. affures us, that the eldest Prometheus lived in the time of Ofiris, whom Cumberland has clearly proved to be Mifraim, the son of Ham, Japhet's brother, we fhall perceive that Arcadia is intimated, by these writers, to be planted about the third generation after the flood, not long after the planting of Egypt by Mifraim: but the planters of it were called Pelafgi, and not Arcades.

ANOTHER of the Pelafgian fettlements, as confeffed by feveral authors, was in Argos, where Dion. Halic. affirms they were feated fix generations before they removed into Hæmonia, or Thessaly, and intimates that, in many men's opinions, they were sprung out of the earth, near Argos. What a strong proof of their being the very first inhabitants after the flood, in this place, is here intimated in this suggestion? and, if compared with the other anecdotes mentioned concerning the Pelafgi, in other parts of Greece, it will naturally lead us to be of opinion, that the tradition of these Aborigines was handed down to the times of the change of their language into the Greek, and fo taken up by their authors as early as they began to commit their 3

traditions.