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manner distinguished. To what holy and illuftrious perfonage, about to appear in the Weft, Confucius, who feems to have inherited at once the fublime virtues and the prophetic fpirit, of the old patriarchs, alluded, fhall presently be unfolded.*

Were it not for the very fingular circumftance, recorded in the Chinese hiftories, that the mother of Fohi, the great ancestor of the Chinese, was embraced and rendered pregnant by A RAINBOW, a mythological fable very probably originating either in fome mifconceived tradition concerning the bow, which was first manifested to Noah as a token that the waters fhould never again inundate the globe, or elfe allufive to his having emerged from the bofom of the furrounding ocean to commence a new scene of existence upon the renovated earth; were it not alfo recorded in the fame hiftories that Fohi carefully trained up seven forts of creatures, which he annually facrificed to the Supreme Spirit of Heaven and Earth, a circumftance fo exactly confonant to the account of Scripture, that Noah took into the ark of every clean beaft by Sevens, and of fowls in the air by sevens ;

were

Vide Couplet. Scient. Sinic. p. 78. and Martini Martinii Sinicæ Hiftoriæ, lib. iv. p. 149. Edit. duod. Amfterdam, 1659.

were it not that they fix the first refidence of this their great ancestor, where, according to the most ancient Sanfcreet traditions, the first Chinese colony did abfolutely fettle, in the province of XENSI, to the North-weft of India; were it not probable, from the total filence of Scripture concerning the future incidents of the life of fo important a perfonage as the great and favoured patriarch and the mad unreftrained act of his progeny in building the tower of Babel, that he really did migrate from the place where the ark refted to fome spot, remote from his degenerate offspring, on the extremities of Afia; did not the very name of him who builded the firft altar after the flood, and offered thereon the first victim to the Lord, fignify OBLATION, whence doubtlefs Noah was defignated as the facrificer on the old celestial sphere, under the name of Shin Num, his immediate fucceffor in the govern-. ment of China, or rather himself by another. appellative, for these two perfons are denominated the founders of that empire; did not we recognize the oriental and in particular the Arabian denomination of China, which is Sin, and in Num the Menu of India, which words combined together may be rendered

rendered into Latin Sinicus Noah, the Chinefe Noah: were it not for thefe circumftances, which fo decidedly point to the perfon of Noah, I fhould be inclined to as gree in opinion with Mr. Bryant, that, by Fohi, the Chinese meant the parent of the human race himself, instead of the venerable father of the regenerated world.

If Mr. Bryant's hypothefis could be admitted, the eighteen thousand years, which he obferves are faid to have intervened between the reign of the first and fecond emperors of China, by being confidered as centuries. only, (for which interpretation of the word thousand some learned chronologists have ftrenuously contended,) will come very near the fcriptural account of time that elapsed from the period of the creation to the deluge. In that cafe, however, Fohi and Shin Num must be confidered as diftinct characters, living in very remote ages, which their history does not warrant ;* but that, at all events, Shin Num and Noah were the fame person, and that both meant the Menu of India, can scarcely admit of a doubt, especially when Mr. Bryant's judicious obfervation, that, in Hoang, or Hoam-ti, the son

See Mr. Bryant's Analyfis, vol. iii. p. 583.

of

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of Shin Num, the veftiges of the scriptural name of Ham may plainly be traced. a farther corroboration of this supposition, I fhall for the prefent only add that the feven regal defcendants of Shin Num, who, according to Couplet, reigned after him, that is, in the provinces fubject to the fupreme head of the empire, were doubtless the feven Reyshees, or holy men of India; and these, after all, were probably no other than the seven persons who went into the ark with Noah, forming, with himself, the famous oGDOAS of antiquity.

From an author compelled in a great degree, on account of the repeated attacks made by sceptics upon the Mosaic history through the fides of Indian and Chinese antiquities, not to pafs unnoticed these circumstances, the reader will naturally be led to expect a more extenfive investigation of thefe abftruse points hereafter. I shall, therefore, at prefent, only inquire if any fentiments, of a nature confonant to those already demonftrated to have been fo widely diffused through Afia, prevailed in any ancient theological code of China. The purity of their primeval theology has been noticed. They originally adored no fculptured images of

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the Deity, although they worshipped him in the emanations of guardian and benevolent fpirits that iffue from the exhaustless fountain of deity. The doctrine of those emanations, and the lapfe and immortality of the foul, afford the strongest reafon for fuppofing that the tradition of a God-mediator, to appear upon earth after a certain revolution of ages, was cherished from time immemorial in China. Since Confucius ftrictly adhered to, and vigorously enforced in his writings, the pure doctrine of his country, which equally forbade all images of the Deity and the deification of dead inen; and, in confequence, could not confiftently recommend to them the grofs idolatry of the Bhudfoifts; it is highly probable that this devout and venerable perfonage, when he told them to look to the Weft for the HOLY ONE that was to appear upon earth, was infpired with fome foreknowledge of the great event of the redemption, and by divine inspiration was enabled to predict the advent of the Meffiah in Paleftine, a country which is exactly fituated after the manner described; and, indeed, is the most western country of Afia, in refpect to China.

In

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