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SERMON

PREACH'D at

Canterbury School Feaft.

With a PREFACE,

Shewing that Alphabetical Letters were never used by any before Moses, and he first learned an Alphabet from God.

By the late Reverend JOHN JOHNSON, A. M. Vicar of Cranbrook in Kent.

NUM B. xi. 29.

-Would God that all the Lord's People were Prophets, and that the Lord would put his Spirit upon them.

LONDON:

Printed in the Year M. DCC. XXVII.

PREFACE.

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* School

Feast.

T the Request of the Gentlemen affembled at this Feaft *, I pro-Canterbury mifed to print this Sermon preached before them: Accordingly Ifoon after tranfcribed it for the Prefs, and drew a Preface for it, and fent both to an eminent Divine, who had promifed to revise them before they were published. But, this worthy Perfon dying within a few Weeks after, I could never recover thofe Papers from the Hands in which they were loft. And this Mif fortune was the greater, because I had no Copy of the Preface, but that fingle one, which was now loft. And from that Time to this, I could never find Leifure to recollect the Subftance of the Preface till within a few Months paft.

I found it necessary to write a Preface, if it were only to fupport an Opinion hinted in the Sermon, viz. That Letters, or the Art of Writing and Reading, was first taught by God to Mofes. By Letters, I mean Alphabetical Characters. I deny not, that the Egyptians, and perhaps other Nations, VOL. II.

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PREFACE. Hieroglyphicks long before. The Americans might preferve fome imperfect Remembrances of past Actions in Cotton Fringes of divers Colours, variously knit, or complicated together, before the Time of Mofes (if that Country were then inhabited). The Eaftern Aftrologers might regifter their Obfervations of the Motions of the Stars in Affyrian Letters, as they were called, from the Times of Abraham, or even of the Flood. Nay, I am not concerned to prove, that the Chinese did not write in fuch Characters as they now do, before Mofes was born. For my Difcourfe is concerning Alphabetical Letters only.

I shall comprize what I have to say on this Subject under thefe two Propofi tions, viz.

I. There is no Probability that Alphabetical Letters were ufed by any before Moses.

II. It is not probable that Mofes, or any other Man, firft invented an Alphabet by the Strength of his own Genius, but that Mofes firft learned it from God.

I. All will confefs, that Mofes's Writings are the moft antient of any now extant;

extant; all, I mean, whofe Judgment is PREFACE. to be valued. Nor do I fuppofe, that any Man will undertake to affign the Name of any Writer, Book, or written Monument, more antient than Mofes, though now loft; nor any of the fame Age with him (except the Book of the Wars of the Lord, mentioned Numb. xxi. 14.) and therefore probably written by one of the LXX Prophets, or however, by fome of their Scholars. Seth's Pillars are now given up as mere Fictions by all inquifitive Men. And though the fame cannot justly be faid of the Pillars in the Temples of the Phenicians, and Egyptians, and the Infcriptions made on them; yet it ftill remains to be proved, that any Infcriptions in Alphabetical Letters on thofe Pillars, or any other Monuments of thofe Nations, were more antient than Mofes. The two Nations now mentioned are most celebrated of all others among the Heathen, for the Antiquity of their Records, and their great Care in writing and preferving them. And it is indeed most highly probable, that they, being next Neighbours to the Jews, fhould first of all get the Knowledge of Letters from them, and by this Means be enabled to tranfmit Memorials of their own Actions to Pofterity fooner than any

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