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 Chap. III. Though the Scripture doth not mention any thing concerning the invention of thee; yet 'tis mot generally agreed, that Adam, (though not immediately after his Creation, yet) in proces of time, upon his experience of their great neceity and uefulnes, did firt invent the ancient Hebrew Character : whether that which we now call the Hebrew, or ele the Samaritan, is a quetion much debated by everal Learned men, which I hall not now inquire into, or offer to determine.

It hath been abundantly cleared up by many Learned men, that the ancient Hebrew Character hath the priority before any other now known; which is confirmed by the concurrent tetimony of the bet and mot ancient Heathen Writers. And 'tis amongt rational arguments none of the leat, for the Truth and Divine Authority of Scripture, to conider the general concurrence of all manner of evidence for the Antiquity of the Hebrew, and the derivation of all other Letters from it.

Pliny affirms in one place, that the firt invention of Letters ought to be acribed unto the Ayrians; and in another place he aith, that under the name of Syria he undertands the Region which were tyled Palestine, Judea, and Phnicia; and in the ame Chapter he acribes the invention of Letters to the Phnicians. So doth Lucan, likewie;

With thee agree $a$ Herodotus, Strabo, $b$ Plutarch, $c$ Curtius, Mela, &c. who all conent, that the Grecians did firt receive their Letters from the Phnicians by Cadmus, who lived about the time of Johua. And that the Punic or Phnician Tongue was the Canaanitih or the Hebrew, though omewhat altered from its original pronunciation, (as is wont in tract of time to befall Colonies planted far from home, amongt trangers,) is ufficiently manifeted from the remainders of it that are extent in Plautus and other prophane Authors, as they are cited by the learned Bochart. And that the Phnicians were Canaanites hath proof alo in Scripture, becaue the ame woman who in ''Mark 7. 26. is tyled a Syrophnician, is aid Matth. 15. 22. to be a Canaanite''.

That the ancient Greek Character was of very near affinity to the Samaritan, and that the Latin Letters were of uch an affinity to the Greek, and derived from them, being in a menner the ame with the ancient Ionic Letters, is made very plain by Scaligar, and owned by Pliny and Dionyius Halicarnaenis. And Tacitus doth acknowledge that the ancient Latin Characters were in the hape and figure almot the ame with the Greek. And as for the other Letters that are known, namely, the Syriac, Arabic, thiopic, Armenian, Coptic, Illyric, Georgian, Gothic, there is this cogent Argument to prove them to be of the ame Original, becaue their Alphabets do generally oberve the ame order of Letters, which, being in it elf exceedingly irrational, cannot probably have any other reaon but imitation. Except onely that of the Arabs, ath Hermannus Hugo, who, that they might not eem to have borrowed Letters Rh