Page:History of Manchester (1771), Volume 1, by John Whitaker.djvu/406

 Chap. X. OF MANCHESTER, 371 39 Stonehenge c. 10.— 4 ° Offian paffim. And fee Crit. Dificrt. p. 315. — - 11 Borlafe's Cornwall p. 299. — * Rennet's Par. Ant. p. 698. And Carte p. J96. corroborates this account with the exprefs teftimony of the old Welch bards, who aflert this to have been the place of Vortigern's fepulture. — 4I Caefar p. 122 of the Gaul*. — "Stonehenge p. 45. — " 5 Offian vol: i. p. 5$. &c— * ft Borlafe p. 238 and 239. — 47 Mela c. ii. 1. 3 — " 8 Caefar p. 122.— 49 Stone- henge p. 46, Borlafe p. 237, and Offian vol. i. p. 153. VI. THE art of drawing out our ideas into vifion and declaring the fentiments of the., mind by the fpeaking imagery of charac- ters could never have relulted perhaps from any principle of human reafbning, and mud have been firft fuggefted probably by the wifdom of the Deity. Such an art became abfolutcly ne- ceflary for a being like man, who required the extraordinary af- fiftance of moral revelations to point out to him the line of his duty, and who 'needed the extraordinary interpofition of confo- latory prophecies to encourage him in the pra&ice of it. The di- vine declarations of duty and the divine predi&ions of redemption would neceflarily be committed to writing for the fame reafon for which, they were originally given, to preclude the fatal in- conveniencies of miftakes, and to inftruft or confirm- the future ages of the world. And one prediction we know to have been actually entrufted to writing even as early as the feventh gene- ration only from Adam. This is* that remarkable prophecy of Enoch which is formally cited by St. Jude, and of which a very folemn paffage Is tranfmitted to us by him The ufe of letters therefore is certainly prior to the sra which is commonly fixed for the introduction of them, the age of Mofes. As many divine revelations were certainly made to man, fo many divine declarations were certainly committed to writing, before the period of the Mofaical works. And all the various combinations of the Noachidae at Babel muft have B b b 2 carried —■"