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    then , with whatever difficulties it may be embarrassed , Seems to represent most faithfully the genuine tradition of \ he Jewishjpeople . And even the adoption of either of the other systems woutd ^ fill leave us straitened for room , in which to dispose of the Egyptian dynasties . It should , however , be remembered , that as yet the chronology of

    Manetho , anterior to the invasion of the shepherds , has not received that confir-r mation from monuments which has given credibility to his subsequent history . Nor is this all ; from the statements of M . Champollion it should seem that there is no hope of our ever obtaining such a confirmation * ** The more , " says he , " we became acquainted with the inscriptions which cover the edifices which remain on both banks of the Nile , and by their

    means with the date of their erection , the more we shall be convinced that there remains scarcely any thing anterior to the \ % th Diospolitan dynasty * It is to the long residence of the Hykshos , and the devastations which accompanied their dominion , that we are to attribute exclusively the almost entire disappearance of the public edifices , reared under the kings of the preceding sixteen dynasties . " Lettre II . p . 8 . Such an event , while it deprives us of the means of confirming history by monuments , must also impair the certainty of the history itself , because these very monuments were

    the materials from which , had they been spared , copious and authentic history would have been constructed . The invasion of the shepherds was to Egypt , what the invasion of the Gauls was to Rome ; and as Livy , when he tells us that historical documents , " incensa Urbe plerseque interiere , " absolves us from the obligation to believe implicitly what he had related before , so the history of the earlier Egyptian dynasties must always be received with considerable doubt . Indeed , independently of this violent annihilation of monuments , Time destroys even in Egypt , and therefore remoter periods are ipso facto attended with more obscurity and doubt .

    We must be content , therefore , to leave this question at present undecided : but supposing the result of further inquiries to be an extension of the Egyptian history to a longer period than we can reconcile with the chronology of Genesis , no friend of revelation need be alarmed at such a discovery . Had we indeed been told , either by the historian who has preserved the genealogies of the patriarchal ancestors of the Jews , or by any other of the sacred writers , that the transmission of them had been miraculously guarded

    from those errors or imperfections to which every other tradition is liable , or that they had been derived not from tradition but from immediate inspiration , the case would have been different : but no such authority is claimed , and we are not at liberty gratuitously to assume it . Those who think that when the accuracy or the completeness of a narrative is questioned , they can quiet doubts by appealing to its inspiration , forget that in so doing they beg the whole question and more besides . It is a perilous expedient for the

    honour , and even the security of religion , to bring her authority to decide questions in science , against the evidence of facts and arguments . Yet such is the practice of many persons at the present moment , who will not allow the philosopher to read any thing in the archives of nature , nor the historian in the early annals of the world , which is not consistent with what they deem the authority of revelation . They acknowledge no difference between the blind and eager spirit of scepticism , which to destroy the authority of Scripture thinks all weapons and all modes of attack legitimate ; * and the * It Is a lamentable fact , that during the ascendancy of the Constitutionalists iu-Spain , an abridgement of the work of Dupuis , Oi igine dc tous lcs Cultes , was widely

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    320 "Biblical Gleanings .

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), May 2, 1827, page 320, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1796/page/8/