of the antediluvians. For the variety of figures in visible objects would suggest a sufficient variety in their characters; the hand could easily execute this; and their permanency would both give the antediluvians distinct ideas of all the original characters, and all their variations, and also fix them in their memory. We may suppose therefore, that though their words and marks would be so associated together (agreeably to what was before observed), as that the word would be the name of the corresponding mark, and the mark the picture of the word in many cases, yet their marks would in some instances extend farther than their words; and consequently, that on this account, as well as because the marks would be similar and different, where the words were not, there would be no alphabetical writing in the antediluvian world.
They might, however, hand down a history of the creation, fall, and principal events, in this picture-writing, attended with a traditional explanation, which might remain uncorrupted and invariable till the deluge. And indeed, if we suppose picture-writing to be of divine original, it will be most probable, that they received a divine direction to do this, and that they would not apply their picture-writing to any other purpose for some time: just as the Israelites afterwards seem to have employed alphabetical writing chiefly for recording the divine dispensations and interpositions.
After the flood, the great change made in the face of things, and in natural bodies, with the appearance perhaps of some entirely new ones, would make some parts of the antediluvian language superfluous, at the same time that it would be greatly defective upon the whole. Hence we may suppose, that the antediluvian language must receive much greater alterations and additions just after the flood, than at any time before. But Noah and his wife, having their words and ideas more firmly associated together than Shem, Ham, and Japheth, and their wives, on account of their superior age, would be far less able to make the requisite changes in their language. Something like this must also take place in respect of their picture-writing, if we suppose there was any such thing in the antediluvian world.
Let us suppose this, and also with Mr. Whiston and Mr. Shuckford, that Noah, his wife, and their postdiluvian posterity, settled early in China, so as to be cut off from Shem, Ham, and Japheth, and their posterity. Here then we may suppose farther, that they would alter and improve their picture-writing, or character, so as to suit it to the new face of things in the postdiluvian world, and to make it grow with the growth of knowledge, more than they would their language, from the greater facility of doing this: for I presume, that the antediluvian language contained but few of the articulate sounds which are now known, and that they could not invent more. Thus their character and language would both of them be the immediate representatives of objects
