, that Moses used words unknown to Nimrod and Heber: and that the men at Shinaar(3) had words which the people before

the flood were strangers to. Even in the seventeenth century, there must have been a great alteration in the language of Adam; and when the venerable Patriarch and his family came into a new world, that was in a different state from the earth before the deluge, and saw a vast variety of things without precedent in the old world, the alterations in nature and diet, must introduce a multitude of new terms in things of common experience and usage; as, after that amazing revolution in the natural world, not only the clouds and meteors were different, and the souls that were saved had a new and astonishing view of the ruin and repair of the system; but Noah did then begin to be an husbandman; he planted a vineyard; he invented wine; and to him the first grant was given of eating flesh. All these things required as it were a new language, and the terms to be sure with mankind encreased. The Noachical language must be quite another thing after the great events of the flood. Had Methuselah, who conversed many years with Adam, who received

from his mouth the history of the creation and fall, and who lived 600 years with Noah, to communicate to him all the knowledge he got from Adam; had this Antediluvian wise man been raised from the dead to converse with the postdiluvian fathers, or even with Noah, the year he died, that is, 350 years after the flood; is it not credible, from what I have said, that he would have heard a language very different from that tongue he used in his conversations with Adam, even in the 930th year of the first man(4) ? I imagine, Methuselah

would not have been able to have talked with Noah, at the time I have mentioned, of the circumstances that then made the case of mankind, and of the things of common experience and usage. He must have been unable to converse at his first appearance.
What you say, Madam, (I replyed) is not only very probable, but affords a satisfaction unexpected in a subject on which we are obliged, for want of data, to use conjectures. I offer up to your superior sense the notion, that the Scriptures were wrote in the language of Paradise. Most certain it is, that even in respect of our own language, for example, the subjects of Henry the 1st, would find it as much out of their power to understand the English of George