BRIEF RETROSPECT 



OF THE 



EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 



INTRODUCTION. 



1 HE oldest historian in the world, and the only 

 one in whose information and faithfulness we can 

 place unlimited confidence, tells us, that, in the 

 beginning, when God created the heavens and the 

 earth, he said. Let t fierce be lights in the firmament 

 of the heaven^ to divide the day from the night; and 

 let them be for signs ^ and for seasons^ and for days, 

 and for years. Without recurring to the regular 

 motions of these celestial orbs, time would pass 

 unnoticed and unmeasured. Its flight, in itself, is 

 not an object of sense ; we neither see nor hear it. 

 But by observing t\\^ diurnal revolutions of the 

 heavenly bodies, we acquire the conception of 

 days ; by dividing these days, v/e form hours and 

 minutes; and, by multiplying them, we gain the 

 ideas of months, years, and ages. Like all the 

 rest of the works and ways of God, these means of 

 marking the progi'css of time, and ascertaining its 

 portions, are adapted to promote both physical 

 Vol. I. B 



