all the Higher Asia there seems to have been diffused an immemorial 

 tradition relative to a second grand convulsion of nature, and a final 

 dissolution of the earth by the terrible agency of FIRE, as the first 

 was by that of WATER. The two pillars which are recorded by Jo- 

 sephus (whether the asserted fact of their existence in his day, or 

 even after the deluge, be true or not, is of no material consequence) 

 to have been erected by Seth before the flood, and to have been in- 

 scribed with the prediction to this purpose of our grand parent, to 

 whom it might have been revealed by the Deity himself, may be 

 adduced as the first proof of such a tradition; and the evidence is 

 so material that I consider myself bound to insert it at length : " The 

 sons of Seth," says this historian, " were the inventors of that pe- 

 culiar sort of wisdom which relates to the heavenly bodies and their 

 order. That their inventions might not be lost before they were 

 sufficiently known, upon Adam's prediction that the world was to be 

 destroyed at one time by a deluge of water, and at another time by 

 the violence of fire, they made two pillars, the one of brick, the 

 other of stone : they inscribed their discoveries on them both, that in 

 case the pillar of brick should be destroyed by the flood, the.pillar of 

 stone might remain, and exhibit those discoveries to mankind, and 

 also inform them that there was another pillar of brick erected by 

 them. Now this remains in the land of Seriad to this day*." 



I must again beg permission to observe, that neither the existence 

 of the pillars nor the place of their erection is of any consequence to 

 the general argument : the record of the prediction by Josephus is 

 sufficient for my purpose, because it supposes the belief of it general 

 among the ancient HEBREWS. The venerable book of Enoch, ex- 

 pressly alluded to by St. Jude, confirms this traditionary dogma ; 

 and, if that production should appear to some of my readers of little 



* Vide Joseph! Autiq. Judaic, lib. i. cap. 2, sect. 3. 



