blind chance, but for
these great purposes of divine providence.

It appears from the Chinese annals, in F. Du Halde's History of China,
that this vast empire is the most ancient in the world. Mr. Shuckford
(B. 1, 2, 6) thinks, that their first, king, Fo-hi, was Noah himself,
whom he imagines to have settled here soon after the deluge. Mr.
Swinton, in the twentieth tome of the Universal History, justly censures
this conjecture, and rejects the first dynasty of the Chinese history;
which Mr. Jackson in his chronology, with others, vindicates. We must
own that the Chinese annals are unanimous in asserting this first
dynasty, whatever some have, by mistake, wrote against it; and this
antiquity agrees very well with the chronology of the Septuagint, or
that of the Samaritan Pentateuch, one of which several learned men seem
at present much inclined to embrace. As for this notion that the Chinese
are originally an Egyptian colony, and that their first dynasty is
borrowed from the latter; notwithstanding my great personal respect for
the worthy author of that system, it stands in need of proofs founded in
facts, not in conjectures. A little acquaintance with languages shows,
that we frequently find in certain words and circumstances a surprising
analogy, in some things, between several words or customs of the most
disparate languages and manners of very distant countries: several
Persian words are the same in English, and it would be as plausible a
system to advance that one of these nations was a colony of the other.
From such circumstances it only results, that all nations have one
common original. Allowing therefore the Chinese an antiquity of which
they are infinitely jealous, Fo-hi was perhaps either Sem himself, or
one that lived very soon after the flood, from whom this empire derives
its origin. Confucius was the great philosopher of this people, who drew
up the plan of their laws and religion. He is thought to have flourished
about the time of king Solomon, or not much later. He was of royal
extraction, and a man of severe morals. His writings contain many
sublime moral truths, and show him to have been the greatest philosopher
that ever lived. As he came nearer to the patriarchs in time, and
received a more perfect tradition from them, he surpassed, in the
excellency of his moral precepts, Pythagoras, Socrates, and Plato. He
taught men to obey, honor, and fear the Lord of Heaven, to love their
neighbor as themselves,