Gabb, Thomas: Finis pyramidis or Disquisitions concerning the antiquity and scientific end of the great pyramid of Giza, or ancient Memphis, in Egypt, and of the first standard of linear measure (Retford, 1806)

ί 59 }

Unreasonable, in attributing this perfect production,
sufficiently proved to be antediluvian, to the beneficent
efforts of those sons of God, with a view to transmit to
posterity, a magnificent paragon of the more useful
parts, of the many scientific discoveries made in the
early part of their long well spent lives.

And even indépendant of the authority of the tra-
ditional testimony above mentioned ; what should
impede our belief that these antediluvians, dignified in
Holy Scripture with such a distinguishing appellation,
were men of natural good parts, and that amongst them,
should have been found some men of surpassing talents ;
men of refined taste, skill, judgment, and every mental
endowment; since they were so immediately descended
from him, who, in receiving his existence, received, at
the same time, maturity of knowledge, to an extent
equal surely, if not surpassing that of any of his

»immediate descendants : and this first of men lived long
enough, to have been consulted, even by the very pro-
jectors of the design for promoting science by the
invention, and erection of a specimen indicative of some
of the more useful branches of geometrical discoveries,
and which might also serve mankind, in ages then to
come, as a perpetual and permanent metrical standard,
for the various well known purposes of human life.
What is there, I repeat it, what, either extravagant

I or unreasonable, in believing those antediluvian fathers,
those sons of God, to have been the fosterers of science,
the promoters of the arts, and the accomplishers of the
means to give perpetuity to useful discoveries, after
maturity of age enabled them progressively to bring to
light, the secrets of the arts and sciences, the seeds
whereof they inherited, from their, and our grandest

Sire?

H Shall