THE SACRED HISTORY OF THE WORLD, AS DISPLAYED IN THE CREATION AND SUBSEQUENT EVENTS TO THE DELUGE. ATTEMPTED TO BE PHILOSOPHICALLY CONSIDERED, IN A SERIES OF LETTERS TO A SON. FOURTH EDITION. BY SHARON TURNER, F.S.A. & R.A.S.L. LONDON: LONGMAN, REES, ORME, BROWN, GREEN AND LONGMAN, ORIGINAL PREFACE. FORTY years ago, the Author felt the want of a Book like that, which is now offered to the Public in the following pages. At that period of his life, he wished a selected and concentrated view of such facts and reasonings on the Creation, intellectual design, and Divine economy of the World we inhabit, as would correspond with the other knowlege he was acquiring; and which at the same time should be so conceived and shaped, as to suit the modern topics and style of thought and reasoning, in which the philosophical subjects that interested him, were beginning to be presented. Finding none at that time so collected and represented, as to satisfy his young curiosity, or sufficiently adapted to meet the ideas and difficulties that were arising around him, he was obliged to make such outlines of this great subject for his own information, as occasional studies and opportunities enabled him to form. Amid these Sketches for his |