the real facts which Taautus had recorded, from the fictions super-added to them. But he, (i. e. Sanchoniathon) finding some of the books of the Ammonei, which were kept in the libraries or registries of the temples, examined every thing with the greatest care; and rejecting the allegories and fables which at first sight offered themselves, he at length brought his work to perfection. But the priests who lived after him, adding their comments and explications to his work, in some time brought all back to mythology again." This, I think, is a just account of what has been the fate of the ancient heathen remains; they were clear and true, when left by their authors, but after-writers corrupted them by the addition of fable and false philosophy. Therefore, whoever would endeavour to give a probable account of things from the remains of Thyoth, or Sanchoniathon, must set aside what he finds to be allegory and fable, as the surest way to come at the true remains of these ancient authors. This I have endeavoured to do in my accounts of the Phoenician and Egyptian

antiquities. I have added nothing to their history, and if their ancient remains be carefully examined, the nature of what I have omitted will justify my omitting it; and what I have taken from them, will, I believe, satisfy the judicious reader, that ancient authors before their writings were corrupted, left accoun very agreeable to that of Moses.

Some persons think that the remains we have of Sanchoniathon, and the extracts from Taautus, are mere figments; and that very probably there never were either such men or such writers. But to this I answer with Bishop Stillingfleet. Had it been so, the antagonists of Porphyry, Methodius, Apollinaris, but especially Eusebius, who was so well versed in antiquities, would have found out so great a cheat; for however they have been accused of admitting pious frauds, yet they were such as made for them, and not against them; as the works of these writers were thought to do, when the enemies of Christianity produced them. And I dare say, that if

'Origines Sacræ. p. 1. c. 2.

the fragments of these ancients did indeed contradict the Sacred history, instead of what they may, I think, when fairly interpreted, be proved to do, namely agree with it, and to be thereby an additional argument of its uncorrupted truth and antiquity; our modern enemies of revealed religion would think it a partiality not to allow them as much authority as our Bible.

As the works of Taautus and Sanchoniathon were corrupted, by the fables of authors who wrote after them; so probably the Chaldean records suffered alterations from the fancies of those who in after ages copied them; and from hence the reigns (or lives) of Berosus's Antidiluvian Kings (or rather men) came to be extended to so incredible a length. The lives of men, in these times, were extraordinary, as Moses hath represented them; but the profane historians, fond of the marvellous, have far exceeded the truth in their relations. Berosus computes their lives by a term of years called sarus; each sarus, he says, is six hundred and three years, and he thinks that some of them lived 10, 12, 13, and 18 sari, i. e.

six thousand and thirty, seven thousand two hundred and thirty-six, seven thousand eight hundred and thirty-nine, and ten thousand eight hundred and fifty-four years; but mistakes of this sort have happened with writers of a much later date. Diodorus, and other writers, represent the armies of Semiramis, and her buildings at Babylon, more numerous and magnificent than can be conceived by any one who considers the infant state kingdoms were in when she reigned. Abraham, with a family of between three and four hundred persons, made the figure of a mighty prince in these early times, for the earth was not full of people: and if we come down to the times of the Trojan war, we do not find reason to imagine, that those countries of which the heathen writers treated, were more potent or populous than their contemporaries, of whom we have accounts in the sacred pages; but the heathen historians, hearing that Semiramis, or other ancient princes, did what were wonders in their age, took care to tell them in a way and manner, that

should make them wonders in their own. In a word, Moses is the only writer whose accounts are liable to no exception. We, must make allowances in many particulars to all others, and very great ones in the point before us, to reconcile them either to truth or probability; and I think I have met with a saying of an ancient writer, which seems to intimate it; for he uses words something to this purport: Datur hæc venia antiquitati, ut miscendo ficta veris primordia sua augustiora faciat.

In my history of the Assyrian empire after the Flood, I have followed that account which the ancient writers are supposed to have taken from Ctesias. Herodotus differs much from it; who imagines that the Assyrian empire began only five hundred and twenty years before the Medes broke off their subjection to it; and thinks that Semiramis was but five generations older than Nitocris, the mother of Labynetus, called in scripture Belshazzar,

*

Herod lib. 1, c. 95.

Id. ibid. c. 184.