the date of its rife lies beyond the moft remote fource of pagan hiftory. The kings in Phrygia were older than the gods in Greece. Laomedon the father of Priam, having employed Apollo and Neptune in repairing the walls of his capital, defrauded them of their reward, which indignity provoked Jupiter to accomplish its deftruction in the next reign. By a ftrict attention to phyfical probability, textual connexion, hiftorical confiftence, parallel records, various readings, and ancient versions, it has been attempted to rectify incidental mistakes in the chronology and genealogy of the facred writings. In the Newtonian computations are many undoubted improvements, which had escaped the fcrutiny of the Christian Fathers, and fuch mafterly critics of later times, as Petau, Scaliger, Ufher, &c.-improvements, exquifitely fubfervient to giving order and form to the difcordant annals of paganism; and it is now propofed to correct the miftakes intermingled with the very conftruction of the New Chronology, affuming for a fource in reckoning the date affigned by Sir I. Newton for the catastrophe of Troy. A fpecimen has likewife been given, connecting the origin of the Greek theology with the times of Cadmus and Danaus :-an experiment hitherto unattempted, with acknowledged fuccefs. Objections. I. "To the fix reigns in Phrygia, prior to the conflagration of Troy, is affigned a period of 307 years, (the mean quantity being 51), difproportionate by excess to to the courfe of nature." Anfwer. In the foregoing Analysis it has been evinced, that the period of natural life was not reduced to the prefent ftandard before David, till whofe time men generally lived 100, or 110. To the first three Trojan kings, Dardanus, Erichthonius, and Tros, is feverally marked a reign of 31, 75, and 60 years, the laft ending about the 26th of David's reign. The other three were in part co-exiftent with David, Solomon, and Afa, whofe reigns amounted to 120, or 40 years a-piece. This difproportion is inconfiderable. In a more advanced period of the kings in Judah, the reigns of Joafh, Amaziah, and Manasseh, were 40, 52, and 55. 2. Objection. "IF Jupiter, Apollo, and Neptune, were men, of mature age, in the times affigned to Cadmus and Danaus, they must have been either fuperannuated, or dead, at the fiege of Troy, after the lapfe of two centuries." It is replied, Who expects to find coherence, probability, or truth, in the gentile mythology, where every thing is transformed, the man Jupiter, for inftance, into a fwan, then into a bull, laft of all into a god? A more direct answer, however, admits the objection, in its full extent. All the perfonages, above mentioned, and others of the fame family, were both dead and deified, before the reigns of Laomedon and Priam. These are the proofs, 1. SIR I. Newton, on the authority of Pythagoras, affirms that the fepulchre of Minos, the fon of Jupiter, was feen in Crete in the year before Chrift 964, or the 14th of Rehoboam. Marfham refers to the Scholiaft on Callimachus, who teftified, that the word MINOIS had by length of time been obliterated, and that JUPITER'S SEPULCHRE only was legible; whereas the infcription, when complete, had been, "THE TOMB OF MINOS, THE SON OF JUPITER." A remark of Epimenides, a poet coeval with Solon, arraigns the veracity of his countrymen, in a character rehearsed by an Apoftle, Titus, i. 12: "The Cretans are always liars." Callimachus, a later poet, in the days of Pt. Philadelphus, repeated and exemplified the charge, in the very cafe now under exami◄ "The Cretans are always liars, because they pretended, that the tomb of Jupiter was with them; whereas they had only that of his fon Minos, for Jupiter himself was immortal." Whether that monument and infcription were in memory of Jupiter, or of Minos, the present argument is not invalidated, for either the one or the other, perhaps both, died before the overthrow of Troy, and neither was immortal. nation. 2. EVEN after the hero-gods had been enrolled among the celeftials, they were liable to a temporary degradation, and exile. Thus Vulcan for a work of piety, towards his mother Juno, was precipitated from the fummit of Olympus to the island of Lemnos. But examples, ftill more appofite occur. * See Callim. Hymnum i, in Jovem, v. 8. JUPITER, JUPITER, having difcharged a thunderbolt which flew Efculapius, incurred the refentment of Apollo, who in revenge murdered one of the Cyclops, ufually employed in forging the artillery of the clouds; and for that offence Apollo being excluded from heaven, betook himself to the humble occupation of a fhepherd. About the fame time, it feems, Neptune, (not thinking the empire of the sea, equal to that of earth and heaven, confpired with other deities to dethrone Jupiter), was condemned to affift Laomedon in repairing the walls of Troy. After a train of amorous adventures, Apollo became partner with Neptune in the engagement to rebuild the Trojan walls, on the reasonable condition, that the king should reftore the ornaments and treasures, which had been expended in the fortifications. In one year the work was finished; but Laomedon having defrauded the divine architects, Apollo fent a deftru&tive peftilence among his fubjects; Neptune laid waste his territories by inundations; and Jupiter, resenting the perfidy, decreed irreverfibly the ruin of the kingdom and capital *. These were works proper to deities. 3. THE Palladium, or curious ftatue of Minerva, which, according to the oracles of fiction, was let down from heaven, near the tent of Ilus, the 4th fovereign of Ilium, while that prince was rearing the citadel, * These coincidences of events, perfonages, and times, indicate the particular period when Efculapius, the fon of Apollo, and god of medicine, flourished. Homer, (Iliad, iv. 193.) mentioning Machaon, the fon of Efcula pius, among the heroes at Troy, confirms this arrangement. Dd 2 evinces evinces that the goddefs had previously retired from the ftage of mortality. Anciently deification was a ceremony not indulged to the living. It is mentioned as a circumstance without precedent, that divine honours were paid to fome of the Cefars before death. 3. Objection. "THE Romans compute the chronology of their gods differently from the Greeks." True; but the more recent nation affumes a less remote term. Both worshipped the fame Jupiter, the fon of Saturn, and fovereign of Crete. By the Greek reckoning he was coeval with the Phoenician Cadmus, and the Egyptian Danaus; and all three flourished in the late years of Samuel's government: by the Roman, with David and Solomon. The fall of Troy has been fixed to the 78th year from the death of Solomon. Ovid introduces Ajax fupporting his claim to the armour of Achilles by the confideration that he was the third in descent from Jupiter, who, by allowing three generations for a century, was a mortal king, and coeval with David. But if his reign were likewife co-existent with the rife of the Baotian Thebes, in the days of Cadmus, he must have been dead long before the overthrow of Troy, In the fictitious theology of paganism, the actions of this and the other mortal heroes are often blended, in promifcuous confufion, with thofe of the immortal gods. In like manner the Greek chronology makes Venus, the mother of Hermione, coeval with Cadmus; and that of the Romans reprefents her as the mother of |