APPENDIX.

No. I.-See p. 48-50.

JUSQUES à quand l'homme importunera-t-il les cieux d'une injuste plainte? Jusques à quand, par de vaines clameurs accusera-t-il le SORT de ses maux? Ses yeux seront-ils donc toujours fermés à la lumière, et son cœur aux insinuations de la vérité et de la raison? Elle s'offre partout à lui, cette vérité lumineuse, et il ne la voit point! Le cri de la raison frappe son oreille, et il ne l'entend pas! Homme injuste! si tu peux un instant suspendre le prestige qui fascine tes sens! si ton cœur est capable de comprendre le langage du raisonnement, interroge ces ruines! Lis les leçons qu'elles te présentent!... Et vous, témoins de vingt siècles divers, temples saints! tombeaux vénérables! murs jadis glorieux, paraissez dans la cause de la nature même! Venez au tribunal d'un sain entendement deposer contre une accusation injuste! venez confondre les declamations d'une fausse sagesse ou d'une piété hypocrite, et vengez la terre et les cieux de l'homme qui les calomnie-Les Ruins, c. iii. Euvres de Volney, tom. i., p. 13.

O noms à jamais glorieux! champs célèbres, contrées mémorables! combien votre aspect présente de leçons profondes! combien de vérités sublimes sont écrites sur la surface de cette terre! Souvenirs des temps passés, revenez à ma pensée. Lieux témoins de la vie de l'homme en tant de divers âges, retracez-moi les revolutions de sa fortune! Dites quels en furent les mobiles et les ressorts! Dites à quelles sources il puisa ses succès et ses disgraces! Dévoiles à lui-même les causes de ses maux ! Redressez-le par la vue de ses erreurs! Enseignes-lui sa propre sagesse, et que l'expérience des races passées devienne un tableau d'instruction et un germe de bonheur pour les races présentes et futures!-Ibid., c. iv., p. 25.

No. II. See p. 59.

EXTRACT FROM LETTER OF HUME TO DR. CAMPBELL.

It may perhaps amuse you to learn the first hint which suggested to me that argument which you have so strenuously attacked. I was walking in the cloisters of the Jesuits' College of La Fleche (a town in which I passed two years of my youth), and was engaged in conversation with a Jesuit of some parts and learning, who was relating to me and urging some nonsensical miracle performed lately in their convent, when I was tempted to dispute against him; and as my head was full of the topics of my Treatise of Human Nature, which I was at that time composing, this argument immediately occurred to me, and I thought it very much gravelled my companion. But at last he observed to me that it was impossible for that argument to have any solidity, because it operated equally against the Gospel as the Catholic miracles, which observation I thought proper to admit as a sufficient answer. I believe you will allow that the freedoin at least of this reasoning makes it somewhat extraordinary to have been the produce of a convent of Jesuits, though perhaps you may think that the sophistry of it savours of the place of its birth.-Campbell's Lectures on Ecclesiastical His tory, Edinburgh, June 7, 1762,

CONCURRING TESTIMONY OF ANCIENT AND CHIEFLY HEATHEN RITERS, TO HISTORICAL FACTS RECORDED BY MOSES.

(Adduced by Grotius, De Veritate, i., 16.)

The nations which most rigidly retained ancient customs reckoned time by nights, darkness having originally preceded light, as Thales taught from the ancients. The remembrance of the completion of the work of creation on the seventh day was preserved by the honour in which the seventh day was held, not only among the Greeks and Italians, as we learn from Josephus, Philo, Tibullus, Clemens Alexandrinus, and Lucian (and, as is manifest, among the Hebrews), but also among the Celts and Indians, by all of whom time was divided by weeks, as Philostratus, Dion Cassius, and Justin Martyr inform us, and as the most ancient names of the days do show. From the Egyptians we learn that man's life at the beginning was simple or innocent, and that his body was naked; hence the golden age of the poets, which, according to Strabo, was celebrated by the Indians. Maimonides remarked that the history of Adam, of Eve, of the tree, and of the serpent, existed in his time among the idolatrous Indians; and witnesses likewise of our own age testify that the same tradition exists among the inhabitants of Peru and of the Philippian Islands, who derived their origin from India; that the name of Adam is found among the Brahmins, and that the Siamese reckon 6000 years since the creation of the world. Berosus in his history of the Chaldeans, Manetho in that of the Egyptians, Hæstiæus, Hecatæus, Halbanicus in their histories of Greece, and Hesiod among the poets, have related that the life of those who were descended of the first men extended to nearly a thousand years, which is the less incredible, as the histories of a great many nations, and especially Pausanias and Philostratus among the Greeks, and Pliny among the Romans, relate that the bodies of men in ancient times were much larger, as was found by opening the tombs. Catullus, following many of the Greek writers, relates that divine visions appeared to man before the frequency and enormity of his offences secluded him from converse with the Deity and his angels. The savage life of the giants mentioned by Moses is almost everywhere spoken of by the Greek writers, and some of the Roman. Concerning the deluge it is to be remarked, that the traditions of all nations, even of those which were long unknown, and have been recently discovered, terminate in its history; whence also all that time was called unknown by Varro. And what we read in the poets, mystified by the license of fable, the most ancient writers had related truly, i. e., agreeably to Moses, viz., Berosus among the Chaldeans, Abydinus among the Assyrians, who, like Plutarch among the Greeks, mentions the sending forth of the dove, and Lucian, who says that at Hierapolis of Syria there existed a very ancient history both of the ark, and of chosen men and other living creatures having thereby been preserved. At Molo also and at Nicholaus Damascenus the same account prevailed, the latter of which had the name of ark, as Apollodorus also relates in the history of Deucalion. Many Spaniards likewise testify that in parts of America, Cuba, Mechoana, Nicaragua, the remembrance of the deluge, of the preservation of animals, and of the crow and pigeon, is still preserved; and of the deluge itself, in that part now called Golden Castile, and Pliny's remark that Joppa was built before the flood, informs us of a part of the world which was then inhabited. The place where the ark rested after the flood, on the Gordyæan mountains, is pointed to by the constant tradition of the Armenians, from age to age, till the present day. Japhet, the primogenitor of the Europeans, and from him Ion, or, as it was formerly pronounced, Javon of the Greeks, also Hammon of the Africans, are names to be found in the writings of Moses, and others are traced by Josephus and

other writers in the names of nations and places. Which of the poets does not mention the attempt to climb the heavens? The burning of Sodom is recorded by Diodorus Siculus, Strabo, Tacitus, Pliny, and Solenius. Herodotus, Diodorus, Strabo, and Philo Biblius bear testimony to the very ancient custom of circumcision, which was practised among the descend ants of Abraham; not the Hebrews only, but also the Idumeans, Ishmaelites, and others. The history of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph, in accordance with that of Moses, formerly existed in Philo Biblius, taken from Sanchoniathon in Berosus, Hecatæus, Damascenus, Artaphanus, Eupolimus, Demetrius, and partly in the very ancient writers of the Orphic songs, and something of it is still extant in Justin, taken from Trogus Pompeius. In almost all these there is also a history of Moses and his actions. For the Orphic songs expressly mention that he was drawn out of the water, and that two tables were given him from God. To these we may add Polemon, and not a few things relating to the departure out of Egypt, from the Egyptian writers Manetho, Lysimachus, and Chæremon. Nor can it appear credible to any prudent man, that Moses, to whom both the Egyptians and many other nations, as the Idumeans, Arabians, and Phoenicians, were hostile, would have dared to speak openly of the origin of the world and of the most ancient events, which could be refuted either by former writings, or was opposed to the ancient and popular belief, or that he would have published what happened in his own time, which many then alive could have disproved. Diodorus Siculus, Strabo, Pliny, also Tacitus, and after them Dionysius Longinus (on the Sublime) all speak of Moses. Besides the Talmuds, Pliny and Apoleius mention also Jamnes and Mambres, whe resisted Moses in Egypt. Many things are found in the Pythagorean writings about the rites given by Moses, and also some things in other writers Strabo and Justin, out of Trogus, particularly bear witness to the religion. and justice of the ancient Jews, &c.

No. IV.-See p. 98, 99.

EXTRACT FROM PLAYFAIR'S OUTLINES OF NATURAL PHILOSOPHY.

By comparing very distant observations, it is found that the line of the apsides, or the longer axis of the sun's orbit, has a progressive motion, or a motion eastward; so that the apsis recedes from the vernal equinox 62', or by De Lambre's Tables 61" 9 annually.

a. This motion includes the precession of the equinoctial points, which is in the opposite direction, and amounts to 50"-25; so that the real motion of the apsides eastward, in respect of the fixed stars, is 11" 65 a year, or 19.4" 1-6 in a century.

b. Hence there is a difference between the tropical year or the time of the sun's revolution from equinox to equinox, and what is called the anomalistic year, or the time of the sun's revolution from either apsis to the same apsis again. As the apsis has gone in the same direction with the sun over 62" in a year, the sun must come to the place where the apsis was at the beginning of the year, and must move over 62′′ more before the anomalistic year is completed. The time required to this is 01748 of a day, which, added to the tropical year, gives 365d.259,744, or 365d, 6h, 14m, 2s for the anomalistic.-Biot. Astron., tom. ii., § 91.

c. The line of the apsides, thus continually moving round, must at one period have coincided with the line of the equinoxes. The lower apsis or perigee in 1750 was 278° 6211 from the vernal equinox, according to La Caille; and the higher apsis was, therefore, at the distance of 98°-6211. The time required to move over this arch, at the rate of 62" annually, is about 5722 years, which goes back nearly 4000 before our era; a period remarkable for being that to which chronologists refer the creation of the world. At

that period, the length of time during which the sun was in the northern signs, that is, on the north side of the equator, was precisely the same with that on which he was on the south, each being exactly half a year. At present, the apogee, where the sun's motion is slowest, being in the ninth degree of Cancer, more time by 7d, 16h, 30m, 8s is consumed in the northern than in the southern signs; so great is the change which the motion of the apsides has produced. About 464 years ago, the apogee was in the beginning of Cancer.

e. The motion of the sun's apsides being 19′ 4′′ in a century with respect to the fixed stars, it requires a period of more than 108,000 years to complete their siderial revolution. Their tropical revolution is 20,903 years.— Playfair's Outlines of Natural Philosophy, vol. ii., p, 114-116.

No. V.-See p. 106.

"It is necessary to state the independent authorities on which this remarkable and consistent series of dates is grounded. I. The epoch of the kingdom of Babylon, which we venture to call the Chaldean era of the dispersion, results from the 1903 years' observations which Simplicius tells us were discovered on the taking of Babylon by Alexander, and transmitted by Callisthenes to his preceptor Aristotle, compared with the 720,000 days, or 1971 years of observations inscribed on titles, which, according to Epigenes cited by Pliny, were noted in the Chaldean annals. These annals were dedicated by their author, Berosus, to Antiochus Theos, whose reign commenced B.C. 262; and ascending from that date, the series of Epigenes point to the same commencement with that of Callisthenes, reckoned upward from B. C. 330. The earlier Chaldean dates, which suppose an intercalary cycle of 1440 years to have preceded the astronomical era of Babylon, are given on the authority of Alexander Polyhistor, a copyist of Berosus, cited by Syncellus (p. 32 and 38, ed. Par.). He estimated the ten antediluvian reigns at 1183 years, and an interval of 257 years between the deluge and the renewal of the kingdom under Enechous, or the second Belus. II. The Chinese series are from the annals produced by the fathers Martinius and Couplet, which are invariably dated in the years of saxagenary cycles, of which the series is complete. These annals mention a partial deluge in the reign of Yao (the contemporary of Noah, Hisuthrus, and Chronus, according to the Hebrew, the Chaldean, and the Egyptian systems), from whom their authentic history is supposed by the English liter ati to commence. III. The first series of Indian dates are those which are stated in the Graho Munjari quoted by Mr. Bentley (Asiatic Researches, vol. viii.) The first supposes the renewal of the world at the expiration of a great cycle, and the second the foundation of the kingdom Megadha, at the end of the historical Satya age of 960 years. IV. The second series represent the commencement of the Cali Yuga, the admitted Hindoo era of the deluge, and the epoch of the kingdom of Ayodhya or Oude, and of the appearance of the first Buddha, when 1000 years of the Cali age had expired. This latter will be found to fall in with the time of Thoth or Athothes, the son of Mison, the first Hermes of the Egyptians, who may have been the same with the first Buddha, a synchronism in connexion with the origin of the most ancient Egyptian and Indian temples, on which our present limits will not allow us to dilate. V. The Assyrian era is that of the ancients generally; 1995 years before the conquest of Antiochus the Great by the Romans, B.C. 190, according to Omilius Lura, cited by Paterculus; and 1342 years before the overthrow of the Assyrian empire by Arbaces the Mede, according to Castor Rhodius; the first year of Arbaces being fixed to B.C. 843 by Paterculus, Africanus, and Cedrenus, Ctesias and Čephalon make the foundation of this empire to have preceded the taking of Troy 1000 years. All these reckonings point to B.C. 2185-3 for the ac

cession of Belus Assyrius, the Asshur of Gen. x., 11. VI. The Greek series results from the date of Ogygian flood, as fixed by Varro, sixteen centuries before the first Olympiad, and the era of the little kingdom of Sicyon, with whose monarchs Varro commences his chronology, as we learn from Augustine. The latter is referred by Castor, cited by Eusebius, to the fifteenth year of the Assyrian empire. This state ended immediately before the Trojan war, as appears by comparing the notices of Homer and Pausanias; and its period, 692 years, according to Castor, exactly coincides with this account. We introduce the era of Sicyon in consequence of its consistency, and because it is the only Saphalian date which applies to the general origin of kingdoms. Ogialeus, to whom the foundation of Sicyon, and the earliest name of the Morean peninsula are ascribed, may fairly be supposed to represent the Elisha of Gen. x, 4, &c. VII. The Egyptian dates of the gods, demigods, and monarchy, result from the fragment of the old Egyptian chronicle preserved by Syncellus. The author of this work, probably the contemporary of Manetho, professes to have deduced it from the Hermaic book, the source of Manetho's history, and on that authority refers the dynasties to the years of the canicular period, regarding the epochs of which Censorinus and Theon have left us in no doubt. The correspondence of the Egyptian era thus obtained, with our former results from Diodorus, Eratosthenes, and other writers, leaves nothing to be desired on this head."-Foreign Quarterly Review, vol. xii., p. 384, &c.

No. VI. See p. 166.

C. PLINIUS TRAJANO IM P. S.

Solenne est mihi, Domine, omnia de quibus, dubito, ad te referre. Quis enim potest melius vel cunctationem meam regere, vel ignorantiam instruere? Cognationibus Christianorum interfui nunquam. Ideo nescio quid et quatenus aut puniri soleat, aut quæri. Nec mediocriter hæsitari, sitne aliquod discrimen ætatum, an quamlibet teneri nihil a robustioribus differant: deturne poenitentiæ venia, an si qui omnine Christianus fuit, desiisse non prosit, nomen ipsum, etiamsi flagitiis careat, an flagitia cohærantia nomini puniantur. Interim in iis qui ad me tanquam Christiani deferebantur, hunc sum secutus modum. Interrogavi ipsos, an essent Christiani. Confitentes iterum ac tertio interrogavi, supplicium minatus: perseverantes duci jussi. Neque enim dubitabam qualecunque esset quod faterentur, pervicaciam certe, et inflexibilem obstinationem debere puniri. Fuerunt alii similis amentiæ: quos quia cives Romani erant, annotavi in urbem remittendos. Mox ipsi tractu (al. tractatu), ut fieri solet, diffundente se crimine, plures species inciderunt. Propositus est libellus sine auctore, multorum nomina continens, qui negârunt se esse Christianos, aut fuisse, quum prœeunte me, Deos appellarent, et imagini tuæ quam propter hoc jusseram cum simulacris numinum afferri, vino ac thure sacrificarent, præterea maledicerent Christo; quorum nihil cogi posse dicuntur, qui sunt revera Christiani. Ergo dimittendos putavi. Alii ab indice nominati, esse se Christiani dixerunt, et mox negaverunt; fuisse quidem, sed desiisse, quidam ante triennium, quidam ante plures annos, non nemo etiam ante viginti quoque. Omnes et imaginem tuam, deorumque simulacra, venerati sunt. li et Christo maledixerunt. Affirmabant autem, hanc fuisse summam vel culpæ suæ, vel erroris, quod essent soliti stato die ante lucem convenire, carmenque Christo, quasi Deo, dicere secum invicem; seque sacramento non in scelus aliquod obstringere, sed ne furta, ne latrocinia, ne adulteria committerent, ne fidem fallerent, ne depositum appellati abnegarent; quibus peractis, morem sibi discedendi fuisse, rursusque coeundi ad capiendum cibum, promiscuum tamen, et innoxium; quod et ipsum facere desiisse post edictum meum, quo secundum mandata tua hetarias esse vetueram. Quo magis