I.

in

BOOK because men are apt to think, that things so vastly different as truth and falsehood could never blend or be incorporate together; therefore when they are certain they have some truth, they conclude no falsehood to be joined with it. And this I suppose to have been the case of the more credulous and vulgar Heathen, as the other was of the philosophers; for they, finding mankind to agree this, not only that there is a God, but that he must be worshipped, did, without scruple, make use of the way of worship among them, as knowing there must be some, and they were ignorant of any else. And from hence they grew to be as confident believers of all those fables and traditions on which their idolatry was founded, as of those first principles and notions, from which the necessity of divine worship did arise. And being thus habituated to the belief of these things, when truth itself was divulged among them, they suspected it to be only a corOrig. c. ruption of some of their fables. This Celsus the EpicuCels. 1. iv. rean, on all occasions, in his books against the Christians P.174,179 did fly to. Thus he saith, the building of the Tower of Ed. SpenBabel, and the confusion of tongues, was taken from the fable of the Aloidæ in Homer's Odyssey; the story of the flood, from Deucalion; Paradise, from Alcinous's Gardens; the burning of Sodom and Gomorrah, from the story of Phaeton. Which Origen well refutes, from the far greater antiquity of those relations among the Jews, than any among the Greeks; and therefore the corruption of the tradition was in them, and not in the Jews: which must be our only way for finding out which was the original, and which the corruption, by demonstrating the undoubted antiquity of one beyond the other; whereby we must do as Archimedes did by the crown of Hiero, find out the exact proportions of truth and falsehood which lay in those heathen fables.

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And this now leads to the third account, why truth is so hardly discerned from error, even by those who search after it, which is, the great obscurity of the history of ancient times, which should decide the controversy. For there being an universal agreement in some common principles, and a frequent resemblance in particular traditions, we must of necessity, for the clearing the truth from its corruption, have recourse to ancient history, to see if thereby we can find out where the original tradition was best preserved, by what means it came to be corrupted, and whereby we may distinguish those corruptions from the truths to which they are annexed: which is the de

sign and subject of our future discourse, viz. to demon- CHAP. strate that there was a certain original and general tra- I. 'dition preserved in the world concerning the oldest ages of the world; that this tradition was gradually corrupted among the Heathens; that, notwithstanding this cor6 ruption, there were sufficient remainders of it to evi'dence its true original; that the full account of this tra'dition is alone preserved in those books we call the 'Scriptures: that where any other history seems to cross 'the report contained in them, we have sufficient ground to question their credibility; and that there is sufficient ' evidence to clear the undoubted certainty of that history which is contained in the sacred records of Scripture.' Wherein we shall observe the same method, which Thales took in taking he height of the pyramids, by measuring the length of their shadow; so shall we the height and antiquity of truth from the extent of the fabulous corruptions of it: which will be a work of so much the greater difficulty, because the truth we pursue after takes cover in so great antiquity, and we must be forced to follow its most flying footsteps through the dark and shady paths of ancient history. For though history be frequently called the light of truth, and the herald of times, yet that light is so faint and dim, especially in Heathen nations, as not to serve to discover the face of Truth from her counterfeit, Error; and that herald so little. skilled, as not to be able to tell us which is of the elder house. The reason is; though Truth be always of greater antiquity, yet Error may have the more wrinkled face, by which it often imposeth on such who guess antiquity by deformity, and think nothing so old as that which can give the least account of its own age. This is evidently the case of those who make the pretence of ancient history a plea for infidelity, and think no argument more plausible to impugn the certainty of Divine revelation, than the seeming repugnancy of some pretended histories with the account of ancient time reported in the Bible. Which being a pretext so unworthy, and designed for so ill an end, and so frequently made use of, by such who account infidelity a piece of antiquity as well as of reason, it may be worth our while to shew, that the Scriptures are no more liable to be baffled with reason, than to be confuted by antiquity.

In order therefore to the removing of this stumblingblock in our way, I shall first evince, That there is no certain credibility in any of those ancient histories, which seem to

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BOOK contradict the Scriptures, nor any ground of reason why 1. we should assent to them, when they differ from the Bible: and then prove, that all those undoubted characters of a most certain and authentic history are legible in those records contained in Scripture. Whereby we shall not only shew the unreasonableness of infidelity, but the rational evidence which our faith doth stand on as to these things. I shall demonstrate the first of these, viz. that there is no ground of assent to any ancient histories, which give account of things different from the Scriptures, from these arguments; the apparent defect, weakness and insufficiency of them as to the giving an account of older times; the monstrous confusion, ambiguity and uncertainty of them in the account which they give; the evident partiality of them to themselves, and inconsistency with each other. I begin with the first of these, the defect and insufficiency of them to give such an account of older times as may amount to certain credibility which if cleared, will of itself be sufficient to manifest the incompetency of those records, as to the laying any foundation for a firm assent to be given to them. Now this defect and insufficiency of those histories is either more general, which lies in common to them all; or such as may be observed in a particular consideration of the histories of those several nations, which have pretended highest to antiquity.

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The general defect is, The want of timely records to preserve their histories in. For it is most evident, that the truest history in the world is liable to various corruptions through length of time, if there be no certain way of preserving it entire. And that, through the frailty of memory in those who had integrity to preserve it; through the gradual increase of barbarism and ignorance, where there are no ways of instruction; and through the subtilty of such, whose interest it may be to corrupt and alter that tradition. If we find such infinite variety and difference in men's accounts, as to the histories of their own times, when they have all possible means to be acquainted with the truth of them; what account can we imagine can be given, where there was no way of preserving to posterity the most authentic relation of former ages? Especially, it being most evident, that where any certain way of preserving tradition is wanting, a people must soon degenerate into the greatest stupidity and barbarism; because all will be taken up in minding their own petty concerns, and no encouragement at all given to such pub

L

lic spirits, who would mind the credit of the whole CHAP. nation. For what was there for such to employ themselves upon, or spend their time in, when they had no other kind of learning among them, but some general traditions conveyed from father to son, which might be learned by such who followed nothing but domestic employments? So that the sons of Noah, after their several dispersions and plantations of several countries, did gradually degenerate into ignorance and barbarism: for, upon their first settling in any country, they found it employment sufficient to cultivate the land, and make habitations to live in, and to provide themselves of necessities for their mutual comfort and subsistence. Besides this, they were often put to removes from one place to another, where they could not conveniently reside; which Thucydides speaks much of as to the ancient state of Greece and it was a great while before they came to embody themselves together in towns and cities, and from thence to spread into provinces, and to settle the bounds and extents of their territories. The first age after the plantation of a country being thus spent, the next saw it necessary to fall close to the work of husbandry, not only to get something out of the earth for their subsistence; but when by their diligence they had so far improved the ground, that they had not only enough for themselves, but to spare to others, they then found out a way for commerce one with another by exchange. This way of traffic made them begin to raise their hopes higher, of enriching themselves; which when some of them had done, they bring the poorer under their power, and reign as lords over them; these rich, with their dependents, strive to outvie each other; whence came wars and mutual contentions, till they who got the better over their adversaries, took still greater authority into their hands: thence at first every city almost, and adjacent territory, had a king over it; which by conflicting with each other, at last brought several cities and territories under the power of one particular person, who thereby came to reign as sole monarch over all within his dominions.

For although there be some reason to think, that the leaders of several colonies had at first superiority over all that went with them; yet there being evidence in few nations of any continued succession of monarchs from the posterity of Noah, and so great evidence of so many petty royalties almost in every city, (as we read of such multi

XVII.

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BOOK tudes of kings in the small territory of Canaan,, when Joshua conquered it,) this makes it at least probable to me, that after the death of the first leader, by reason of their poverty and dispersedness of habitations, they did not incorporate generally into any civil government under one head, but did rise by degrees in the manner before set down; but yet so, that in the petty divisions some prerogative might be given to him who derived his pedigree the nearest from the first founder of that plantation; which in all probability is the meaning of Thucydides, who tells us, when the riches of Greece began to increase, and their power improved, tyrannies were erected in most Thucyd.l.i. cities, πρότερον δὲ ἦσαν ἐπὶ ῥητοῖς γέρασι πατρικαὶ βασιλεῖαι, for before that time kingdoms with honours limited were herediEd. Duker. tary; for so the scholiast explains it, πατρικαὶ βασιλεῖαι ἀπὸ

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τῶν πατέρων παραλαμβανόμεναι κατὰ διαδοχὴν γένους. This then being the state and case of most nations in the first ages after their plantation, there was no likelihood at all of any great improvement in knowledge among them; nay, so far from it, that for the first ages, wherein they conflicted with poverty and necessity, there was a neces sary decay among them, of what knowledge had been conveyed to them: because their necessities kept them in continual employment; and after they conquered them, they began to conquer each other so that till such time as they were settled in peace under established commonwealths, there was no leisure nor opportunity for any arts or sciences to flourish, without which all certain historics of their own former state must vanish and dwindle into some fabulous stories. And so we find they did in most nations; which thence are able to give no other account of themselves, but that they sprung out of the earth where they lived; from which opinion the Athenians used to wear of old their golden grasshoppers, as Thucydides relates. What account can we then expect of ancient times from such nations, which were fo defective in preserving their own originals?

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Now this defectiveness of giving testimony of ancient times by these nations, will further appear by these two confiderations: First, what ways there are for communicating knowledge to pofterity. Secondly, how long it was ere these nations came to be masters of any way of certain communicating their conceptions to their successors. Three general ways there are, whereby knowledge may be propagated from one to another; by representative symbols, by speech, and by letters. The first of