argument from the concurrence of profane tradition with the Mosaic history; deducing both from the common source of revelation, disguised indeed and disfigured in the one by allegories and fabulous conceits, but conveyed to us by the other in its pristine and uncorrupted purity. The laborious and valuable researches of Mr. Bryant, Mr. Maurice, and particularly Sir William Jones, have thrown new and powerful lights upon this important subject.

As to the searching, with a curious minuteness, into the resemblances, which subsist, between the Pagan mythologies, and the great truths of the Jewish and Christian revelations; this may undoubtedly be carried too far. And I agree entirely with the learned and judicious Mr. Nares, that we are not bound in the proof of the authenticity of revelation, to mark out its traces, amidst the rubbish of absurd fables and disgusting mysteries, which compose the various religions of the Heathen world. See Nares's Bampton Lecture, pp. 251, 252.—And yet, since these resemblances have been employed, by the pen of infidelity, to overthrow Revelation, under the pretence, that the discoveries, which we ascribe to it, had been derived from Pagan mythology, it surely must be admitted, that such enquiries of the learned, as tend to reverse this position, possess no inconsiderable value. The engines, designed for the destruction of Christianity, are hereby converted

into instruments for its defence. The infidel, who laboured in the support of error, is thus rendered an auxiliary in the cause of truth. And it may perhaps not unfairly be viewed, as a sort of providential retribution, that a Hume, a Bolingbroke, and a Voltaire,* should be pressed into

* Volney is not, perhaps, of sufficient calibre, to be rauk. ed with the above mentioned discoverers of moral and reli. gious truths. And yet, he has given specimens, which prove him not wholly unworthy of such society. He has, amongst many curious matters, discovered, that the mysterious birth of the Messiah, signifies nothing more, than the Sun rising in the constellation of Virgo; that the twelve apostles, are the twelve signs of the Zodiac ; and that all "the pretended personages from Adam to Abraham, are mythological beings, stars, constellations, countries." Ruins, pp. 348. 388, 389. -Of this work of Mr. Volney, it has been well remarked by a learned writer, that it is truly stiled THE RUINS: for that, agreeably to its title, it menaces destruction to every thing that has justly commanded the respect and veneration of man; as it would rob men of the inestimable blessings of peace and good order, of the endearing ties of social connexion, and consequently of what constitutes both public and private happiness; and by breaking the salutary restraints of religion, would banish peace from the human breast, and spoil it of its firmest support in life and surest consolation in death." And to this is most properly subjoined, that "its baleful influence is not confined to these alone; that it carries in itself the seeds of its own ruin and confusion; and that it would almost require a volume, to enumerate the contradictory and jarring atoms, of which this chaos of confusion is composed." An Enquiry into the origin of the Constellations that compose the Zodiac, p. 197.

the ranks with the champions of Revelation, and compelled to march in the triumphal procession which celebrates their own defeat.

The latest claim, that has been set up in opposition to the Hebrew Scriptures, is on behalf of the sacred books of the Hindus. These, it has been pretended, evince not only the priority of the Indian records; but also, that Moses has borrowed from the Bráhmens, much of what has been commonly ascribed to him as original, especially with regard to the creation of the world. The fallacy of such pretences has, indeed, of late years, been fully manifested, by the valuable exertions of Sir William Jones, and those of his respectable fellow-labourers in the field of Indian literature. At the same time, it is to be lamented, that the admissions of that illustrious vindicator of the Hebrew writings, as well as those of Mr. Maurice, and others, respecting the antiquity of the Vedas, have been such as to furnish those, who were desirous to pervert the truth, with an opportunity of applying the produce of their meritorious labours to the prejudice of the Jewish

Such are the judicious observations of a writer, whose learning has enabled him to overthrow the principal theories, which have been erected by others upon the subject of which he treats; and yet has not prevented the writer himself, from adding one more to the numerous instances, that already existed, of the danger of adventuring into those visionary regions, in which fact supplies no solid footing, and fancy is the only guide.

records; an opportunity which was not neglected.* The futility of the attempt was, happily, at once, exposed by a few judicious observations in the British Critic, (vol. xvi. pp. 149, 150.) and has since received more ample refutation from the pens of Mr. Faber and Mr. Nares, in their Bampton Lecture volumes. But, in truth, notwithstanding that, as has been abundantly proved, such admissions of the great antiquity of the Hindu records, by no means justify an inference, affecting the originality and priority of the Hebrew Scriptures; yet it is fairly to be questioned, whether that antiquity has not been rated much above its real standard.

The astronomical tables of the Hindus, it is well known, supply the only reasonable data from

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* See the Advertisement prefixed to the 5th volume of the London edition of the Asiatic Researches: in which, after noticing the antiquity ascribed to the Vedas by the above Orientalists, the Editors insidiously subjoin the following observation. We shall not take up your time, with a dissertation on the exact age of either the HEBREW, or the HINDU SCRIPTURES: both are ancient: let the reader judge.—WHETHER THE HINDU BRAHMENS BORROWED FROM MOSES, OR MOSES FROM THE HINDU BRAHMENS, is not our present enquiry." p. iv.—The merit of these observations, it should be noticed, belongs exclusively to the London Editors: the advertisement being altogether a fabrication of theirs; and no one part of it being to be found in the original Calcutta Edition, of which this professes to be a faithful copy.-Such is the use, to which the pure gold of Sir W. Jones would be converted, by these workers of base metal.

which to judge of their chronology: their habitual exaggerations rendering every other source of chronological information altogether chimerical; insomuch that Sir W. Jones pronounces, (in his Dissertation on the Gods of Greece, Italy, and India) that " the comprehensive mind of an Indian chronologist has no limits;" and at the same time proves his assertion by a number of the most extraordinary instances indeed. Their astronomical calculations, therefore, having naturally become a subject of great curiosity and interest with men of science, the celebrated M. Bailly, in the year 1787, published, at Paris, a volume on the Indian astronomy, in which he contended for its great antiquity, carrying it back to a period of more than 3000 years before the Christian era. This conclusion he founded upon the nature of certain of their astronomical tables; which, he contended, contained internal evidence, that they had been formed from actual observation, and must therefore be carried up to so early a date as that of 3102 A. C. His reasonings upon this subject, in his elaborate Traité de l'Astronomie Indienne et Orientale, were followed by other astronomers, particularly by Professor Playfair in the 2d vol. of the Edinburgh Transactions, in 1789 and the Surya Siddhantá, supposed to

* Mr. Davis, who was the translator of this most ancient of the Sastras, thinks that he finds in it sufficient data, from which, computing the diminution of the obliquity of the