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PART III.

LECT. V.

SECT. II.

HITHERTO we have traced the effects of the Jewish dispensation, chiefly in enlightening the oriental nations; but let it be remembered, that previously to the Babylonish.captivity, the greatest part of Europe had been sunk in barbarism, and Greece itself began to emerge from the depths of ignorance only at that period. It was not until after the first capture of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar, that Thales travelled into Egypt, and from thence introduced into his native land, geometry, astronomy and philosophy he appears to have been amongst the first, who gave his countrymen any rational idea of the origin of the world, and

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* Vide Chronological Tables of Marshal and the Universal History, also Brucker's História Philosophiæ, Lib. II. cap. i.

his opinion that water was the first principle of things, and that God was that spirit who formed all things out of water, seems evidently borrowed † from the Mosaic account indistinctly understood; *" that in the be

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ginning the earth was without form and

void, and darkness was upon the face of "the deep, and the spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters."t

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Anaximander, ‡ the friend and disciple of Thales, seems to have expressed his opinion though in different terms, yet such as indicate that it also sprang from the same source. He taught that infinity was the first principle of all things, from which they are produced, and in which they terminate. The most rational explanation of this idea seems to be, that it means that indefinite chaos combined with that infinite mind, from which all things proceeded.

* Genesis, i. 1.

The

+ Thales enim Milesius qui primo de talibus rebus quæsivit, aquam dixit esse initium rerum, Deum autem eam mentem quæ ex aqua cuncta fingeret. Cicero de Natura Deorum, Lib. I. cap. x.; and Bruckeri Historia Philosophiæ, Lib. II. cap. i. Vol. I. p. 465.

Bruckeri Historia, Lib. II. cap. i. sect. x. p. 483, who explains the opinion of Anaximander as I have done.

The great Anaxagoras * also, who first distinctly taught the separate existence of a supreme all-directing Mind, spoke of the material world as originating from a confused mass, consisting of different kinds of particles, each of which afterwards combined in homogeneous masses; an opinion so similar to that of the Mosaic records, that we can scarcely doubt but that it was from them derived.

But not to enter into a disquisition unnecessary to the object of this work, and in which certainty is scarcely attainable, it may be sufficient to remark some general circumstances in the history of the Grecian philosophy and religion, which appear to confirm the opinion of their having been derived ultimately from the source of the Jewish revelations; though corrupted and debased with the impure mixtures of Egyptian mystery and superstition, and rendered still more extravagant and incoherent, by that poetic imagery which the vivid imagination of the Greeks so promptly invented, and so fondly retained.

One of these circumstances is, that Egypt †

was

* Bruckeri Historia, Lib. II. cap. i. sect. xx. Vol. I.

P. 503.

+ Brucker affirms this of Thales, from whom the Ionic

was certainly the school, to which the sages of Greece resorted for instruction, at and after the Babylonish captivity; and that some are related to have extended their journies and researches into Chaldæa and Assyria. Now at all times Egypt had maintained such frequent intercourse with Judæa. that it could not be difficult there to learn the Jewish tenets, and have access to the Jewish scriptures, while at the same time Assyria was full of the dispersed and captive Jews.

We have indeed the most decisive proof of the constant intercourse and close connection of the Jews with Egypt, from the multitudes who at the beginning of the Babylonish captivity, * fled thither, and settled

there

sect derived their opinions; and conceived that Thales derived his opinion from the traditions of the Phoenicians, “which he had learned in Crete and in Egypt; who in "their cosmogonies laying aside an operating cause, philo"sophised on the origin of natural objects from a chaos." Vide Vol. I. p. 466. If this is true, it is a melancholy instance, how perversely human reason misused and misinterpreted the information which revelation had supplied. The tenet of the soul's immortality is confessed to have been brought from Egypt to Greece by Thales. Brucker, Vol. I. p. 475. Vide also Brucker's Acconnt of the Opinions of Orpheus, particularly as to a Chaos, Vol. I. p. 390.

* Vide Jeremiah, xlii, xliii, xliv, and xlvi.

there in direct opposition to the commands of their God and the warnings of his Prophet; an event speedily followed by the reduction of Egypt under the Assyrian empire, and the signal punishment of the idolatrous Jews in that country, according to the prediction of Jeremiah: occurrences which would naturally excite a considerable degree of attention to the Law and the Prophets amongst the remaining Jews, both in Egypt and Assyria; and possibly even amongst such of the natives of those countries, as well as foreigners, who were more learned and inquisitive.

From this period the intercourse between Europe, Asia and Egypt continued to increase, and consequently access to the sacred treasures of revelation, became more practicable.

It is another remarkable circumstance, connected with our present subject, that the tenets of the earliest Grecian philosophers, were delivered, not in the form of regu

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lar

* The sages known by the name of the seven wise men of Greece, it is acknowledged, delivered their doctrines in this form; and Brucker observes of Thales, "As the real

reason

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