is Plato, but Moses conversing in the language of Athens?"

Diodorus and Herodotus take notice of the terrible scourges brought on the Egyptians by Moses. The former, who lived in the time of Julius and Augustus Cæsar, and wrote the histories of Egypt, Persia, Syria, &c., also mentions, "That the Troglodytes, the indigenous inhabitants of the place, (where Moses crossed the Red Sea,) had a tradition from father to son, from very early and remote ages, that once a division of the sea did happen there; and after leaving the bottom some time, the sea again came back and raged with great fury." This is the testimony of a heathen historian, not writing on the subject of revelation, but merely speaking of the country, the history of which he was writing, and recording the knowledge he had obtained from the natives.

Artepanus mentions a tradition, of the manner of the passage of the Israelites through the Red Sea, among the people of Heliopolis. And Tacitus says of the Jews, that they worshipped the supreme, eternal, immutable Being.

Dion Cassius says that many had written of the God of the Jews, and of the worship that they paid to him. And Varro, the most learned historian among the Romans, much approved the

Jewish way of worship, as being free from that idolatry which he could not but dislike in the heathen religion.

The tradition of a seventh day sabbath among all the heathen nations could only be derived from the writings of Moses, or the teachings of Abraham and his descendants.

Clemens Alexandrinus, in his Strom. V., quotes out of Hesiod, "that the seventh day was sacred." The like out of Homer and Callimachus: to which may be subjoined what Eusebius has taken out of Aristobulus, lib. xiii. cap. 12, "Theophilus Antiochanus to Antelychus, concerning the seventh day, which is distinguished by all men.'

Suetonius in his Tiberius says, "Diogenes the grammarian used to dispute at Rhodes on the sabbath day."

Lucian tells us in his Paralogist, "That boys were used to play on the seventh day.”

Dion Cassius, lib. xxxiii. says: "The day called Saturnus, and the custom of computing time by weeks, was derived from the Egyptians to all mankind."

Herodotus, in his second book, tells us, "That the keeping the seventh day was not a but a very ancient custom.”

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Josephus against Appion, about the end of

the second book, says: "There is no city, Greek or Barbarian, in which the custom of resting on the seventh day is not preserved, as it is among the Jews."

And Philo says, "It is a festival not only celebrated in one city or country, but throughout the whole world."

That there was such an universal destruction by water as Noah's flood, is confirmed by the concurrent testimony of several of the most anIcient writers and nations in the world.

That the Egyptians were no strangers to this event, appears from the testimony of Plato, who says, "that a certain Egyptian priest recounted to Solon, out of their sacred books, the history of the universal flood which happened long before the particular inundation known to the Grecians."

The inhabitants of Heliopolis in Syria showed a chasm or cleft in the earth in the temple of Juno, which they say had swallowed up the waters of that flood.

Herodotus says, the Egyptian priests told him that the sun had four times deviated from his course, having twice risen when he uniformly goes down, and twice gone down when he uniformly rises.

Grotius, in his Treatise on Truth, informs

us, "that what Moses says of the origin of the world is recorded by the Phoenicians and Egyptians."

Those who have read Ovid will recollect that he begins his Metamorphoses with a poetical transcript of the beginning of Genesis. He then proceeds with a history of the creation, acknowledging that man was made after the image of God; that he was to have dominion over all animated creation. He then goes on to describe the general corruption, when the earth was filled with violence; points out the destruction of mankind by the deluge, except two persons, whom he names Deucalion and Pyrrha, who were saved in a ship or boat which rested on Mount Parnassus; and from these two, he adds, the whole earth was re-peopled.

And even their oracles, and the various priests who attended their devotions, had undoubtedly the Jewish mode of worship in view.

Maimonides says, "That the Indians in the East formerly had the story of Adam and Eve, the tree of knowledge, and the temptation of the serpent; and it is said that the Brahmins and inhabitants of Siam have them at this day."

Manetho, who wrote the history of the Egyptians; Berosus, who wrote the Chaldean history; Hesiod among the Greeks; Hecateus,

Hellanicus, and Ephorus, all unanimously agree that in the first ages of the world men lived one thousand years.

The account of the ark, the deluge, and those who were saved therein, is also mentioned by Berosus, Plutarch, and Lucian.

Berosus was a priest of Belus, and a Babylo. nian born, but afterwards flourished in the island of Cos. He gives an account of Noah under the name of Xisuthrus, to whom Saturn appeared in a dream, and gave him warning that on the 15th day of the month Desius mankind should be destroyed by a flood, and therefore commanded him to build a ship; and having furnished it with provisions, and taken into it fowls and four-footed beasts, to go into it himself with his friends and nearest relations: this ship was five furlongs in length, and two wide. All this Xisuthrus did; and when the flood came, and began to abate, he let out some birds, which, finding no food nor place to rest on, returned to the ship. After some days he let out the birds again; but they came back with their feet daubed with mud. In a few days he let them go again, but they did not return, whereby he understood that the earth appeared again above the waters; and so, taking down some of