с

a

Philosophers, and Divines of their age. Magianism, which had been for ages the popular and national religion of the Medes and Persians, was rapidly falling into contempt, when Zoroaster appeared, commissioned, as he said, "by Heaven, to revive and establish it upon new principles." "Some of the Greek and Latin authors have given to this distinguished person a fabulous antiquity. It is believed that he was a Jew, and contemporary with Daniel the prophet." Up to this time the Magians had held the being of two first causes : "the first light, or the good God; the second, darkness, or the evil God; and that, by the combined influence of those two, all things were made and governed. He introduced a principle superior to them both, viz.-"one Supreme God who gave being to both light and darkness, and all things." He defined this being as follows: "God is the first incorruptible, eternal, unmade, indivisible, made unlike to every thing, the head or leader of all good, unbribable, the best of the good, the wisest of the wise he is also the Father of law and justice; self taught, perfect, and the only inventor of the natural holy." It is surprising that Infidelity should boast of

a Prideaux, ii. 26.

b Prideaux, vol. i. 254. c Ibid. d. Ibid i. 273. e Ibid i. 255. f Cudworth.

this ally, since it is a well known fact, that, whatever was agreeable to reason and truth in his system, was borrowed from the Hebrew scriptures. His Zendavesta, which is read to this day by his followers in the five temples of Persia, bears indubitable evidence of this! He has transcribed into this work, the greater part of the Psalms of David, and inculcated obedience to the commands of Moses, relative "to beasts clean and unclean-to paying tithe to the sacerdotal order— to avoiding all kinds of pollution-to purifying themselves by washing-and to keeping the priesthood in one tribe." To accommodate his religion to the licentious taste and habits of his countrymen, "he made it lawful for a man to marry his sister, his daughter, or his mother."a How much Zoroaster followed the Jewish platform in his reformations, doth manifestly appear from the particulars I have mentioned: for most of them were taken, either from the sacred writings, or the sacred usages of that people. Moses heard God speaking to him out of a flame of fire from the bush, and all Israel heard him speaking to him in the same manner out of the midst of fire from Mount Sinai: hence Zoroaster pretended to have heard God speaking to him also out of the midst of a flame of fire.

a Prideaux, vol. ii. 227.

The Jews had a visible Shechinah of the divine presence among them resting over the mercy-seat in the holy of holies, both in their tabernacle and temple, towards which they offered up all their prayers: and therefore Zoroaster taught his magians to pretend to the like, and to hold the sun, and their sacred fires in their temples, to be this Shechinah in which God especially dwelt; and for this reason they offered up all their prayers to him with their faces turned toward both. The Jews had a sacred fire which came down from heaven upon their Altar of burnt offerings, which they did there ever after, till the destruction of Jerusalem by the Chaldeans, inextinguishably maintain; and with this fire only were all their sacrifices and oblations made, and Nadab and Abihu were punished with death for offering incense to God with other fire. And in like manner Zoroaster pretended to have brought his holy fire from heaven: and therefore commanded it to be kept with the same care. And to kindle fire on the altar of any new-erected fire temple, or to re-kindle it on any such altar, where it had been by any unavoidable accident extinguished, from any other fire, than from one of the sacred fires in some other temple, or else from the sun, was reckoned a crime punished in the same manner. And

whereas great care was taken among the Jews that no wood should be used on their altar in the temple, but that which they reputed clean, and for this reason they had it all barked and examined before it was laid on; and that when it was laid on, the fire should never be blowed up, either with bellows, or the breath of man for the kindling of it: hence Zoroaster ordained both these particulars to be also observed in respect of his sacred fire among his magians, commanding them to use only barked wood for the maintaining of it, and no other means for the kindling of it up into a flame, but the pouring on of oil and the blasts of the open air. And that he should in so many things write after the Jewish religion, or have been so well acquainted with it, can scarce seem probable, if he had not been first educated and brought up in it. If there be any thing in the Chaldean history that contradicts Moses, it will be found upon examination, to be as repugnant to reason as to his writings. The sceptic may please himself, but we are not prepared to exchange the sublime revelations of the Hebrew lawgiver for the absurd dogmas of the Eastern magician! It only remains for us to examine the antiquity of

a

a See Lightfoot's Temple Service.

F

THE GRECIAN HISTORY. Out of the sacred

"Javan,

writings, the Infidel himself can obtain no satisfactory account of the origin of the Grecian nations. the son of Japhet, and grandson of Noah, was certainly the father, not of the Javians only, but also of all the other nations of Greece." And for this reason Alexander, in the predictions of Daniel, is mentioned under the name of the King of Javan, or Jon, or Joan, which properly is Asia the less, which was inhabited by Javan, Gen. x. 2. "They spread over all Greece, they all used the Greek language, and the sea was thence called the Ionian sea."a

66

The four sons of Javan were, without doubt, the heads of the principal branches of that nation, which became in succeeding ages, so renowned for literature, arts, and arms." The first impressions of religion, derived from Japhet, were soon lost by his posterity, who rapidly degenerated into a state of ignorance and babarism in which they slumbered for many centuries. 'Who, says Rollin, would have imagined that the people to whom the world is indebted for all her knowledge in literature and the sciences, should be descended from mere savages, who knew no other law than force, were ignorant even of agriculture and fed

66

a Poole. b Rollin, vol. iii. 8.