then, with whatever difficulties it may be embarrassed, seems to represent most faithfully the genuine tradition of the Jewish people. And even the adoption of either of the other systems would still leave us straitened for room, in which to dispose of the Egyptian dynasties.

It should, however, be remembered, that as yet the chronology of Manetho, anterior to the invasion of the shepherds, has not received that confirmation from monuments which has given credibility to his subsequent history. Nor is this all; from the statements of M. Champollion it should seem that there is no hope of our ever obtaining such a confirmation. "The more," says he, "we became acquainted with the inscriptions which cover the edifices which remain on both banks of the Nile, and by their means with the date of their erection, the more we shall be convinced that there remains scarcely any thing anterior to the 18th Diospolitan dynasty. It is to the long residence of the Hykshôs, and the devastations which accompanied their dominion, that we are to attribute exclusively the almost entire disappearance of the public edifices, reared under the kings of the preceding sixteen dynasties." Lettre II. p. 8. Such an event, while it deprives us of the means of confirming history by monuments, must also impair the certainty of the history itself, because these very monuments were the materials from which, had they been spared, copious and authentic history would have been constructed. The invasion of the shepherds was to Egypt, what the invasion of the Gauls was to Rome; and as Livy, when he tells us that historical documents, "incensâ Urbe pleræque interiere," absolves us from the obligation to believe implicitly what he had related before, so the history of the earlier Egyptian dynasties must always be received with considerable doubt. Indeed, independently of this violent annihilation of monuments, Time destroys even in Egypt, and therefore remoter periods are ipso facto attended with more obscurity and doubt.

We must be content, therefore, to leave this question at present undecided: but supposing the result of further inquiries to be an extension of the Egyptian history to a longer period than we can reconcile with the chronology of Genesis, no friend of revelation need be alarmed at such a discovery. Had we indeed been told, either by the historian who has preserved the genealogies of the patriarchal ancestors of the Jews, or by any other of the sacred writers, that the transmission of them had been miraculously guarded from those errors or imperfections to which every other tradition is liable, or that they had been derived not from tradition but from immediate inspiration, the case would have been different: but no such authority is claimed, and we are not at liberty gratuitously to assume it. Those who think that when the accuracy or the completeness of a narrative is questioned, they can quiet doubts by appealing to its inspiration, forget that in so doing they beg the whole question and more besides. It is a perilous expedient for the honour, and even the security of religion, to bring her authority to decide questions in science, against the evidence of facts and arguments. Yet such is the practice of many persons at the present moment, who will not allow the philosopher to read any thing in the archives of nature, nor the historian in the early annals of the world, which is not consistent with what they deem the authority of revelation. They acknowledge no difference between the blind and eager spirit of scepticism, which to destroy the authority of Scripture thinks all weapons and all modes of attack legitimate; * and the

It is a lamentable fact, that during the ascendancy of the Constitutionalists in Spain, au abridgement of the work of Dupuis, Origine de tous les Cultes, was widely

spirit of cautious but free inquiry, which refuses to close its eyes to the conclusions to which it has been led, by an examination conducted in the sincere love of truth, and with the use of all the means which are calculated to secure its attainment. In the particular case which we are now considering, obstinately to reject the evidence of an undue contraction of the Jewish chronology (always supposing that further investigation supplies such evidence) would be in effect to declare that belief in revelation is inconsistent with historical criticism, and that we must choose which we will renounce ; while, on the other hand, it is difficult to see how the admission of it would affect a single truth in the doctrines, or fact in the history, of religion. The records of the human race, from their dispersion to the birth of Abraham, are contained in sixteen verses of the eleventh chapter of Genesis-a naked list of descents-a species of record very liable to alteration, both in regard to the number of its members and its individual dates. It is impossible to read the book of Genesis, and not perceive how much its character is changed from the point where the history of the Jewish people begins - the calling of Abraham. From a collection of fragments it becomes a full and connected narrative; from a style in which the acutest critics have been at a loss to determine in many passages whether they were reading a history or an allegory, it changes to one in which the distinctness, the vividness, the circumstantiality of real and authentic history are marked in characters not to be mistaken. Now this gradation is precisely what might have been expected, and confirms the fidelity of the historian, by corresponding with the necessary gradation in the copiousness and distinctness of his documents. What preceded the calling of Abraham belonged to the Jews only in common with the other nations of mankind; what followed it was exclusively their own, and therefore would both be known more perfectly, and preserved with greater accuracy. It is very possible that the family of Abraham may also have preserved the chronology of their own descent from the postdiluvian Patriarch with equal accuracy; all that is contended is, that should subsequent investigations prove that they have not, it will be equally unjust to reject the evidence of history, in order to uphold the inspiration of Jewish genealogy, or to reject the evidence of revelation, because the Jewish chronology of an obscure and primæval period appears to be imperfect or

erroneous.

K.

circulated in that country, by some who wished to disabuse the Spaniards of their superstition. The object of this work is to prove that Christ was the Sun, his mother the constellation Virgo, the Apostles the twelve signs of the Zodiac or the Dii Majores, Peter with his keys being Janus. Thus it is that the prohibition of reason, in matters of religion, produces a reaction towards the most irrational extravagance of scepticism. The Romish Church has been the mighty parent of infidelity, and some Protestants seem desirous that their churches should rival her fecundity.

THE CHRONICON OF EUSEBIUS.

In every point of view, the recovery of a long-lost treasure of antiquity, the work of a man so justly celebrated as Eusebius, the Bishop of Cæsarea, is an event highly interesting to the literary world. The result of the researches of a distinguished writer and indefatigable inquirer to whom the long-lost stores of antiquity lay open, and who knew how to employ those stores to the best account, must at all times be valuable, and still more when it preserves considerable portions of the very authorities from which he drew.

Eusebius lived at a most important era. Christianity had begun to rear her established head in courts and palaces. From being regarded as the depraved superstition of rebels and schismatics, it became the favourite religion of the state; councils were assembling under temporal authority to give law in matters of faith; and Christians, who had just escaped from the persecutions of Heathens, began to whet the sword of religious zeal in the hands of the magistrates against their fellow-worshipers. But there was still a literary warfare to maintain with the votaries of ancient superstitions, and the opponents of every system of revealed religion. Even Paganism had been purified to a certain extent in the conflict, and its philosophers maintained a vigorous literary warfare on the merits and preliminary principles and opinions held up by the Christians for their adoption. It was obviously the time for talent and research to come forward in the foremost ranks of the defenders of the newly-adopted faith of the state, and a fitter champion could hardly be found than the Bishop of Cæsarea. When we consider the impediments which must have lain in the way of an extensive cultivation of any pursuits that required an acquaintance with the works of many authors of various ages, at a time when such works existed only in scattered manuscripts, and could only be perused with severe labour, the extent of his acquirements seems prodigious. Besides a personal acquaintance with all the learned men of his time, his writings shew that he had read the works of every species of Greek writers, philosophers, historians, or divines, and the catalogue of his productions is a sufficient demonstration of the indefatigable industry with which he dovoted himself to the support of the cause he had at heart.

name.

The general scope of the arguments used by Eusebius in discussing in his principal works the respective claims of the rival systems of religion in point of authority and antiquity, naturally led him into historical and chronological investigations. The Christian religion, he argued, (without much notion apparently of what are now called its peculiar doctrines,) though new in name, was instituted and observed from the beginning of the world by good men accepted of God, from those natural notions which are implanted in men's minds. The patriarchs were Christians in reality, though not in For what else, he said, did the name of Christian denote, but a man who by the knowledge and doctrine of Christ is brought to the practice of sobriety, righteousness, patience, fortitude, and the religious worship of the one and only God over all? Christianity was anterior to Judaism. Judaism was a republic, established according to the law delivered by Moses. It was anterior to Heathenism, which was a superstition consisting of the worship of many gods and deified men. Anterior to either of these there was a third religion, neither Judaism nor Heathenism, the most ancient institution, the oldest philosophy, which had lain dormant but had been lately declared and revived agreeably to the predictions of Moses and the prophets; and he who

forsook Heathenism or Judaism and became a Christian, embraced in so doing that law and course of life which had been followed by the ancient patriarchs, the friends of God.

In discussing these subjects with the philosophers and advocates of Heathenism, Eusebius of course maintained the superior authenticity and credit of the Jewish records. The historical accuracy of records connected with religion became a point of great importance at a time when the only memo→ rials for fixed chronology were intimately connected with hieratic registers. Berosus, from such materials, had compiled the annals of the Assyrians, Manetho, those of Egypt, Acusilaus, those of Greece. Assuming the substantial accuracy of many of these records, and investigating and correcting them where wrong, Eusebius devoted himself to ascertain and determine their correspondence with the chronology of the Jewish Scriptures, intending at the same time to prove that the dates which heathen chronology assigned to those worthies who had become the objects of heathen worship was far later than those of the patriarchs and prophets recorded in the authentic history of the Old Testament. Moses, he intends to shew, even according to their own chronology, lived prior to the worship of Jupiter, to the birth of Latona, of Bacchus, Apollo, and most of the heathen deities; to the flood of Deucalion, the fall of Phaeton, the rape of Europa, and ages prior to the first poets, philosophers and historians of Greece."

The fruit of inquiries of this sort was a series of chronological tables, forming his Xpovikos Karovas, compiled in parallel columns, graduated by a scale of years much on the same plan as our modern historical charts, preceded by a work on which it was grounded, and which formed its development and illustration. This Eusebius entitled his Tavтodany iσTopiav. It was, in fact, a digest, with copious extracts, of all the writers of note who could be regarded as the original sources of information on the subject. The work was, as it deserved to be, highly valued, both for the original materials which it preserved, and the industry, skill and originality of its compilation. These books, now long lost to the world, or at least only preserved in scattered and imperfect fragments, have lately been restored in an Armenian version, of which a Latin translation has been published under the title of " Eusebii Pamphili, Cæsariensis Episcopi, Chronicon Bipartitum, nunc primum ex Armeniaco textu in Latinum conversum, adnotationibus auctum, Græcis fragmentis exornatum, opera P. Jo. Baptista Aucher, Ancyrani, Monachi Armeni, et Doctoris Mechitarista. Venetiis, 1818. 2 Tom. quarto." We derive our information as to this book and its valuable contents from the analysis of it in a contemporary (the British Critic). If opportunity shall occur, we shall gladly avail ourselves of it to present a more minute account of it to our readers, comparing it with the fragments preserved, and, as he fancied, reunited and connected into almost their original form by Scaliger; and we shall also examine how far the system of such inquirers as Bryant are affected by an addition like this to the slender materials they possessed. At present we can only perform the humbler office of recording as matter of interesting intelligence such information as we have been able to procure.

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There is every reason to believe that the original text of Eusebius is irretrievably lost for though many searches were made during the two last centuries in the libraries both of the East and West, not a single copy has been hitherto discovered. The version of Jerome, indeed, still exists; but it cannot supply the place of the original for two reasons. First, it contains.

only the second part or the chronological tables. Secondly, Jerome informs us, that he had taken on himself the duty of author, as well as translator, and had inserted numerous additions with the view of rendering the work more interesting to the Latin Christians. The liberties which he took with Eusebius his transcribers have taken with him; and at the present day there exist not two manuscript copies which resemble each other. Scaliger, however, consulted with diligence all the Greek chronologists and historians who wrote after Eusebius, extracted from their works every passage which they stated, or which he supposed to have been taken from the pages of Eusebius, translated other passages from the Latin version of Jerome, added a few improvements of his own, and then, having arranged his materials in order, produced a work which he persuaded himself to be a correct representation of the Greek text, and accordingly published under the modest title of Εὐσεβίου το Παμφίλε Χρονικῶν λόγος πρῶτος, as if he were perusing the identical text of the Greek chronographer.

The work of Eusebius has, however, at last been recovered, not indeed in the Greek language, but in an almost entire and, as far as it is possible to judge, a faithful version. It was contained in an Armenian manuscript found in Jerusalem by Isaac, the Vicar of the Armenian Patriarch, a little before the close of the last century, and afterwards deposited by him in the library of the Armenian seminary in Constantinople. The monks of the isle of St. Lazarus, near Venice, have long been distinguished by the industry and success with which they have cultivated the antiquities and literature of their country. Their curiosity was awakened by the fame of this discovery; they requested a copy; suspicious of its fidelity, they procured a second; and in 1802 they sent Aucher of Ancyra, one of the fraternity, to Constantinople. During the seven years that he resided in the Turkish capital, he had numerous opportunities of correcting the two copies by the original, and of inquiring into the age and authenticity of the Armenian manuscript. With respect to its age, its appearance bore testimony to its antiquity, and the form of the characters resembled that which is known to have been in use in the twelfth century. From the impression of a seal on one of the pages, it seems to have belonged to the patriarch Gregory. But Gregory was a favourite name among the Armenians, and no fewer than six prelates of that appellation sat in the patriarchal chair between the years 1065 and 1306. Any one of these may have been the owner of the manuscript.

In the year 406, the Armenian characters were invented by the teacher Mesropes. The patriarch Isaac availed himself of this fortunate circumstance to improve the education of his clergy. Of his disciples some were sent to Edessa, some to Alexandria, and some to Constantinople. They studied the languages of Syria and Greece; they procured copies of the most serviceable works; and they undertook the task of translating them into their vernacular tongue. The books of Scripture were the first object of their labours; the decrees and canons of the councils followed; to these were added a considerable number of treatises by theological authors; and so extensive was the benefit derived from their writings, that the national historians, in gratitude for their services, have denominated the fifth century "the age of the translators." Now there is convincing evidence to shew that the Armenian version of Eusebius before us, was executed at this early period. Numerous quotations from it, some of them of considerable length, are to be found in the ancient Armenian writers: and among the eight cited by the editor in his preface are two, Lazarus Pharpensis, and Moyses Choronensis, who were