manifest proof, that the time allotted unto Balthasar, by Annius's Metasthenes, was far short of the truth; which is enough to render all suspected that he hath said in distributing what part of the seventy years he pleased among the rest. For, in the third year of Balthasar, Daniel saw a vision, after which he was sick certain days, but when he rose up he did the king's business; from which business, that he did afterwards withdraw himself, and lived retired, so long that he was forgotten in the court, it appears plainly, both by the many words which the old queen used to set out his sufficiency, and by the king's asking of him, when he came into his presence, whether he were Daniel 8. Now, to think that a man of such account and place as Daniel had held, could in two years have been worn out of remembrance, were, in my judgment, a very strange conceit, which, rather than I would entertain, I can well be contented to think the whole story, (thus related,) a part of Annius's impostures.

Out of these reports of Josephus, Berosus, and others, many new opinions are framed by conjectures of late writers; for the endurance of the captivity being seventy years, and these years extending unto the first of Cyrus, in which course of time Nabuchodonosor, his son, and grandchild, must have reigned, it hath seemed needful to supply the years of these three descents, by inserting some whose reigns might fill up the whole continuance of the captivity, with which the time allotted by Berosus and others to Evilmerodach and Balthasar, joined unto the years following the nineteenth of Nabuchodonosor, (wherein Jerusalem was laid desolate,) are nothing even.

Therefore Mercator, and others following him, fashion the years of Evilmerodach in this sort: They say, that the eighteen years given to him by

7 Dan. viii. 1. and 27.

8 Dan. v. 11, 12, 13. 9 Dan. ii. 49.

Josephus in the tenth of his Antiquities, should be read and numbered twenty-eight years, and the two years that Berosus hath allowed to Evilmerodach should be written twenty-three: in the first number the figure of [1] is mistaken for the figure of [2,] and in the latter there should have been added the figure of [3] to that of [2]: this granted, to wit, that Evilmerodach reigned twenty-eight years, wherof five together with his father, and twenty-three after his death, and the same number of twenty-three added to the twenty-five which Nabuchodonosor lived after the destruction of Jerusalem, make forty-eight; then four years of Niglisar according to Berosus, nine months of Labosardach his son, and seventeen years of Labonidus or Balthasar, make up the number of seventy years to the first of Cyrus. But whether by error in figures or in words, the numbers be utterly mistaken, in all copies extant,-upon how weak a foundation do they build, who, having nothing to help them, save only the bare names of two 'unknown kings, found in authors manifestly corrupted, and such as if they had been entirely extant, were not worthy to have that place of Jeremiah called into dispute, in regard of their authority?

SECT. V.

A more particular examination of one opinion touching the number, persons, and reigns of the Babylonian kings.

OTHER Suppositions, little different in substance from this of Mercator, I purposely forbear to rehearse, as falling under the same answer. That of Joseph Scaliger I may not forget, as deserving to be considered apart from the rest. He gives to Nebuchadnezzar forty-four years, to Evilmerodach two, to Balthasar

five, and to Nabonidus seventeen. So that from the nineteenth of Nebuchadnezzar, in which Jerusalem was destroyed, unto the time of Cyrus, he accounteth only fifty-nine years, beginning, (as many do,) the captivity eleven years sooner, from the transportation of Jechoniah. But hereof enough hath been said already. That which we are now to consider, is his distribution of the time running between the nineteenth of Nebuchadnezzar and the fall of the Chaldæan empire, wherein if he have erred, then is all further inquisition frivolous.

Concerning the length of Nebuchadnezzar's reign, I shall hereafter, upon better occasion, deliver my opinion. The time which he gives to Evilmerodach is very short, and more precisely agreeing with Berosus than with the scriptures; for we find in Jeremiah, that this Evilmerodach, in the first of his reign, shewing all favour to Jechoniah, did, among other things, take order for him at his table; and that he did continually eat bread before him all the days of his life: And for his diet, there was a continual diet given him of the king of Babylon, every day a portion, until "the day of his death, all the days of his life.' The very sound of these words, (which is more to be esteemed than the authority of Berosus, were he perfectly extant,) imports a far longer time than two years, wherein Jechoniah, under this gentle prince, enjoyed the comfort sent by God, whose commandment he had obeyed in yielding himself to Nebuchadnezzar. Indeed, how long Jechoniah did live it cannot be proved; but plain it is hereby, that all his remaining days he did eat bread before this king. Now, that he lived not so short a while after this as two years, it is more than likely, for he was but fif. ty-five years old when he was set at liberty, having been thirty-seven years in the prison, whereinto he was cast at the age of eighteen years; after which

1 Jer. lii. 33, 34.

time it seems plain that he begat Salathiel, as well by the age of Zorobabel, who is said to have been but a young man, and one of Darius's pages threescore years after this, as by other circumstances of his imprisonment itself.

Of Balthasar, to whom Scaliger gives the next five years, (naming him also Laborosoardoch,) I should wonder why he calls him Nebuchadnezzar's daughter's son, were it not that herein I find him very careful to help out Berosus, by shifting in his Niziglissoroor, as husband to Nebuchadnezzar's daughter, and protector of his son four of these years; by which means there remains about one year to Balthasar alone, agreeing nearly with the nine months assigned by Berosus to the son of Niglissar. But Jeremiah hath told us that it was to Nebuchadnezzar, and to his son, and to his son's son, (not to his daughter's son,) that the empire was promised; which difficulty, if Scaliger could not help, it was well done of him to pass it over in silence.

Nabonidus, the last of these, whom others (desirous to reconcile Berosus to the scriptures) have judged to be all one with Balthasar, is by Scaliger thought to be Darius of the Medes. But herein Scaliger is no firm Berosian, for Berosus makes him of the same stock or race, a Babylonian. I speak not this to disgrace the travail of that most learned man, (for it highly commends his diligence and judg ment, that he was not so wedded to any author as affected with the love of truth,) but to shew that he himself having in some points disliked those writers, whom in general he approveth, might with greater reason have wholly reformed them by the scriptures, wherein can be no error. Two things there are which chiefly did breed or confirm this opinion in Scaliger, that he whom Berosus calls Nabonidus, was the same whom Daniel had called Darius of the Medes: First, the phrase in scripture, which signifies unto us, that Darius took the kingdom, not saving

that he won it by force of arms. Secondly, a fragment of Megasthenes found in Eusebius, wherein this Nabonidus is called the Median. Touching the word of the original, or of the Greek translation, which expressing no force of arms, doth only signify, that Darius took or received the kingdom; I see no reason why we should thereupon infer, that the next king entered by election; seeing Daniel relateth not the means and circumstances of Balthasar's death, but only the swift accomplishment of his own prophecy. Neither could it indeed have properly been said (if Daniel had cared to use the most expressive terms) that Darius of the Medes, breaking into the city, did win the kingdom, seeing this was performed by Cyrus in the absence of Darius, though by his forces, and to his use. Now concerning the fragment of Megasthenes, true it is, that in Eusebius's works, printed at Basil in the year 1599, I find only this much of Megasthenes cited out of Alpheus, that Nabuchodonosor, was more valiant than Hercules; that he subdued all Libya, and the rest of Asia, as far as to the Armenians; and that, as the Chaldæans report, being returned into this kingdom, and rapt with a divine fury, he cryed with a loud voice, O Babylonians, I foretel ye of • a great calamity that shall come upon you, which "neither Bel, nor any of the Gods shall avert: There ⚫ will come a Persian, half an ass, that shall bring slavery upon ye:' and that this and the like when he had spoken, he vanished. Of all this I believe little or nothing, saving that Nabuchodonosor knew before-hand that this empire should be translated, as Daniel had foretold, from the golden head, to the silver breast. But that he won all Africa or Libya, I hold it neither true nor probable.

If Scaliger's copy of Eusebius were the more perfect, out of which Megasthenes tells us that Nabuchodonosor won both Africa and Spain, I believe the fragment so much the less; and am as little