when Jeremiah often reprehended them for their idolatry, foretelling both the destruction of themselves and the Egyptians also, he was by these his own hardhearted and ungrateful countrymen stoned to death; and by the Egyptians, who greatly reverenced him, buried near the sepulchre of their own kings. THE END OF THE SECOND BOOK. THE HISTORY OF THE WORLD, IN FIVE BOOKS. THE THIRD BOOK. ENTREATING OF THE TIMES FROM THE DESTRUCTION OF JERUSALEM TO THE TIME OF PHILIP OF MACEDON. CHAP. I. OF THE TIME PASSING BETWEEN THE DESTRUCTION OF JERUSALEM AND THE FALL OF THE ASSYRIAN EMPIRE. SECT. I, Of the connection of sacred and prophane history. HE course of time, which in profane histories THE might rather be discerned, through the greatest part of his way hitherto passed, in some out-worn footsteps, than in any beaten path, having once in Greece by the Olympiads, and in the eastern coun tries by the account from Nabonassar, left surer marks, and more appliable to actions concurrent, than were the war of Troy, or any other tokens of former date, begins at length, in the ruin of Jerusalem, to discover the connection of antiquity forespent, with the story of succeding ages. Manifest it is, that the original and progress of things could ill be sought in those that were ignorant of the first creation; as likewise that the affairs of kingdoms and empires afterwards grown up are not to be found among those that have now no state nor policy remaining of their own. Having therefore pursued the story of the world unto that age, from whence the memory of succeeding accidents is with little interruption of fabulous discourse derived unto us, I hold it now convenient briefly to shew, by what means and circumstances the history of the Hebrews, which of all other is the most ancient, may be conjoined with the following times, wherein that image of sundry metals, discovered by God unto Nebuchadnezzar, did reign over the earth, when Israel was either none, or an unregarded nation. Herein I do not hold it needful to insist upon those authorities, which give, as it were by hearsay, a certain year of some old Assyrian king unto some action or event, whereof the time is found expressed in scripture; for, together with the end of Ninus's line in Sardanapalus, if not before, all such computations were blotted out; the succession of Belochus and his issue that occupied the kingdom afterwards, depending upon the uncertain relations of such as were neither constant in assigning the years of his beginning, nor of credit enough for others to rely upon. Let it therefore suffice, that the consent and harmony which some have found in the those over-worn monarchs, do preserve their names, which otherwise might have been forgotten. Now, concerning the later kings of that nation, howsoever it be true that we find the names of all or most of years of them in scriptures, which are recorded by prophane historians, yet hereby could we only learn in what age each of them lived, but not in what year his reign began or ended, were it not that the reign of Nebuchadnezzar is more precisely applied to the times of Jehoiakim and Zedekiah. Hence have we the first light whereby to discover the means of connecting the sacred and prophane histories; for under Nebuchadnezzar was the beginning of the captivity of Judah, which ended when seventy years were expired; and these seventy years took end at the first of Cyrus, whose time being well known, affords us means of looking back unto the ages past, and forwards into the race of men succeeding. The first year of Cyrus's reign in Persia, by general consent, is joined with the first year of the fifty-fifth Olympiad, where, that he reigned twenty-three years before his monarchy, and seven afterwards, it is apparent, and almost out of controversy. Giving, therefore, four hundred and eight years unto the distance between the fall of Troy and the instauration of the Olympiads by Iphitus, we may easily arrive unto those antiquities of Greece which were not merely fabulous. As for princes ruling the whilst in sundry parts of the world, St. Augustine and others may be trusted in setting down their times, which they had by tradition from authors of well-approved faith and industry. From Cyrus forwards, how the times are reckoned unto Alexander, and from him to the battle of Actium, it were, (peradventure,) in this place impertinent to set down. But seeing that the beginning and end of the Babylonian captivity are marks whereby we are chiefly directed, in passing from the first unto the latest years of the world through any story, with least interruption, it is very expedient that we take some pains to inform ourselves truly of the seventy years during which it continued, even from Nebuchadnezzar unto Cyrus. SECT. II. A brief rehearsal of two opinions touching the beginginning of the captivity; with an answer to the cavils of Porphyrius inveighing against St. Matthew and Daniel, upon whom the latter of these opinions is founded. MANY commentators, and other historians and chronologers, find, that the captivity then began, when Jechoniah was carried prisoner into Babylon, eleven years before the final destruction of Jerusalem under Zedekiah. This they prove out of divers places in Ezekiel', especially out of the 14th chapter, where he makes a plain distinction between the beginning of the captivity and the utter destruction of Jerusalem by Nabuzaradan, in these words: In the five and ⚫ twentieth year of our being in captivity, in the beginning of the year, in the tenth day of the month, in the fourteenth year after that the city was smitten.' In which words he beginneth the captivity in plain terms eleven years before the city was destroyed. Beroaldus is of opinion that it began in the first of Nabuchodonosor and the fourth of Joachim, which he endeavours to prove out of the second of Chronicles, but more especially out of St, Matthew and Daniel, whose words afford matter of long disputation, but serve not to make good so much as Beroaldus would enforce. That place of St. Matthew, and the whole book of Daniel, have ministered occasion of scoffing and railing at the Christian religion to that wretched man Porphyrius, who, not understanding how the sons of king Josiah were called by divers names, as Epiphanius hath shewed at large, thought that the apostle had spoken 1 Ezek. i. ii. and iii. 11, 15. |