the high antiquity assignable to the principles and tenets of Zoroastrianism, as already commented on.

We thus find our Critic, in his attempt to refute Volney's statements, excluding in his quotations from the Ruins, the most material arguments and facts on which subsequent inferences are dependent.

The distinctions subsisting between the two portions of the Jewish nation, as deducible from the Hebrew writings; these distinctions constituting two parties--the Pharisees or innovators, (by the introduction of the Zoroastrian dogmas, at or on the return from the captivity,) and the adherents to the ancient national worship, the Sadducees, justify and confirm the following:1that "On their return to their country, the emigrants brought back with them these ideas; and at first, innovations occasioned disputes between their partisans the Pharisees, and the adherents to the ancient national worship, the Sadducees: but the former, seconded by the inclination of the people and the habits they had already contracted, and supported by the authority of the Persians, their deliverers, finally gained the ascendancy, and the theology of Zoroaster was consecrated by the children of Moses.'

1 Ruins, sect. 18-
P2

1

"The fortuitous analogy between two leading ideas," asserted in the Ruins to have "proved particularly favourable to this coalition," and to have "formed the basis of a last system, not less surprising in its fortune than in the causes of its formation," we find the Author of the Remarks commenting on, without being able to disprove. It is next asked, "was the fall of Tyre, and its restoration after seventy years; or the capture of Babylon by the Medes, about 200 years before it took place, predicted by a fortuitous analogy? Did Jeremiah foretel the return of the Jews from Babylon, after seventy years, by a fortuitous analogy between Samaria and Jerusalem ?" The merit of these predictions, it has been seen, is highly questionable. It is stated and proved in the New Researches, vol. 2, chap. xiv, that "the siege of Tyre began in the seventh year of Nebuchadnezzar, (598); that it lasted thirteen years, and consequently ended in the year 586, one year after the taking of Jerusalem, which agrees very well with chapter xxvi. of Ezekiel, who, in the eleventh year of Zedekiah, (587) reproaches the city of Tyre for its joy at the destruction of Sion, and menaces it with a similar fate."

From this quotation it is easy to see what 1 Remarks, chap. 13.

degree of merit is to be attached to such predictions, in this instance the prophet Ezekiel having lived contemporaneously with the events; and that here there elapsed only one year between the writing of his prophecy and its completion.

CHAPTER XVIII.

CHRONOLOGICAL AND ETYMOLOGICAL DISQUISITIONS.

In the next question proposed by the Author of the Remarks, he attempts to invalidate Volney's statements relative to the capture of Babylon by the Medes, which took place at two distinct epochas. According to Herodotus1, the first took place under Cyrus, (anno 539,) and the second under Darius Hystaspès, in 507 or 506; and that these should have been predicted "two hundred years before," is a manifest improbability. As respects the next question, "did Jeremiah foretel the return of the Jews from Babylon, after seventy years, by a fortuitous analogy between Jerusalem and Samaria"; or rather, these constituting, according to Volney, a fortuitous analogy between two leading ideas?-To this it may

1 Clio, cap. 188 to 191, and Thalia c. 159.

be replied, that, according to Volney's statements, in a note to the chapter "of the last kings of Babylon until Kyrus,"1 it is highly probable, and that facts indicate the probability of the three last chapters of Jeremiah, relative to the destruction of Babylon, having been added subsequent to the time when Jeremiah wrote; that is, from the precise identity in the conclusion of the last chapter of Jeremiah and the last chapter of the second book of Kings, "is it not evident that very ancient transcribers took the liberty to add these verses and even part of this chapter? And then where have we the proof that the preceding, the fiftieth and fifty-first, have not been added, when their contents, full of allusions to the taking of Babylon, by Kyrus, are much more irreconcileable with the life of Jeremiah? Where are our vouchers for the autography of Jeremiah's manuscripts."

"But," says our Critic, "had any such 'fortuitous analogy' subsisted, it did not form 'the basis of a last system, &c.' The basis of this system was laid in those words of God, after the fall of man, 'He shall bruise thy head.' Gen. iii. 15. It was enlarged in the promises made to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. It was the subject of prophecy in Jacob's dying benediction to his 1 New Researches, vol. 2, c. xvi.