Vid. Cicero de Divinat. _Lib. I. who condemns the Egyptians and Babylonians, as foolish, vain, yea impudent, in their accounts relating to this matter, when they speak, as some of them do, of things done four hundred and seventy thousand years before; upon which occasion, Lactantius, in Lib. 7._ § 14. de Vita beata, _passes this just censure upon them_, Quia se posse argui non putabant, liberum sibi crediderunt esse mentiri; _and_ Macrob. in somn. Scip. _cap. 11. supposes that they did not measure their years as we do, by the annual revolution of the sun, but by the moon; and so a year, according to them, was no more than a month, which he supposes Virgil was apprised of, when he calls the common solar year, Annus Magnus, as compared with those short ones that were measured by the monthly revolution of the moon: but this will not bring the Egyptians and Chaldean accounts to a just number of years, but some of them would, notwithstanding, exceed the time that the world has stood. As for the Chinese, they have no authentic histories that give any account of this matter; but all depends upon uncertain tradition, transmitted to them by those who are their leaders in religious matters, and reported by travellers who have received these accounts from them, which, therefore, are far from deserving any credit in the world._ Footnote 9: The reader will be highly gratified by a treatise of Dr. Hugh Williamson on climate, wherein he examines this subject. Footnote 10: _The common distribution of time, into that which is_ αδηλον, _before the flood, and_ μυθικον, _after it, till they computed by the Olympiads; and afterwards that which they call_ ἱστορικον _the only account to be depended upon, makes this matter farther evident_. Footnote 11: _See this argument farther improved, by those who have insisted on the first inventors of things; as_ Polydor. Virgil. de Rerum inventoribus; _and_ Plin. Secund. Hist. Mundi. _Lib. VII. cap. 56.-60. and Clem. Alex. Strom. Lib. I. Lucretius, though an assertor of the eternity of matter and motion, from his master Epicurus, yet proves, that the world, as to its present form, had a beginning; and what he says is so much to our present argument, that I cannot but mention it._ Vid. Lucret. de Rer. Nat. _Lib. V._ _Prætera si nulla fuit genitalis origo Terrarum & Cœli, semperq; æterna fuere; Cur supra bellum Thebanum, & funera Trojæ, Non alias alii quoque res cecinere Poetæ? Quo tot facta virum toties cecidere? neque usquam Æternis famæ monimentis insita florent? Verum, ut opinor, habet novitatem Summa, recensq; Natura est Mundi, neque pridem exordia cepit. Quare etiam quædam nunc artes expoliuntur. Nunc etiam augescunt; nunc addita navigiis sunt. Multa: modo organici melicos peperere sonores. Denique Natura hæc rerum, ratioque reperta est Nuper.——_ Footnote 12: