All I have here related was a received usage, observed by the heathen nations in general; and this usage was founded on the principles of that religion of which I have given a short account. We have a signal proof of this in that passage of the Cyropædia,(48) where Cambyses, the father of Cyrus, gives that young prince such noble instructions; instructions admirably well adapted to form the great captain, and great king. He exhorts him, above all things, to pay the highest reverence to the gods; and not to undertake any enterprise, whether important or inconsiderable, without first calling upon and consulting them; he enjoins him to honour the priests and augurs, as being their ministers and the interpreters of their will, but yet not to trust or abandon himself so implicitly and blindly to them, as not, by his own application, to learn every thing relating to the science of divination, of auguries and auspices. The reason which he gives for the subordination and dependence in which kings ought to live with regard to the gods, and the benefit derived from consulting them in all things, is this: How clear-sighted soever mankind may be in the ordinary course of affairs, their views are always very narrow and bounded with regard to futurity; whereas the Deity, at a single glance, takes in all ages and events. “As the gods,” says Cambyses to his son, “are eternal, they know equally all things, past, present, and to come. With regard to the mortals who address them, they give salutary counsels to those whom they are pleased to favour, that they may not be ignorant of what things they ought, or ought not, to undertake. If it is observed, that the deities do not give the like counsels to all men; we are not to wonder at it, since no necessity obliges them to attend to the welfare of those persons on whom they do not vouchsafe to confer their favour.” Such was the doctrine of the most learned and most enlightened nations, with respect to the different kinds of divination; and it is no wonder that the authors who wrote the history of those nations, thought it incumbent on them to give an exact detail of such particulars as constituted part of their religion and worship, and was frequently in a manner the soul of their deliberations, and the standard of their conduct. I therefore was of opinion, for the same reason, that it would not be proper for me to omit entirely, in the ensuing history, what relates to this subject, though I have however retrenched a great part of it. Archbishop Usher is my usual guide in chronology. In the history of the Carthaginians I commonly set down four æras: The year from the creation of the world, which, for brevity’s sake, I mark thus, A.M.; those of the foundation of Carthage and Rome; and lastly, the year before the birth of our Saviour, which I suppose to be the 4004th year of the world; wherein I follow Usher and others, though they suppose it to be four years earlier.