21 



Whatever reason there is for supposing that this science 

 should have been cultivated after the flood, would still more 

 strongly apply to its cultivation before that period. The his- 

 tory, the traditions, the monuments of antiquity, all tend to 

 confirm the scriptural assurance that mankind fell from a 

 higher to a lower state of mental, as well as moral endowment ; 

 and can we suppose for a moment, that whilst the Chaldean 

 idolators, in after ages, cultivated astronomy, and arrived at 

 the high pitch of attainment they are universally acknowledged 

 to have reached, the long-lived and far more intellectually 

 endowed patriarchs, before the deluge, should have paid no 

 attention to, and have made no real progress in, so sublime 

 and captivating a science ? Josephus mentions the long lives 

 of the antediluvians as having especially served this purpose, 

 and cites the curious fact of their longevity being essential to 

 the observation of the " great year^' of six hundred years."^ It 

 cannot be supposed that Josephus was aware of the extreme 

 nicety of this period, which was proved by Cassini to have 

 contained a knowledge of the length of, the lunar and solar 

 year to within kd" of its present known duration. If, there- 

 fore, we find that in the days of Job the constellations had 

 been made and generally received, and that the sweet influence 

 of the Pleiades, the bands of Orion, the guidance of Arctarus 

 and his sons (by which, doubtless, Bootes and the Great Bear 

 were meant), had become proverbial expressions for the influ- 

 ence of the seasons over which they presided, the probability 

 is, that these were the traditionary records of a state of science 

 which had been attained during the two thousand six htlndred 

 and fifty-six or three thousand years in which mankind existed 

 in a higher state before the deluge. 



[Having dwelt upon the antiquity of the constellations and 



* [" Providence found it necessary for the study and advancement of virtue, and 

 for the improveineut of geometry and astronomy, which required at least ^ix hundnMl 

 years (according to the coniputatiun of tho groat year), for the making and perfecting 

 of observations." Antiq. Book I., chap, iv.] — EniTna. 



