306 On Scriptural and profane Accounts 
improvement, the human mind must have 
made rapid advances, literature and science 
must have been cultivated, men of talents, 
curiosity and leisure, must have risen up, and 
history, which records the minutest circum- 
stances of the earliest reigns of the Assyrian 
monarchs, could never have become, at once, 
profoundly silent respecting their successors. 
Could we therefore admit the very improba- | 
ble supposition of seventeen peaceful reigns, 
we have still to explain why we know no- 
thing more of them than that they were se- 
venteen. 
That the Ctesian history is in its present 
form incredible, has been universally felt by 
modern critics, but they differ widely in 
their opinions of the portion of truth which 
it contains. Some, like the author 1 have 
just mentioned, endeavour to pare down its 
extravagant chronology, and romantic events, 
to something like history ; and to connect the 
profane and scriptural accounts together ; 
but they refuse all union or assimilation. Di- 
odorus knows as little of Pul and his succes- 
sors, as the scripture does of Ninus, Semira- 
mis and their dynasty. Others, like Sir 
Isaac Newton, (7) reject the Ctesian history 
as a pure fiction, with the exception of the 
single circumstance of the capture of Nine- 
