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authority, they will find in St. Peter's sublime account of the final 

 conflagration, (2 Peter, iii. 9,) an incontrovertible proof, that, among 

 the Jews of his day, the predicted catastrophe by fire was still be- 

 lieved. 



From the Hebrew patriarchs the doctrine was, in all probability, 

 derived to the Egyptian priests, who made it known to Plato and the 

 other Greeks, who studied philosophy in the colleges of the Thebais. 

 No words, indeed, can be more express on this subject than those of 

 Plato in the Thnaeus, where he introduces his Egyptian priest an- 

 nouncing this fatal exTrvqaa-is, or purification of all things by fire ; 

 declaring to them that the Greek fable of Phaeton's burning the 

 world should one day be verified*. Zoroaster and Pythagoras, who 

 might have learned this doctrine from the Jews themselves, also 

 affirmed that the dissolution of the world should be by fire. Seneca, 

 a philosopher of the Stoic school, declares, Ignis exitus mundi estf- ; 

 and Ovid, from the same sources, is still more particular in the 

 following well-known lines : 



Esse quoque in FATIS remlniscitur affore tempus, 

 Quo mare, quo tellus, correptaquc regia cceli 

 ARDEAT. 



Metam. lib. i. fab. 7. 



Upon traditions similar to these, and drawn doubtless from the 

 same primeval fountains, have the Indians formed their final Avatar. 

 Their astronomical speculations gave strength and probability to the 

 conception thus formed ; but the image by which they represented 

 their ideas is so complex, and, at the same time, so much in unison 

 with that presented to the Christian world, in immediate reference to 

 the same subject, that it is impossible not to suspect that the Hindoos, 



* Timseus, p. 22. t Qusest. Natural, cap. iii. sect. 13. 



