the fourth year of Zedekiah coincides with the year 595 before Christ. There is therefore no room for fcepticism: but if you are still disposed to doubt and hefitate, what then think you of the present condition of the place? Could the prophets, unless they were prophets indeed, have forefeen and foretold what that would be fo many ages afterwards? And yet they have exprefly foretold that it should be reduced to defolation. İfaiah is very strong and poetical: (XIII. 19, &c.) Babylon the glory of kingdoms, the beauty of the Chaldees excellency, Shall be as when God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah: It Shall never be inhabited, neither shall it be dwelt in from generation to generation; neither Jhall the Arabian pitch tent there, neither shall the shepherds make their fold there: But wild beafts of the desert shall lie there, and their houses shall be full of doleful creatures, and owts shall dwell there, and fatyrs shall dance there: And the wild beafts of the iland Shall cry in their defolate houses, and dragons in their pleafant palaces: and her time is near to come, and her days Shall not be prolonged. Again (XIV. 22, 23.) I will rife up against them faith the Lord of hosts, and cut off from Babylon the name, and remnant, and fon and nephew (or rather fon and grandion) faith the Lord: I will also make it a poffeffion for the bittern, and pools of water; and I will fweep it with the besom of destruction, faith the Lord of hosts. Jeremiah speaketh much in the same strain: (L. 13, 23, 39, 40.) Because of the wrath of the Lord, it fhall not be inhabited, but it shall be wholly defolate; every one that goeth by Babylon shall be astonished, and hiss at all her plagues: How is the hammer of the whole earth cut afunder and broken? How is Babylon become a defolation among the nations? Therefore the wild beafts of the defert, with the wild beajts of the ilands shall dwell there, and the owls shall dwell therein; and it shall be no more inhabited for ever; neither shall it be dwelt in from generation to generation: As God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah, and the neighbour cities thereof, faith the Lord; fo no man fhall abide there, neither shall any fon of man dwell therein. Again (LI, 13, 26, 29, 37, 42, 43.) O thou that dwellest upon manywaters, abundant in treasures; thine end is come, and the measure of thy covetousness: And they shall not take

of thee a stone for a corner, nor a ftone for foundations: but thou shalt be defolate for ever, faith the Lord: And the land shall tremble and forrow, for every purpose of the Lord Shall be performed against Babylon, to make the land of Babylon a defolation without an inhabitant: And Babylon Shall become heaps, a dwelling place for dragons, an astonishment and an hiffing without an inhabitant: The fea is come up upon Babylon; she is covered with the multitude of the waves thereof: Her cities are a defolation, a dry land and a wilderness, a land wherein no man dwelleth, neither doth any fon of man pass thereby. We shall fee how these and orher prophecies have by degrees been accomplished, for in the nature of the things they could not be fulfilled all at once. But as the prophets often speak of things future, as if they were already effected; so they speak often of things to be brought about in process of time, as if they were to fucceed immediately; paft, present, and to come being all alike known to an infinite mind, and the intermediate time not revealed perhaps to the minds of the prophets.

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Ifaiah addresseth Babylon by the name of a virgin, as having never before been taken by any enemy: (If. XLVII. 1.) Come down and fit in the dust, O virgin daughter of Babylon, fit on the ground: and (9) Herodotus faith exprefly, that this was the first time that Babylon was taken. After this it never more recovered its ancient fplendor: from an imperial, it became a tributary city; from being governed by its own kings, and governing strangers, it came itself to be governed by strangers; and the feat of empire being transferred to Shushan, it decayed by degrees, till it was reduced at last to utter defolation. Berofus in Jofephus (1) faith, that when Cyrus had taken Babylon, he ordered the outer walls to be pulled down, because the city appeared

to him very factious and difficult to be taken. And (2) Xenophon informs us, that Cyrus obliged the Babylonians to deliver up all their arms upon pain of death, diftributed their best houses among his officers, impofed a tribute upon them, appointed a strong garrifon, and compelled the Babylonians to defray the charge, being defirous to keep them poor as the best means of keeping them obedient.

But notwithstanding these precautions, (3) they rebelled against Darius, and in order to hold out to the laft extremity, they took all their women, and each man choofing one of them, out of those of his own family, whom he liked best, they strangled the reft, that unneceffary mouths might not confume their provifions. " And hereby," faith (4) Dr. Prideaux, "was very

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fignally fulfilled the prophecy of Ifaiah against them, " in which he foretold (Chap. XLVII. 9.) That two things should come to them in a moment, in one day, the lofs of children and widowhood, and that these shall come upon them in their perfection, for the multitude of their "forceries, and the great abundance of their inchantments. "And in what greater perfection could these calamities

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come upon them, than when they themselves thus upon themfelves became the executioners of them?" Or rather, this prophecy was then fulfilled a fecond time, having been fulfilled before, the very night that Babylon was taken, when the Perfians flew the king himself and a great number of the Babylonians. They sustained the fiege and all the efforts of Darius for twenty months, and at length the city was taken by stratagem. As foon as Darius had made himself master of the place, he ordered three thousand of the principal men to be crucified, and thereby fulfilled the prophecies of the cruelty, which the Medes and Perfians should use towards the Babylonians; (If. XIII. 17, 18. Jer. L. 42.) and he likewife demolished the wall, and took away the gates,

neither of which, faith (5) Herodotus, had Cyrus done before. But either Herodotus, or Berofus must have been mistaken; or we must suppose that Cyrus's orders were never carried into execution; or we must understand Herodotus to speak of the inner wall, as Berofus spoke of the outer: and yet it doth not feem very credible, when the walls were of that prodigious highth and thickness, that there should be an inner and an outer wall too; and much less that there should be three inner and three outer walls, as (6) Berofus affirms. Herodotus (7) computes the highth of the wall to be 200 cubits; but later authors reckon it much lower, (8) Quintus Curtius at 100, (9) Strabo who is a more exact writer at 50 cubits. Herodotus describes it as it was originally; and we may conclude therefore that Darius reduced it from 200 to 50 cubits; and by thus taking down the wall and destroying the gates, he remarkably fulfilled the prophecy of Jeremiah, (LI. 58.) Thus faith the Lord of hosts, The broad walls of Babylon shall be utterly broken, and her high gates shall be burnt with fire.

Xerxes (1) after his return from his unfortunate expedition into Greece, partly out of religious zeal, being a professed enemy to image worship, and partly to reimburse himself after his immenfe expenfes, seised the facred treafures, and plundered or destroyed the temples and idols of Babylon, thereby accomplishing the pro

'bitorum ducentorum celfitudine. Herod. Lib. 1. Cap. 178. p. 74. Edit. Gale.

(8) Altitudo muri C cubitorum eminet spatio Quint. Curt. Lib. 5. Cap. 1.

(9) ύψος δε των μεν μεσοπυργιων, πηχεις πεντηκοντα. Altitudine inter turres cubitorum L. Strabo. Lib. 16. p. 738. Edit. Paris. p. 1072. Edit. Amstel. 1707.

(1) Herod. Lib. 1. Cap. 183. p. 76. Edit. Gale. Arrian. de Exped. Alex. Lib. 7. Cap. 17. p.. 296. Edit. Gronov. Usher's Annals. A. Μ. 3526. p. 129. Prideaux Connect. Part 1. B. 4. Anno 479. Xerxes 7.

phecies

phecies of Ifaiah and Jeremiah; (If. XXI. 9.) Babylon is fallen, is fallen; and all the graven images of her gods he hath broken unto the ground: (If. XLVI. 1.) Bel boweth down, Nebo Stoopeth, their idols were upon the beafts, and upon the cattle, &c.: (Jer. L. 2.) Babylon is taken, Bel is confounded, Merodach is troken in pieces, her idols are confounded, her images are broken in pieces: (Jer. LI. 44, 47, 52.) And I will punish Bel in Babylon, and I will bring forth out of his mouth that which he hath fwallowed up; Therefore behold the days come, that I will do judgment upon the graven images of Babylon; andagain, Wherefore behold the days come, faith the Lord, that I will do judgment upon her graven images. What God declares, I will punish Bel in Babylon, and I will bring forth that which he hath fwallowed, was alfo literally fulfilled, when the veffels of the house of God, which Nebuchadnezzar had brought from Jerufalem, and placed in the temple of Bel, (Dan. I. 2.) were restored by order of Cyrus (Ezra I. 7.) and carried to Jerufalem again.

Such was the state of Babylon under the Persians. When Alexander came thither, tho' (2) Quintus Curtius says that the whole circuit of the city was 368 furlongs, yet he affirms that only for the space of 90 furlongs it was inhabited. The river Euphrates having been turned out of its course by Cyrus, and never afterwards restored to its former channel, all that fide of the country was flooded by it. Alexander indeed (3) purposed to have made Babylon the feat of his empire, and actually fet men at work to rebuild the temple of Belus, and to repair the banks of the river, and to bring back the waters again into their old channel: and if his defigns had taken effect, how could the prophecies have been fulfilled? and what providence therefore was it, that his designs did not take effect, and that the breacheswere never repaired? He met with fome difficulties in the work, and death foon after put an end to this and all

p. 303. Edit. Gronov. Hecatæus apud Joseph. contra Apion. Lib. 1. Sect. 22. p. 1348. Edit. Hudson. Strabo. Lib. 16. p. 738. Edit. Paris. p. 1073. Edit. Amstel. 1707.