" of the nations: both the pelican and the bittern "shall lodge in the upper lintels of it; their voice "shall sing in its windows; desolation shall be in "its thresholds:-This is the rejoicing city that "dwelt carelessly, that said in her heart, I, and "none beside me: how is she become a desolation, "a place for beasts to lie down in*!" Nahum speaks the same doom more concisely; "She is

empty, and void, and waste t." What the two other prophets have said of Babylon's desolation is equally full and expressive.

Zephaniah is stated to have prophesied in the days of Josiah, king of Judah, the last year of whose reign falls B. C. 608. But when was Nineveh taken? This is one of the unsettled points of ancient Chronology, and it will remain so; for the time is long past, when it might have been cleared and reduced to certainty. In the diversity of the accounts extant, we must approximate the truth, by taking what is most credible, and that is the relation of Herodotus §, the author the nearest in age, and the best informed in the affairs of the East. He assigns the capture of Nineveh to Cyaxares, and he

* Chap. ii. 13-15.

+ Chap. ii. 10.

Ch. i. 1. "The word of the Lord which came unto Zepha“niah, the son of Cushi, the son of Gedaliah, the son of Ama"riah, the son of Hizkiah, in the days of Josiah, the son of "Amon, king of Judah." A chronological notice, which has its force from the testimony of the Jewish Church.

§ Lib. i. 106.

places it after the expulsion of the Scythians from Asia*, which will be some years below the latest period of Zephaniah's prophesying. So far then as we can go, on probable grounds, the argument will be made good, that the desolation of Nineveh was predicted before its capture.-The case of Babylon is perfectly clear; its capture was long subsequent to the prophecy of its desolation.

The desolation foretold has ensued. Those two great flourishing cities, the ancient glory of the East, the abodes of empire and overflowing population, have vanished. It has become an object of research to the inquisitive traveller to ascertain the spot on which they stood. With some difficulty and suspense, he explores in heaps of otherwise unappropriated ruins the vestiges of their local memory. For what are they now? What have they long been? The haunts of beasts. Man has disappeared. "The pelican and the bittern lodge in "the lintel" of their forsaken houses. Those creatures possess the waste, the characteristic inhabitants of an assured and unmolested solitude.

Once more; make the most large, and indeed unwarrantable, suppositions, as to the time of publication to be ascribed to the prophecies which speak of this final destiny of Babylon. Suppose them to have been published, and first known, after

* B. C. 596.

the taking of Babylon by Cyrus: that they were published after the catastrophe of this extreme devastation which they announce, is wholly impossible to be maintained, or believed, even on the most sceptical principles. Because the collection and promulgation of the Jewish Canon of Scripture, made in the age after the Return of the Jews from Babylon, was prior to the time when we know Babylon not to have been so desolated. In fact, it was the work of some centuries to break down this gigantic city into a heap of ruins. It follows, that the truth of the predictions of Isaiah and Jeremiah in this point, is established, even upon the most extreme hypothesis. There is no date which can be assigned to them, ever so licentiously, which will not leave them in possession of a clear prophetic character in this one branch of their subject. The proof is absolute, and beyond the reach of objec

tion.

And this I may remark, that as the æra of the conquest of Babylon by Cyrus, is the basis of Pagan Chronology*, the point from which it begins to be clear and consistent; so the extraneous proof of the truth and prescience of prophecy takes its proportionate force and clearness from the same æra. The greater regularity and completeness of the

Primus hic Cyri annus non solum soluta Captivitatis, sed etiam totius vetustioris Chronologia basis est; et res Ebraicas cum extraneis connectit. Marsham. Canon. Chron. Sæc. xviii. p. 630. Ed. Franeq.

Pagan narrative supplies a fuller comment upon the scheme of things delineated in the Scripture oracles.

With regard to Nineveh, it is granted that we cannot constitute so exact and decisive a confirmation of these oracles, out of the imperfect and illadjusted remains of Oriental history. And in this instance the sacred history itself, and the formal chronology of the prophecies, as to the time of their promulgation, are not so explicit as to answer every question which might be raised respecting them. But in this unequal measure of evidence, it is only a bold ignorance, or a very unthinking piety, that can presume any sort of objection.

For brevity's sake, I shall pass over any discussion of the discriminating particulars which may be traced in the prophecy concerning Tyre. Those particulars include the subjugation of that city; her restoration to power after a servitude of seventy years; her later calamities of capture, burning, and demolition; her religious conversion; her last desolated state, like that of Nineveh and Babylon. For so it is foretold: "I will scrape the dust from

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her, and make her like the top of a rock; it shall "be a place for the spreading of nets; thou shalt be "built no more; though thou be sought for, thou "shalt never be found again*." Time has wrought

* Ezek. xxvi. 14. 21, &c.

the perfect completion of this extremity of ruin: as the earlier and intermediate things foretold had their due fulfilment. In this instance, however, the anterior publication of the prophecy, as to a chief part of it, is indisputable. For even the age of Ezra, and the collection of the Sacred Canon, precede by a century the destruction of Tyre, made by Alexander; still more do they precede the subsequent conversion to Christianity, and the last stage of the ruin and solitude, foretold.

Will it be alleged, to invalidate the force of all these prophecies combined, that this catastrophe of three of the greatest and most flourishing capital cities of the ancient world, is possible to have been within the range of man's foresight, or was nothing more than what is conformable to experience? History refutes the allegation. It is not the common issue of things that great and flourishing capitals of empire are so swept away and obliterated. The merciless ravages of war, and the progressive decays of time have rarely accomplished such absolute extermination. Certainly when the prophecies were uttered, such things had not been seen. It would be in vain to adduce, as a similar event, the fate of Troy, or other ill-established cities of an earlier foundation, in times when the habits of migration and settlement were yet at war with each other. For as to Troy, whatever that city might have been, it was as much like to Babylon, as a pile