Selected quad for the lemma: truth_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
truth_n	wonderful_a	write_v	writer_n	15	3	7.4433	4	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A70514	A theological systeme upon the presupposition, that men were before Adam the first part.; Systerna theologicum ex praeadamitarum hypothesi. English	La Peyrère, Isaac de, 1594-1676.	1655 (1655)	Wing L427; ESTC R7377	191,723	375

believe the number of years that the College of Chaldaeans affirm'd that they had spent in the consideration of the world sayes Diodorus For til the expedition of Alexander into Asia they reckon'd four hundred and seventy thousand years since the time they had begun to observe the stars Diodorus● thought it hard to be believ'd but not impossible as believing himself that the motion of the eternal circuit by an eternal Law was ordered by the constellations and the stars And that was it which made Cicero living at the same time with Diodorus write the same things of the Chaldaeans whom he calls Babylonians For they deceive us sayes he in saying that the Chaldaeans busied themselvs four hundred and seventy thousand years in calculating the nativities of all children for if they had so done they had not left off But we know no body that can inform us that such a thing is practised or ever was Cicero refutes not the account of years in that place which he did not think impossible otherwise by impossibility he had refuted it but the vanity of the Caldaeans predictions those careful trials and experiments given by tradition concerning the Nativities of Children all through the continuation of so many years which to Cicero seem'd improbable For why sayes he should the Chaldaeans have discontinued and not in his time likewise have calculated Nativities Besides that wonderful number of years which as Diodorus and Cicero relates the Chaldaeans bestowed either in the observation of the stars or in the raising of Schemes in Nativities is not different from those bundles of times and years which as I shewed before the Chaldaeans made use of in the computation of the inaugurating of their Kings For the number of those times was so great and return'd so far upon former ages that they numbred not those many sums of ages by years not by thousands of years but by several compactions of years The Egyptians contending in Astrologie with the Chaldaeans thought that the motions of all the stars and constellations and every particular one of them was ordained from eternity And the same Diodorus affirms that they had preserved in memorie the descriptions of those motions all through an incredible computation of years As it is likewise known that they kept the Histories of their Kings all along through incredible computations of time Having Gods for their Kings and Heroes and men Of whose most ancient Dynasties marvellous things are related by Herodotus and other Writers of the Egyptian affairs Salmasius the learnedst both amongst those Greeks and Romans makes mention of a most antient Writer who sets down thirty Dynasties of Kings and writes that they endur'd three Myriads of years expounds those myriads to have been ten thousand thousand and three thousand years There are those in Egypt who say that the times of their King God Vulcan was worn out of memory whom they affirm to have reign'd infinite ages in Egypt And that the Sun the Son of Vulcan did possesse the Kingdom of Egypt six hundred thousand six hundred and seventy six years after his Father Salmasius the most acute inquirer of their affairs recounting the number in his Climacterical years Nor must we traduce the truth of Herodotus and other Writers of the Egyptian affairs because Diodorus has written That they embrac'd those wonderful relations for truths For those words of Diodorus have relation to something else than those almost infinite accounts of time For Diodorus in so doing should have turned those monstrous relations back upon himself who doubted not to relate those four hundred and seventy thousand years of the Chaldaeans which were also hard to be believ'd For it is indeed probable that Herodotus an excellent Writer and very acurate in most things and Diodorus himself an assertor of Historical truths spake nothing of those accounts but what they had heard either from Egyptian Priests out of their records and had acuratly examin'd and seen them in Egypt which for their own parts both Herodotus and Diodorus ingenuously confesse But Diodorus himself also relates this of the Egyptians nor thinks it any wonder in part 2. book 1. of his Library That the Egyptian Kings born in that Country rul'd Egypt above 4700 Yeares Whose times we shall find to have surpassed above threescore thousand years if we reckon that there is already a thousand two hundred years past since threescore of the Kings of France began to reign But to say that those thousands of years and myriads which I have mentioned are to be understood of Lunary years or of the the third part of the year as they say it was sometimes divided into the Spring Summer and Autumn were to make Objections to no purpose Since Diodorus himself says this of the Chaldaeans That they said that the Sun and Moon runs through the twelve signs of the Zodiack That the Sun ends his course in a year The Moon in a month As likewise Herodotus says this expresly of the Egyptians that he had learned of the Inhabitants of Heliopolis who were thought the most skilfull of all the Egyptians That the Egyptians were the first of all men that found out years and divided them into twelve months This division of years and months is meant in the first Chapter of Genesis where he speaks thus of the creation of the Sun and Moon Let there be lights in the firmament of heaven and let them divide the night and the day and let them be for signs and times and dayes and years For the dayes in this place are moneths which are divided into thirty days and years which are made up of twelve moneths The Sun being the greater Luminary had alotted to him the greatest parts of the year The Moon had alotted to it the lesse that is the dision of the moneths Therefore that division of years and moneths was alotted by creation and nature from God himself to the Sun and Moon nor was there ever any other account used among the Chaldaeans and Egyptians men most expert and skilfull in the knowledge of the stars But the Chaldaeans were so far from augmenting the numbers by breaking their years which they reckoned always by the Sun by dividing them into monethly and Lunary years that of those very Solar years they bound up their years into compacted numbers which they us'd for conveniency of reckoning and a farr shorter way of account Let them alone then who ever uses such trifling diminutions and divisions to make such handfuls and heaps of years which they neither know or ever could satisfie themselves in to this day However it comes to pass it will always appear that those myriads I spoke of will alwayes much exceed in the least computation that beginning of the creation which is alwayes set down in Adam CHAP. VII Of the Egyptian Kings who were men Plato in Timaeus concerning the warriers of the Atlantick Ilands is cited The sons of this age wiser than the sons of light Of the