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| Chapter XVI.—Uncertain Conjectures of the Philosophers.
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Chapter XVI.—Uncertain Conjectures of the Philosophers.
But I wish now to give you a more accurate
demonstration, God helping me, of the historical periods, that you
may see that our doctrine is not modern nor fabulous, but more
ancient and true than all poets and authors who have written in
uncertainty. For some, maintaining that the world was uncreated, went
into infinity;671
| 671 i.e.,
tracing back its history through an infinate duration. | and
others, asserting that it was created, said that already 153,075 years
had passed. This is stated by Apollonius the Egyptian. And Plato,
who is esteemed to have been the wisest of the Greeks, into what
nonsense did he run? For in his book entitled The Republic,672
| 672 The following quotation is
not from the Republic, but from the third book of the Laws,
p. 676. | we find him expressly saying: “For if things
had in all time remained in their present arrangement, when ever could
any new thing be discovered? For ten thousand times ten thousand years
elapsed without record, and one thousand or twice as many years have gone
by since some things were discovered by Dædalus, and some by Orpheus,
and some by Palamedes.” And when he says that these things happened,
he implies that ten thousand times ten thousand years elapsed from the
flood to Dædalus. And after he has said a great deal about the cities
of the world, and the settlements, and the nations, he owns that he has
said these things conjecturally. For he says, “If then, my friend,
some god should promise us, that if we attempted to make a survey of
legislation, the things now said,”673
| 673 Plato goes on to say, that if he had this pledge of
divine assistance, he would go further in his speculation; and therefore
Theophilus argues that what he said without this assistance he felt to
be unsafe. | etc., which shows that he was speaking by guess;
and if by guess, then what he says is not true.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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