[100] Burke (“Regicide Peace,”) says—“The practice of divorce, though in some countries permitted, has been discouraged in all. In the East polygamy and divorce are in discredit, and the manners correct the laws.”
[101] This was written before the appearance of Sir J. Lubbock’s chapter on “Marriage,” in his “Origin of Civilization,” to which reference is made at pp. [51, 52].
[102] A tradition of the constellations, a proof from tradition that they were so named in the ante-diluvian period.
[103] Sanchoniatho’s “Phœnician History,” by the Right Rev. R. Cumberland. London, 1720, pp. 2, 3, 23, et seq. Eusebius, Præpar. Evangel. lib. i. cap. 10.
[104] Vide Grote, i.
[105] This chapter was written before I became acquainted with Mr Palmer’s “Chronicles of Egypt” (vide [ch. vi.]) If the reader will refer to chap. i., he will there find a learned and exhaustive exposition of the ages of Sanchoniathon, identifying them with Scripture on the one side, and Egyptian tradition on the other.
[106] Is not this the meaning of the cxlvii. psalm, in the expression, “ante faciem frigoris ejus quis sustinebit”? Does not the psalm recount to the Jewish people, in rapid allusions, all that God had done for them, in contrast to the chastisements that had befallen other nations; and if it is objected that there is no allusion to the Deluge, unless in its indirect and beneficial influences, in the words, “flavit spiritus ejus et fluent aquæ,” I reply that to the survivors, the Deluge, regarded largely, and in its permanent effects, was no calamity, but the commencement of a new and more favoured era.
[107] Compare [ch. xiii]. The successive ages of Hesiod, more especially the lines describing the iron age, parallel to the tradition, supra, “that in the fifth age men were named from their mothers.”
“No fathers in their sons their features trace,
The sons reflect no more their father’s face;