1. If the records of antiquity could be deprived of their authority, we should also be deprived of intelligence, liberty and religion!
2. Dates are of little importance; being anciently expressed by letters, they are liable to errors. The Greeks and all eastern christians reckon 5508 years from Adam to Christ.
3. Geography and natural facts are open to criticism.
4. Wonders, monsters, miracles, are not always fabulous, but doubtful. Natural phenomena if unconnected with omens, may be right.
5. Speeches and secret motives do not belong to history, they are ornaments of rhetoric or mere surmises.
6. Facts are only to be attended to, they become more certain, if corroborated by monuments, inscriptions, coins &c.
7. The silence of a historian does not invalidate the assertions of others.
8. Contradictions, exaggerations, prejudices, party spirit, national dislike, must be allowed for. The arrogance of the Greeks and Chinese, who call barbarians, nations as good as they, is shameful, and must be noticed, as well as errors arising from hiding defeats &c.
The independent sources of history besides writers are, 1. remains of literature. 2. Chronological documents and astronomical calculations, 3. Natural features of nature and mankind, with permanent physical facts, 4. Permanent institutions, manners, monuments, languages &c. Lastly, remote facts may be certain; although a long while elapsed: whatever be the consequence; and even if the first evidence may have been erroneously transmitted, or not perspicuous. But accumulated evidence ought never to be doubted.