2. Your next exception is, That a combination could scarce have been formed in the court of Babylon against the favourite minister (though such factions are common in other courts) because the courtiers of Darius must have apprehended that the piety of Daniel would be asserted by a miraculous interposition; of which they had seen a striking instance. And here, Sir, you expatiate with a little too much complacency on the strange indifference which the ancient world shewed to the gift of miracles. You do not, I dare say, expect a serious answer to this charge; Or, if you do, it may be enough to observe, what I am sure your own reading and experience must have rendered very familiar to you, that the strongest belief or conviction of the mind perpetually gives way to the inflamed selfish passions; and that, when men have any scheme of interest or revenge much at heart, they are not restrained from pursuing it, though the scaffold and the axe stand before them in full view, and have perhaps been streaming but the day before with the blood of other state-criminals. I ask not, whether miracles have ever actually existed, but whether you do not think that multitudes have been firmly persuaded of their existence: And their indifference about them is a fact which I readily concede to you.
3. Your third criticism is directed against what is said of the law of the Medes and Persians, that it altereth not; where I find nothing to admire, but the extreme rigour of Asiatic despotism. For I consider this irrevocability of the law, when once promulgated by the Sovereign, not as contrived to be a check on his will, but rather to shew the irresistible and fatal course of it. And this idea was so much cherished by the despots of Persia, that, rather than revoke the iniquitous law, obtained by surprize, for exterminating the Jews, Ahasuerus took the part, as we read in the book of Esther, (and as Baron Montesquieu, I remember, observes) to permit the Jews to defend themselves against the execution of it. Whence we see how consistent this law is with the determination of the Judges, quoted by you from Herodotus—“That it was lawful for the King to do whatever he pleased”—for we understand, that he did not please, that his law, when once declared by him, should be altered.
You add, under this head, “May I not assert, that the Greek writers, who have so copiously treated of the affairs of Persia, have not left us the smallest vestige of a restraint, equally injurious to the monarch, and prejudicial to the people?” I have not the Greek writers by me to consult; but a common book I chance to have at hand, refers me to one such vestige in a very eminent Greek Historian, Diodorus Siculus. Lowth’s Comm. in loc.
4. A fourth objection to the historic truth of the book of Daniel is taken, with more plausibility, from the matter of this law, which, as you truly observe, was very strange for the King’s councillors to advise, and for any despot whatsoever to enact.
But 1. I a little question whether prayer was so constant and considerable a part of Pagan worship, as is supposed; and, if it was not, the prejudices of the people would not be so much shocked by this interdict, as we are ready to think. Daniel indeed prayed three times a day: but the idolaters might content themselves with praying now and then at a stated solemnity. It is clear that when you speak of depriving men of the comforts, and the priests of the profits of religion, you have Christian and even modern principles and manners in your eye: perhaps, in the comforts, you represented to yourself a company of poor inflamed Huguenots under persecution; and, in the profits, the lucrative trade of Popish masses. But, be this as it may, it should be considered, 2. that this law could not, in the nature of the thing, suppress all prayer, if the people had any great propensity to it. It could not suppress mental prayer: it could not even suppress bodily worship, if performed, as it easily might be, in the night, or in secret. Daniel, it was well known, was used to pray in open day-light, and in a place exposed to inspection from his usual manner of praying; which manner, it was easily concluded, so zealous a votary, as he was, would not change or discontinue, on account of the edict. Lastly, though the edict passed for thirty days, to make sure work, yet there was no doubt but the end proposed would be soon accomplished, and then it was not likely that much care would be taken about the observance of it.
All this put together, I can very well conceive that extreme envy and malice in the courtiers might suggest the idea of such a law, and that an impotent despot might be flattered by it. Certainly, if what we read in the third chapter be admitted, That one of these despots required all people, nations, and languages to worship his image on pain of death, there is no great wonder that another of them should demand the exclusive worship of himself, for a month[255]; nay perhaps he might think himself civil, and even bounteous to his gods, when he left them a share of the other eleven. For, as to the presumption—
——Nihil est quod credere de se
Non possit, cui laudatur Diis æqua potestas.
5. A fifth, and what you seem to think the strongest objection to the credit of the book of Daniel, is, “That no such person, as Darius the Mede, is to be found in the succession of the Babylonish princes [You mean, as given in Ptolemy’s Canon and the Greek writers] between the time of Nebuchadnezzar and that of Cyrus.”
In saying this, you do not forget, nor disown, what our ablest chronologers have said on the subject: But then you object, that Xenophon’s Cyaxares has been made, (to serve a turn) to personate Darius the Mede, and yet that Xenophon’s book, whether it be a romance, or a true history, overturns the use which they have made of this hypothesis.
1. I permit myself, perhaps, to be too much flattered by your civility in referring me to my own taste, rather than to the authority of Cicero: But the truth is, I am much disposed to agree with you, “that, if we unravel with any care the fine texture of the Cyropædia, we shall discover in every thread the Spartan discipline and the philosophy of Socrates.” But then, as the judicious author chose to make so recent a story as that of Cyrus, and so well known, the vehicle of his political and moral instructions, he would be sure to keep up to the truth of the story, as far as might be; especially in the leading facts, and in the principal persons, as we may say, of the drama. This obvious rule of decorum such a writer, as Xenophon, could not fail to observe: And therefore, on the supposition that his Cyropædia is a romance, I should conclude certainly that the outline of it was genuine history.