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In vain, then, do some babble with most empty presumption, saying
that Egypt has understood the reckoning of the stars for more than a
hundred thousand years. For in what books have they collected that
number who learned letters from Isis their mistress, not much more
than two thousand years ago?
Varro, who has declared this, is no small authority in history, and
it does not disagree with the truth of the divine books. For as it is
not yet six thousand years since the first man, who is called Adam,
are not those to be ridiculed rather than refuted who try to persuade us
of anything regarding a space of time so different from, and contrary
to, the ascertained truth? For what historian of the past should we
credit more than him who has also predicted things to come which we now
see fulfilled? And the very disagreement of the historians among
themselves furnishes a good reason why we ought rather to believe him
who does not contradict the divine history which we hold. But, on the
other hand, the citizens of the impious city, scattered everywhere
through the earth, when they read the most learned writers, none of
whom seems to be of contemptible authority, and find them disagreeing
among themselves about affairs most remote from the memory of our age,
cannot find out whom they ought to trust. But we, being sustained by
divine authority in the history of our religion, have no doubt that
whatever is opposed to it is most false, whatever may. be the case
regarding other things in secular books, which, whether true or
false, yield nothing of moment to our living rightly and happily.
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