Col. Franklin says, the Avatar ended during the commencement of the fourth age. He was obliged to use this nonsensical mode of expression, because it would not fit to the end of the third or the beginning of the fourth age. It ended in the middle of the fourth age. This arises from confounding the equinoctial cycle with the Neros, which Col. Franklin did not understand. He had a slight glimpse of the two systems of cycles, but did not see that there were two cycles running, but not exactly pari passu.
3. I shall now endeavour to demonstrate the existence of the cycle of 600 or 6000 among the Western nations. Col. Wilford has shewn that the Buddhas and Brahmins were well known and distinguished from each other by Strabo, Philostratus, Pliny, Porphyry, &c.[1] The alternate destruction of the world by fire and water was taught by Plato. In his Timæus he says, that the story of Phäeton’s burning the world has reference to a great dissolution of all things on the earth, by fire. Gale[2] shews that the Jews, as well as Plato, maintained that the world would be destroyed at the end of 6000 years; that then the day of judgment would come: manifestly the Jewish and Christian Millenium.
On this subject Plato says, “When the time of all these things is full, and the change is needful, and every kind upon the earth is exhausted, each soul having given out all its generations, and having shed upon the earth as many seeds as were appointed unto it, then doth the pilot of the universe, abandoning the rudder of the helm, return to his seat of circumspection, and the world is turned back by fate and its own innate concupiscence. At that time also the Gods, who act in particular places as colleagues of the supreme Dæmon, being aware of that which is coming to pass, dismiss from their care the several parts of the world. The world itself being turned awry, and falling into collision, and following inversely the course of beginning and end, and having a great concussion within itself, makes another destruction of all living things. But in due process of time it is set free from tumult, and confusion, and concussion, and obtaineth a calm, and then being set in order, returneth into its pristine course, &c.”[3] Nimrod then adds, “as we farther learn from Virgil, that the next renovation of the world will be followed by the Trojan war—I do not think that more words are necessary in order to evince that the Ilion of Homer is the Babel of Moses.” Cicero says,[4] “Tum efficitur, cum solis et lunæ, et quinque errantium ad eundem inter se comparationem confectis omnium spaciis, est facta cotversio.” And Clavius, Cap. i., says, “Sphæræ quo tempore quidam volunt omnia quæcunque in mundo sunt, eodem ordine esse reditura, quo nunc cernuntur.”
The doctrine of the renewal of worlds has been well treated by Dr. Pritchard.[5] He shews that the dogma was common to several of the early sects of philosophers in Greece;[6] that traces of it are found in the remains of Orpheus; that it was a favourite Doctrine of the Stoics, and was regarded as one of the peculiar tenets of that school; and that we are indebted chiefly to their writings for what we know of this ancient philosophy. But although the successive catastrophes are shewn to have been most evidently held by them, yet, from the doctor’s account, it is very clear that they were not generally understood; some philosophers describing the catastrophe to have taken place in one way, some in another; some by water, some by fire, and some by both alternately. “Seneca, the tragedian, teaches that all created beings are to be destroyed, or resolved into the uncreated essence of the divinity;” and “Plutarch makes the Stoic Cleanthes declare that the moon, the stars, and the sun will perish, and that the celestial ether, which,
