ians testify, and as it is easy to conjecture from the natural
order of things during so long a space of years, they have nevertheless
been preserved (and this preservation has been foretold); and extending
from the earliest times to the latest, their history comprehends in its
duration all our histories [which it preceded by a long time].

The law by which this people is governed is at once the most ancient law
in the world, the most perfect, and the only one which has been always
observed without a break in a state. This is what Josephus admirably
proves, _against Apion_,[223] and also Philo[224] the Jew, in different
places, where they point out that it is so ancient that the very name of
_law_ was only known by the oldest nation more than a thousand years
afterwards; so that Homer, who has written the history of so many
states, has never used the term. And it is easy to judge of its
perfection by simply reading it; for we see that it has provided for all
things with so great wisdom, equity, and judgment, that the most ancient
legislators, Greek and Roman, having had some knowledge of it, have
borrowed from it their principal laws; this is evident from what are
called the Twelve Tables, and from the other proofs which Josephus
gives.

But this law is at the same time the severest and strictest of all in
respect to their religious worship, imposing on this people, in order to
keep them to their duty, a thousand peculiar and painful observances, on
pain of death. Whence it is very astonishing that it has been
constantly preserved during many centuries by a people, rebellious and
impatient as this one was; while all other states have changed their
laws from time to time, although these were far more lenient.

The book which contains this law, the first of all, is itself the most
ancient book in the world, those of Homer, Hesiod, and others, being six
or seven hundred years later.

620

The creation and the deluge being past, and God no longer requiring to
destroy the world, nor to create it anew, nor to give such great signs
of Himself, He began to establish a people on the earth, purposely
formed, who were to last until the coming of the people whom the Messiah
should fashion by His spirit.

621

The creation of the world beginning to be distant, God provided a single
contemporary historian, and appointed a whole people as guardians of
this book, in order that this history might be the most authentic in the