priests in most other nations,
they employed religion in subserviency to the ruling powers, and made use
of imposture to serve the purposes of civil policy. Accordingly Diodorus
Siculus relates (lib. ii., p. 31, compared with Daniel ii. 1, &c., Eccles.
xliv. 3) that they pretended to predict future events by divination, to
explain prodigies, interpret dreams, and avert evils or confer benefits by
means of augury and incantations. For many ages they {44} retained a
principal place among diviners. In the reign of Marcus Antoninus, when the
emperor and his army, who were perishing with thirst, were suddenly
relieved by a shower, the prodigy was ascribed to the power and skill of
the Chaldean soothsayers. Thus accredited for their miraculous powers, they
maintained their consequence in the courts of princes. (See Cic. de Divin.
l. i., Strabo l. xv.--Sext. Emp. adv. Matt. l. v. Sec. 2, Aul. Gell. l. xiv.
s. 1, Strabo l.c.) The mysteries of Chaldean philosophy were revealed only
to a select few, and studiously concealed from the multitude; and thus a
veil of sanctity was cast over their doctrine, so that it might more easily
be employed in the support of civil and religious tyranny. The sum of the
Chaldean cosmogony, as it is given in Syncellus (Chronic. p. 28), divested
of allegory is, that in the beginning all things consisted of darkness and
water; that BELUS, or a divine power, dividing this humid mass formed the
world, and that the human mind is an emanation from the divine nature.
(Perizon. in Orig. Bab. Voss. de Scient. Math. c. xxx. Sec. 5. Hottinger Hist.
Or. p. 365. Herbelot Bib. Or. Voc. Zor. Anc. Un. Hist. vol. iii. Prid.
Conn. b. iv. Shuckford, b. viii. Burnet Archaeol. Phil. l. i. c. 4.
Brucker's Hist. Phil., by Enfield, vol. i. b. i, c. 3.)[44]

Now, we read that, "in the second year of the reign of Nebuchadnezzar,
Nebuchadnezzar dreamed {45} dreams, wherewith his spirit was troubled, and
his sleep brake from him. Then the king commanded to call the magicians,
and the astrologers, and the sorcerers, and the Chaldeans, for to show the
king his dreams. So they came and stood before the king."[45] But when by
the king required not only to interpret but to reveal the very phantasm
itself, they declared it beyond the power of their own or human art.
Daniel, however, of the captive race, revealed it by supernal influence.
Then did the monarch admit as to Deity, that God (JAH, Ps. lxviii. v. 4)
was God of gods (_Baalim_