dayes in perverted apprehensions and conceptions of the world, derogatory unto God and the wisdom of the creation. Again, being so illiterate in the point of intellect, and their sense so incorrected, they are further indisposed ever to attain unto truth; as commonly proceeding in those wayes, which have most reference unto sense, and wherein there lyeth most notable and popular delusion. ways 5 For, being unable to wield the intellectual arms of reason, they are fain to betake themselves unto wasters, and the blunter weapons of truth: affecting the gross and sensible of doctrine, and such as will not consist with strict and subtile reason. Thus unto them a piece of rhetorick is a sufficient argument of logick; an apologue of Æsop, beyond syllogisms in barbara, parables than propositions, and proverbs more powerful than demonstrations. And therefore are they led rather by example than precept; receiving persuasions from visible inducements, before intellectual instructions. And, therefore also, they judge of human actions by the event; for, being uncapable of operable circumstances, or rightly to judge the prudentiality of affairs, they only gaze upon the visible success, and, therefore, condemn or cry up the whole progression. And so, from this ground, in the lecture of Holy Scripture, their apprehensions are commonly confined unto the literal sense of the text, from whence have ensued the gross and duller sort of heresies. For not attaining the deuteroscopy, and second intention of the words, * Fable. authority for the word operable, which he observes is not in use. 8 deuteroscopy.] i. e. the inward and spiritual meaning, which is sometimes Allegorical, and by a continual metaphor or allusion, or similitude or parable, proposes the greatest depths of divinitye: Tropological, tending to the reformation of the manners and life of a Christian: as by the forbidding of swine's flesh, expressing God's detestation of all filthiness in the flesh and the spirit: Anagogicall; inducing us by the vilitye, unstabilitye, and vexatious fruition of earthly things to the love of that future blisse, wherein shall bee noe defect, noe change, noe dislike for ever.-Wr. they are fain to omit the super-consequences, coherences, figures, or tropologies: and are not sometimes persuaded by fire beyond their literalities. And, therefore also, things invisible but unto intellectual discernments, to humour the grossness of their comprehensions, have been degraded from their proper forms, and God himself dishonoured into manual expressions. And so likewise being unprovided, or unsufficient for higher speculations, they will always betake themselves unto sensible representations, and can hardly be restrained the dulness of idolatry. A sin or folly not only derogatory unto God but men; overthrowing their reason, as well as his divinity. In brief, a reciprocation, or rather an inversion of the creation, making God one way, as he made us another; that is, after our image, as he made us after his own. Moreover, their understanding, thus weak in itself, and perverted by sensible delusions, is yet farther impaired by the dominion of their appetite; that is, the irrational and brutal part of the soul, which, lording it over the sovereign faculty, interrupts the actions of that noble part, and choaks those tender sparks, which Adam hath left them of reason. And, therefore, they do not only swarm with errors, but vices depending thereon. Thus they commonly affect3 no man any further than he deserts his reason, or complies with their aberrancies. Hence they embrace not virtue for itself, but its reward; and the argument from pleasure or utility is far more powerful than that from virtuous honesty: which Mahomet and his contrivers well understood, when he set out the felicity of his heaven, by the contentments of flesh and the delight of sense, slightly passing over the accomplishment of the soul, and the beatitude of that part which earth and visi 9 by fire.] He seems to refer to the stake. But, surely, martyrdom has, in a vast majority of instances, been undergone in defence of truth, rather than from ignorant adherence to vulgar error. God himself dishonoured into manual expressions.] On the ancient heresy of the Anthropomorphites, who ascribed to the Almighty a bodily shape, see Augustin. Contra Epist. Manichæi, c. 23;-Epiphanius, tom. i, lib. iii, Hæres. 70; The odoret. lib. iv, c. 10. In 1654, this 2 bilities too weakly affect. But the wisdom of our Saviour, and the simplicity of his truth proceeded another way; defying the popular provisions of happiness from sensible expectations; placing his felicity in things removed from sense, and [in] the intellectual enjoyment of God. And, therefore, the doctrine of the one was never afraid of universities, or endeavoured the banishment of learning, like the other. And though Galen doth sometimes nibble at Moses, and, beside the apostate Christian, some heathens have questioned his philosophical part, or treaty of the creation, yet is there surely no reasonable pagan that will not admire the rational and well grounded precepts of Christ; whose life, as it was conformable unto his doctrine, so was that unto the highest rules of reason, and must therefore flourish in the advancement of learning, and the perfection of parts best able to comprehend it. Again, their individual imperfections being great, they are, moreover, enlarged by their aggregation; and being erroneous in their single numbers, once huddled together, they will be error itself. For, being a confusion of knaves and fools, and a farraginous concurrence of all conditions, tempers, sexes, and ages, it is but natural if their determinations be monstrous, and many ways inconsistent with truth. And, therefore, wise men have always applauded their own judgement, in the contradiction of that of the people; and their soberest adversaries have ever afforded them the style of fools and mad men; and, to speak impartially, their actions have made good these epithets. Had Orestes been judge, he would not have acquitted that Lystrian rabble of madness,† who,-upon a visible miracle falling into so high a conceit of Paul and Barnabas, that they termed the one Jupiter, the other Mercurius, that they brought oxen and garlands, and were hardly restrained from sacrificing unto them,-did, notwithstanding, suddenly after fall upon Paul, and, having stoned him, drew him for dead out of the city. It might have hazarded the sides of Democritus, had he been present at * Julian. Non sani esse hominis, non sanus juret Orestes. 4 treaty.] In the sense of treatise; but the word is obsolete.-Wr. that tumult of Demetrius; when the people flocking together in great numbers, some crying one thing and some another, and the assembly was confused, and the most part knew not wherefore they were come together, nothwithstanding, all with one voice, for the space of two hours, cried out, "Great is Diana of the Ephesians." It had overcome the patience of Job, as it did the meekness of Moses, and would surely have mastered any but the longanimity and lasting sufferance of God, had they beheld the mutiny in the wilderness; when, after ten great miracles in Egypt, and some in the same place, they melted down their stolen 5 ear-rings into a calf, and monstrously cried out, "These are thy gods, O Israel, that brought thee out of the land of Egypt." It much accuseth the impatience of Peter, who could not endure the staves of the multitude, and is the greatest example of lenity in our Saviour, when he desired of God forgiveness unto those, who having one day brought him into the city in triumph, did presently after act all dishonour upon him, and nothing could be heard but crucifige in their courts. Certainly, he that considereth these things in God's peculiar people, will easily discern how little of truth there is in the ways of the multitude; and though sometimes they are flattered with that aphorism, will hardly believe "The voice of the people to be the voice of God." Lastly, being thus divided from truth in themselves, they are yet farther removed by advenient deception. For true it is (and I hope I shall not offend their vulgarities if I say) they are daily mocked into error by subtiler devisors, and have been expressly deluded by all professions and ages. Thus the priests of elder time have put upon them many incredible conceits, not only deluding their apprehensions with ariolation, soothsaying, and such oblique idolatries, but winning their credulities unto the literal and downright adorement of cats, 6 stolen.] Neither stolen nor borrowed, but freely given to the solicitations of the Israelites, to whom "The Lord had given favour in the sight of the Egyptians." The LXX and Vulgate, with the Syriac, Chaldee, Samaritan, Coptic, and Persian all agree in this interpretation of Exod. iii, 22, and xii, 35, 36. The idea of dishonesty so universally attached to this transaction, in consequence of our unfortunate version of the passages, is a vulgar error, which cannot be too generally corrected. 6 ariolation, soothsaying.] Synonimous terms. lizards, and beetles. And thus also in some Christian churches (wherein is presumed an irreprovable truth) if all be true that is suspected, or half what is related, there have not wanted many strange deceptions, and some thereof are still confessed by the name of pious frauds. Thus Theudas, an 7 adorement of cats, lizards, and beetles.] This, no doubt, is an allusion to the ancient Egyptians, by whom all these animals were worshipped, but whether as incarnations or as mere symbols of certain divinities, it seems difficult to determine. It would, indeed, appear probable, that the animals which were at first worshipped in Egypt, as representative symbols only of the deities to whom they were respectively sacred, were in the progress of idolatry adored as manifestations upon earth of those divinities themselves. The CAT, many embalmed bodies of which animal have been found in the Egyptian sepulchres, appears to have been sacred either to Isis or to her half-sister Nephthys. In mentioning the worship of LIZARDS, the author doubtless alludes to that of the Crocodile, the affinity of which to the Lizard was observed and recorded by the Greek writers, who, when travelling in Egypt, bestowed on that animal, called temsah by the natives, the name of Kgozodeλos, previously applied to a lizard, common in Greece. Strabo, relating his own observations, states, that "in the city of Arsinoë, which was formerly called Crocodilopolis, (in Upper Egypt, now called Medinet-el-Fay-yúm,) the crocodile is worshipped, and a sacred crocodile is kept in a pond, who is perfectly tame, and familiar with the priests. He is called Suchus; they feed him with corn, and meat, and wine, which are continually brought him by strangers." One of the Egyptian divinities, apparently that to whom the crocodile was consecrated, was pictured as having a crocodile's head; and is denoted, in the hieroglyphic inscriptions, by a representation of that animal with the tail turned under it. The BEETLE was regarded by the Egyptians as the symbol of a particular personification of Phthah, the father of the Gods; that insect is used in hieroglyphics for the name of this deity, whose head in the pictural representations of him, either bears a beetle, or is itself in the form of a beetle; and in other instances the beetle, in hieroglyphics, has clearly a reference to generation or reproduction, which is a sense attributed to this symbol by all antiquity, and from which Dr. Young, in his hieroglyphical researches, inferred its relation to Phthah; an inference since confirmed by the inquiries of Champollion. The Egyptians embalmed and preserved all the animals they adored; and in the Royal Egyptian Museum at Berlin, are some mummies of the sacred beetle. In these instances of the worship of animals, however, it may be questioned whether the priests who conducted it were not themselves the subjects of delusion, in a degree equal to, or perhaps greater than, that of their followers. Possibly, therefore, they were not wholly deserving of the censure cast upon them by our author.—Br. 8 And thus also, &c.] It would be easy to justify the charge which is only insinuated in this sentence, by a host of examples of the monkish trickery of pretended miracles and relicks. But the task would be endless; and surely it is becoming daily less necessary to contradict what is daily less believed. It happened to the editor, some years since, to visit the cathedral of Aachen (Gallice, Air-la-Chapelle), where, among a profusion of relicks, was exhibited a fragment of one of the nails used in the crucifixion: and we were gravely assured by the priest in attendance, that the other part of that nail was in the cathedral of Nostre Dame, at Paris. There, accordingly, we made a point of inquiring for it, but in vain; our guide averred that there was no such bit of nail among the relicks of the place, nor ever had been ! 9 Theudas.] Theudas or Theodas was a Jewish impostor and magician, in the first century of the Christian church, who so well deluded the people as to collect together above four hundred (not thousand) men, whom he persuaded to quit the town; assuring them that he could dry up the waters of the Jordan by speaking a single word. His followers, however, were exterminated, and Theudas |