nides, imagines oracula fundentes, apud nominis antiquissimi gentes, Zabios aut Chaldæos, fidem et pretium invenisse refert: "Erexerunt stellis imagines, soli quidera aureas, lunæ vero argenteas. Deinde sacella ædificaverunt, imaginesque in illis collo carunt, arbitrantes stellarum vires influere in illas imagines," &c. p. 965. The common doctrine of Idolatry, that the several blessings of life came from some dæmon or idol, to whom the authority and power of bestowing temporal blessings were committed, was of so general and powerful influence that they were to expect the blessings of life from the favour of a Jupiter, a Mercury, a Bacchus, or a Venus; it became the wisdom, therefore, of an institution, (i. e. the THEOCRACY,) designed to preserve the faith and worship of the true God against idolatry, to assert that God was the author of every blessing of life; that he had not parted with the administration of Providence, or given over the disposal of those blessings to any subordinate beings whatsoever; so that health, long life, plenty, and all kinds of prosperity, were to be sought for from him as his gift, and only from his blessing and protection. Lowman's Civ. Govern. Heb. xii. 22. In order to preserve the memory of the true God in an idolatrous world, till the seed should come to whom the promise was made, God saw fit to erect the Jewish state into a Theocracy, properly so called, in which he was the supreme civil magistrate The consequences of which form of government were these; 1. That it was administered by the exertion of an extraordinary Providence. 2. That religion and civil society were thoroughly incorporated. 3. That religion had a public as well as a private part, the subject of it being as well the state collectively as individuals parti cularly. And, lastly, that the sanctions both of religion and society were temporal rewards and punishments. But the Christian religion has no public part, has not the state as such, but individuals only, for its subject. Hence vice and impiety are not now public but private crimes, for which offenders shall doubtless be most severely punished, but according to the Gospel-dispensation. This then is sufficient to shew that we have no real warrant, from Holy Scripture, to conclude that God's dealings with the Jewish people are the measure of administering his Providence over other states. Though, as to the natural consequence of vice and impiety, nothing is more certain than that they are the inevitable ruin of a commonwealth. Nor is any thing more certain than that states, as well as private men, may be the subjects of divine displeasure, so as to bring down his severest judgements upon them; they, as well as private men, having all those essential qualities which constitute a moral agent. We must needs therefore conclude, both from revelation and reason, that the hand of heaven distributes good and evil to societies according to their moral merit or demeriti Not upon that fancy, that as states are only artificial beings with a present existence, and incapable of a future, that therefore God is obliged in justice to punish and reward them here; which is a mere school-invention, as we have many examples, in statesį where where iniquity háth quife escaped the divine vengeance; but for example, and to keep alive the sense of a divine Providence in a careless impious world. And those actions of society, which are the peculiar object of divine favour or displeasure, (established, like our own, on a system of fundamental laws securing reverence to the Deity, and discouraging all vice and immorality,) can evidently be no other than what concern its conduct in transacting with neighbour-states, or, in other words, its observance or neglect of good faith, justice, and equity. Warburton's Fast-Sermon, Dec. 17451 The utter destruction of the seven nations that inhabited the land of Canaan, which infidels have made an objection to the justice and goodness of God, is to be vindicated upon the principles of the theocracy, which was a government peculiar to the Israelites, and was established in the land of Judea for that great purpose of instructing the ido latrous nations that it was Jehovah, and he alone, who ruleth in Jacob and unto the ends of the world. Idolatry, therefore, was absolutely incompatible with the worship of the one true Gody and was high. treason against the King of kings and Lord of lords; as such, then, it was to be extirpated root and branch, and the most condign. punishment was to be inflicted upon the practisers of it.. Nor was God more unjust in punishing the Canaanites in this severe manner than he was in destroying the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah, and the whole world, except eight persons, by a general deluge, who were probably guilty of Idolatry, which is the parent as well as the greatest of all crimes, before he proceeded to this dreadful extremity. Nay, is not the same conduct pursued in the several kingdoms of the earth, and are not the innocent wives and children often punished through the iniquity of their rebellious husbands and párents. But, it has been observed by Bishop Patrick and Mr Bryant, that the Canaanites, who were the descendants of Hum, had unlawfully got possession of the land of Canaan by expelling the descendants of Shem from their legal territory; if this was the case, this is still a farther reason for their extirpation by the Almighty, who only drove out a set of tyrannical usurpers, and by a just retaliation restored it to its original'occupants. After all, must God be unjust and unkind because we are ignorant and short sighted?, what if these temporary punishments of the Canaanites, and we have Scripture to support the supposition, were not only monuments of Divine vengeance, but likewise as intended to be powerful and awful admonitions to all the future ages of the world, and by taking warning from this direful example, to save them from temporal and eternal ruin.. Methinks the opinion of the learned Belgic professor, Perizonius, with respect to, the CONFUSION OF TONGUES, is most probable: for he accounts for it in a way which answered the end of divine Providence in dispersing them, and yet carried in it. the marks of divine displeasure on account of their obstinacy. "Confusio labii nequaquam fuit subita complurium novarum linguarum productio cum veteris oblivione, sed vera et propria sermonis confusio, quacunque tandem ratione illa extiterit," And, And, as the same learned person observes again," Non fuit hæc labii confusio perpetua, sed ad tempus a Deo adhibita tantum, ut homines ad secedendum cogeret." And it is natural to conceive that they might, in a great measure, return to their antient language, after their separation, and the end of the miracle was answered. Winder's Hist. of Knowledge, vol. i. p. 125,› A remarkable account of the TARANTULA from Alexander ab Alexandro, who was an eye-witness to it. Memoria repeto dum per loca illa (sc. Apuliæ campos) diutino situ squalida, et ardore solis ferventia cum aliquot comitibus iter intenderem, undique oppida et vicos, alia tympanis, nonnulla fistulis, pleraque tibicine circumsonantia adisse, cujus rei causam quærentibus nobis, relatum est, tarantule morbo affectos undique per oppida curari. Cumque ejus rei gratia in pagum quendam diverteremus, invenimus adolescentem morbo ejus modi affectum, qui velut repentino furore ictus et mente abalienatus, corporis motu non indecoro, et manuum pedumque gestibus ad tympanum psallebat, non inconcinniter, utque vehementius modos acciperet, quasi illo pulsu demulceri animus et leniri dolor videretur, sensim et placide aures tympano admovere, mox caput manus et pedes crebro motu concutere, et demum in saltum se attollere videbamus. Quæ res cúm ludo et risu prorsus digna visa foret; interim is qui tympanum pulsabat, sonitu parumper intermisso, pausam fecit. Atque illum morbo affectum, ubi præcentio illa quievit, velut attomitum, stupentique similem, repente animo linqui, et omni sensu -destitui cernimus. Rursus resumpto tympano, ubi primum modulos audivit, pristinas illum vires resumere, et acrius in choreas insurgere spectabamus. Creditum est, quod non, a vero abhoret, vim illam veneni virulente morsu et sanie conceptam, harmonia et vocum concentu, per totam corpus diffundi, atque inde fato nescio quo, dilabi et exinaniri. Ideo illos qui morbo ejus modi laborarunt, si quid reliquiarum res siduum fuit, quod penitus curatum non sit, si quando sono extrinsecus vel concentu illorum aures affici contigeret, veluti mente consternatos toto corpore et animo concuti, ac manibus pedibusque gestire compertum est, donec vis illa tabifica penitus extincta fuit. Alex. ab Alex. fo. 41, p. 2. In the temple at Tong-tchew (in China) is a chamber, in the middle of which there is an altar with THREE porcelain figures as large as life placed on it, there were also candlesticks on each side of it, which are lighted regularly every morning and evening. Before these images there is a small pot of dust, in which are inserted a number of long matches that are also lighted during the times of worship. When the pe-, -riod of devotion is past, the candles are extinguished and the flames of the matches blown out, but the matches are left to moulder away. When this ceremony is over, an awendant on the altar takes a soft mallet, with which he strikes a bell, that is suspended to it, three times; the persons present then kneel before the images and bow '.. .. down down their heads three times to the ground with their hands clasped in each other, which they extend over their heads as they rise. A low bow is then seen to conclude the ceremony of the daily worship of the Chinese, which is termed by them chin-chinjosh, or worship of God. Anderson's narrative of the British embassy to China, p. 88. • The number three probably took its rise from a tradition respecting the Trinity, and the word josh seems to be borrowed from Joshua or Jesus. Who the Cabiri might be has been matter of unsuccessful inquiry to many learned men; the utmost that is known with certainty is, that they were originally three, and were called, by way of eminence, the great or mighty ones, for that is the import of the Hebrew word cabirim; and of the like import is their Latin appellation penates. The worship of a triple power under the former name, Dr Horsely is of opinion, was earried into Phrygia from Samothrace by Dardanus só early as the ninth century after the flood. In most of those countries, where the Romans extended their arms and propagated their theology, the number three was considered as sacred and a divine triad was worshipped: The Fates, those relentless sisters who weave the web of human life and fix the inevitable doom of mortals, were three; the Furies, the dire dispensers of the vengeance of heaven for crimes committed upon earth, were three; the Graces, who were honoured as divinities and had a thousand altars and temples erected to them in Greece, were three; and the celestial Muses, according to Varro, were originally included in the same solemn and mysterious number. Maurice on the Oriental Trinities, p. 709, &c. .. It was the leading feature in Lao-Kiun's system of philosophical theology, that Taos the eternal reason, produced one, one produced two, two produced three, and three produced all things. Maurice, (from Le Compte's Hist. of China, p. 314,) p. 808. -The fact is extraordinary; and the most obvious method by which we can account for it is this: to conclude that the doctrine originated with the progenitor of mankind; by him was communicated, as a notice he had received from his Maker, and therefore of importance to be preserved among his immediate descendants; and from them it was delivered down, through succeeding generations, from the first to that which is now in being. Bp of Gloucester's Thoughts on the Trinity. It seems difficult at first sight to account for the zeal of the See of Rome in advancing and propagating a doetrine so full of absurdity as that of TRANSUBST TI ATION. What use, it may be said, could there be in understanding a figurative pression (with which manner of speaking the Scripture so much abounds), according the letter, which makes it nonsense, when that nonsense does not appear to be productive either of power or profit to the church. Nevertheless, the solution of this difficulty may be found in the words of Pope Paschall II.: "That it was a most execrable thing that those hands, which had received such eminent power above what had been grantedi granted to the angels themselves, as by their ministry to create God, the Creator of all, and offer up the same God before the face of God the Father for the redemption and salvation of the whole world, should descend to such ignominy as to be put in sign of subjection into the hands of princes, &c. Lord Lyttelton, vol. i, p. 480. Is it not almost impossible to conceive that any person, much less any church, should entertain a doctrine so blasphemous which makes the hand of a priest superior to the power of God? The doctrine of Transubstantiation was first broached, in the ninth century, by Paschasius Radbert, Abbot of Corbey, who asserted, that, after the consecration of the bread and wine in the Lord's Supper, nothing remained of these symbols but the outward figure, under which the body and blood of Christ were really and locally present; and, secondly, that the body of Christ, thus present in the Eucharist, was the same body that was born of the Virgin Mary, that suffered upon the cross, and was raised from the dead. Mosheim's Eccles. Hist. 8vo, vol. ii. - Transubstantiation is not a jot more contradictory to reason than the Trinity is, And, as to Scripture evidence, the former has greatly the advantage over the latter: for, if you but grant the papists their interpretation of one single text, (Matt. xxvi. 26,) their tenet is proved at once; whereas, the Trinitarians must have their own ins terpretation of many texts, taken from very remote parts of Scripture, which have connection with each other, granted them before they can prove this mystery. Add to this, that trunsubstantiation is no where expressly contradicted in Scripture; but the divinity of Jesus, upon which the Trinity depends, is denied and declared to be false by the apostles, in terms as positive, direct, and explicit, as can, well be conceived. (See John, xvii. 8, 1 Cor. viii. 6, Ephes. iv. 6) For, as long as these passages stand in the Bible, it is impossible that the Son can be God, unless he be the Father also; a flight that even Trinitarians do not soar to! For some parallels between. Transubstantiation and the Trinity, see the Unitarian Tracts, 1691, 4to; vol. i. Tract on Mystery, p. 20, 22; and vol. ii. Tract 1, p. 3, 5, and Tract 2, p. 4. Blunt's Letters to Glanville Sharp, p. 151. And. in p. 171, this author, who is a rank Socinian, has this remarkable passage, “Practical Christianity is the only Christianity contained in the Scriptures." The TREE OF LIFE was the antient and original emblem of immortality, Gen. ij. 9. The meaning is, God furnished our first parents in paradise with every thing that was n edful to complete their happiness; and, as the principal part of all, he put them in a possibility of obtaining immortality without passing through death at all. Adam was not (as some have, without any ground from Scripture, imagined) created actually im mortal, but he was created with a possibility of escaping death, and becoming iinmortal without dying. The means by which flesh and blood: were to have been preserved from mortality, to which it could not but be subject by nature, was the use of |