an undertaking, I cannot in duty to my family incur any certain expense on such an account, without a tolerable prospect of being reimbursed for it.

Allow me, Mr. Editor, with high respect and deference to your judgment and superior abilities, to add a word on the note you have added at page 325, on the subject of extemporaneous preaching. I agree with you in opinion, that in general this mode of preaching is but "ill suited for solid instruction," and therefore I have stated, that "pre-composed discourses" were, I thought, "far better calculated for the generality of ministers of the establishments on many accounts." But the instance I gave for desisting from this general rule was very extraordinary, and therefore I conceived a proper exception. Dr. C.'s theological attainments (as appears from his numerous writings,) were great, and far beyond the usual acquirements of the ministers of the establishment. He was master of the whole range of Divinity, and fully competent to treat any subject with clearness, closeness, and entire satisfaction to his hearers. His memory was retentive almost beyond belief. To assist that memory, he generally, I believe, preached from notes, or brief heads; many of which are at this moment before me. With these qualifications, he delivered his discourses,) for the truth of which assertion I have the testimony of many living persons,) with such energy, clearness, and excellent arrangement, that they equally delighted and instructed the crowded audiences which usually attended his ministry. Having said thus much in support of my original observation, I most readily join with you, Sir, in opinion, that the practice itself is by no means to be recommended to the regular members of the establishment, who possessed not the superior advantages which Dr. C. possessed.

On the subject of his extraordinary memory, excuse me for mentioning the following anecdote related to me by a near relation about the time, that I sent you the article which you so kindly inserted in your last month's magazine. During the illness of his mother, he had frequently, on the Sunday evening, amused her with repeating from memory, the sermon which he delivered extempore that same day in the parish church. Those who heard this before, and particularly the relation who told me this anecdote, declared that the expressions, and even words, were so similar, that it appeared more like reading a sermon twice over, than a repetition of an extemporaneous discourse. To put his memory to the fullest test, one or two sentences, of a remarkable kind, were once

noted down with a pencil, in a very exact manner, and on his repeating that discourse the same evening, every word in these remarkable sentences was the same as they had been delivered in the morning.

Allow me to correct a mistake, probably of myself in the hurry of composition, which carries a contradiction with it to what had been stated before. In page 327, line 18, from the top," his fourth and last child," should be "his fifth and last, &c." Besides the three younger children mentioned in that paragraph, Dr. C. had a daughter Anne, born Feb. 15th, 1764; married and now living: and a son Thomas, born March 6th, 1765; also married, and now living.

Dr. C. had the happiness of knowing and corresponding with the venerable and excellent Mrs. Elizabeth Carter, a slight memoir of whom you have favoured your readers with in the obituary department of your Magazines for March and April last.

I am, Sir, with the sincerest good wishes for the success of your Miscellany,

Creech St. Michael,

June 10th 1806.

Your obedient,

and very humble Servant, THOMAS COMBER.

EXTRACTS.

ABRIDGMENT of a very CURIOUS WORK, (little known) entitled," PICTOR ERRANS," written by M. PHIL. ROHR.

PAINT

By the late Mr. W. BowYER, Printer, F. S. A.

AINTERS err; 1. In representing the Creator as an old man, the "Ancient of Days" of Dan. vii. 9, censured by Augustin, Ep cxx11.

11. In painting the serpent which tempted Eve without feet: whereas his creeping on his belly was inflicted on him as a punishment. See Pole's Synops. in Gen. iii. 1. 4.

11. Many of them place one angel with a drawn sword as a guard to Paradise, when man was expelled from it, Gen. iii.; when the text says there were more; Cherubim, plural. See Pole.

IV. Falsely make Noah's ark a square house placed on a round ship, whereas the ark itself was more probably round.

v.. Misled by the Vulgate, they represent Abraham with a sword in his hand, when he was to sacrifice Isaac,' instead of a sacrificing knife, as the Hebrew expresses it, Gen. xx. 10, with which he afterwards slew the ram. See Piscator in Loc. Pole's Synops. &c.

VI. Falsely represent Isaac kneeling before the pile of wood, with his face towards it; whereas, as the Hebrew word means, his hands were tied to his feet backwards, and he was laid on the pile, with his face upwards, as the sacrifice used to be.

VII. Without any authority from Scripture, Exod. xii. 12, &c. they represent the Israelites eating the Pascal lamb at their going out of Egypt standing. The scripture is silent as to the posture, whether it was standing or sitting. See Schmidius on Matt. xxvii.

VIII. Exod. xxxiv. 29. the Vulgate renders quOD Cornuta esset facies sua*; whence the painters have represented Moses with horns coming out of his head. But the Hebrew word denotes the glory that shone in his face as the LXX. have rightly rendered it didoğaça To προσωπον αυτε.

IX. In Canticles i. 4. the Vulgate reads, Trahe me post se currimus in odorem unguentorum tuorum; which Hermannus Hugo having translated in his Emblems, lib. ii. Emblem 8, has obliged his painter to represent the bridegroom going before with a censor of frankincense, of which there is not a word in the Hebrew, nor in any ap proved version, the Hebrew having only Trahe me post se.

x. Isaiah is painted as sawn asunder, from the head through the body, of which we have no sufficient authority. But as this has been believed by many of the fathers, we will let it pass as dubious.

XI. Cornelius à Lapide says, that in an ancient MS. of Basilius Porphyrogenitus, the prophet Daniel is painted as beheaded; against the authority of all history, which tells us that he died a natural death, Dan. xii. 18. Josephus, Hist. x. 12. The report of his being beheaded is portentum fabulæ et puerile delirium, says Reinsius, Var. Lect. lib. ii. c. 13.

XII. The painting rays of glory round the heads of

* The margin of the quarto edition has splendens. EDIT.

Christ, the Virgin Mary, and the apostles, is a universal custom, taken up without any sufficient foundation.

XIII. John the Evangelist painted young, while writing his gospel, which he wrote, as some suppose, at ninety years of age; but all when he was very old.

agree

XIV. To ridicule the Christians, some one represented a person in a gown, with ass's ears, and one foot hoofed, holding a book in his hand, with these words underneath, Deus Christianorum Ononchysis. "This was that Anah that found the mules in the wilderness, as he fed the asses of Zibeon his father."-What they said of Anah, they ascribed to Moses; and afterwards from the Jews to the Christians, as Selden tells us, De Diis Syntag. 11. Vos. de Idol. lib. iii. c. 75.

xv. Without any authority or reason, they represent Joseph, the husband of the Virgin Mary, as an old man.

XVI. In the Virgin Mary's conception, some represent Christ as an infant descending from heaven, bearing his cross in his hand; which in picture, is the very sense of the Valentinian heresy.

XVII. In the pictures of the nativity, an ox and an ass are represented feeding at the manger, which arose probably from the false translation of the LXX. Hab. iii. 2. ἐν μέσω δυο ζώων γνωσθής, in medio duorum animalium cognos ceris. Jerom, according to the Hebrew, renders in medio annorum vivificas illud. Vide Cas. c. Baron. Exerc. ii. § ii. From this joined to Is. iii. 1. the ox knows his owner, and the ass his master's crib, arose the custom of placing those two animals as guests at that solemnity*.

XVIII. The Magi who came to Christ are represented as kings with crowns on their heads, and to have been only three in number, and one of them of a tawny complexion: for none of which circumstances we have any authority.

XIX. Simeon, Matt. ii. 25, is pictured in the habit of a priest, and blind against all authority, as Bp. Montague observes, Orig. Eccl. part 1. p. 161.

xx. Matt. iii. 4. Mark i. 8. John the Baptist is usually painted as a satyr, with the skin of a camel thrown over him. But he had probably a coarse vestment made of camel's hair, as Beza maintains, and Luther's version expresses it.

* The ox and an ass are introduced at the Nativity, merely to shew that it happened in a stable. EDIT.

Vol. X. Churhman's Mag. for July, 1806. 3 K temple,

Matt. iv. 6. Our Saviour is represented as set by the devil on a sharp spire of the temple: but as the roofs of the Jewish houses were flat, surrounded with a parapet wall; so probably a parapet wall was carried round the temple, for ornament's sake, as Grotius observes on Deut. xxii. 8; and Christ probably was placed within-side of

that wall.

XXI. The painters represent the houses of the Israelites with slant roofs, like our modern ones, directly contrary to the command given them, Deut. xxi. 18. Whence we often find mention made of walking on the "battlements of their houses, 1 Sam. ix. 25, 20. 2 Sam. xi. 2. xvi. 22. See Matt. x. 22.

XXII. Luke xvi. 21. Lazarus is by some ill-represented, lying along the parlour of the rich man, as if a man full of sores would be permitted within doors. By others he is represented lashed by the servants, while the dogs lick his sores, to whom he was grown familiar by his frequent coming thither.-But he would hardly have come again if he had been scourged away by the servants.

XXIII. Matt. xxi. 21. At Christ's procession into Jerusalem, boughs and the cloaths of the populace are represented strewed under the feet of the ass: but that, as Lightfoot observes, would rather have made the ass to stumble. It is probable, therefore, that they built small houses on the road-side with boughs, and covered them with their garments, as was usual at the feast of Tabernacles. Lightfoot Hor. Hebraic. in Matth.

XXIV. Christ is represented sitting at table with his guests the disciples, Matt. xxvi, and John like an infant before him, in his bosom. But the Jews, it is well known, like the Romans, used at this time to eat lying along, as appears from the words ἀνακεισθαι and κατακλίνεσθαι used in the N. T. and from Lazarus being said to be carried to Abraham's bosom, Luke xvi. 12.

xxv. The bread which Christ broke with his disciples, Matt. xxv. 26, is often represented as a piece of a great loaf. But the Jews used at their meals small leaves or manchets, as we find from the mention of breaking them so often mentioned, as Matt. xxvi. 26. Mark vi. 43. viii. 10, &c. and from the fragments whiah were left, Matt. xiv. 20. xv. 37.

XXVI. In the monastery of St. Mary Magdalen at Magdeburgh, Christ is represented lying down in a brook full of sharp stones. A conceit formed from John xviii.

* The original in Matt. iv. 5, and Luke iv. 9, is lepuytor a battlement.