LECTURE IX.

NOTE 1.-Grotius has distinctly enumerated the testimonies from ancient writers, which we mentioned generally: to which he has added others which we did not produce. He says, respecting the Orphic verses, "the great Scaliger has mended the passage, by changing a letter; and instead of reading the word xys, as Eusebius, in his Prep. Evan. lib. xiii. cap. 12. quotes it from Aristobulus, he bids us read it udayevas”—born of the water. His quotation from Strabo is not inserted here, because, while his testimony to the great character of Moses is decisive, he has mingled the fable of tradition so entirely with his evidence, that the passage would not be worthy the room it would occupy in this note. It is in his xvi. book. There is a remarkable testimony in Diodorus Siculus, in the first book of his history, comprised in a single sentence. He had been speaking of those who assert that the gods were the authors of their lawsand adds, παρα Ιεδαίοις δε Μωσαν τον Ιαπ επικαλεμενον Θεόν. 18 Moses, who, among the Jews, called God, law (Ino.) Grotius quotes this passage also, and says, that by law (Ino.) mm (Jehovah.) is intended; and that the name was so pronounced, "by the oracles, in the Orphic verses, by the Basilidian heretics, and other Gnostics:" also, with little variation, "by the Tyrians." These quotations, with his important remarks, are to be found in his truth of the Christian Religion: book i. sect. 16. notes 83-101.

NOTE 2. Testimony of Josephus, to the early settlement of the Jews in Canaan. Thus far Manetheo. Therefore estimating the time from the beginning of those years, (alluding to some foregoing calculations according to Manetho's history) it will appear, that our ancestors, whom they call shepherds, migrated from Egypt, and inhabited this country, 393 years before Danaus came to Argos, which is nevertheless celebrated by the Greeks for antiquity. Josephus adds, "that two things are evident from Manetho's account: first, that the Jews came from another place to Egypt: secondly, that they left them again, and that nearly a thousand years before the Trojan war." Lowth says, that this calculation is double the true distance of time between these events. However, the establishment of

the Jews in Canaan, is much earlier than any Grecian writer,' or history. Sec Josephus, Appion. Tom. II. lib. i. p. 1339.

Hudsoni edit.

LECTURE X.

NOTE 1-It would have been foreign from the immediate object of the preceding Lecture, to have entered into any discussion of the appearance of Samuel to Saul: but I cannot for. bear entering my individual protest against the opinions, either that the sorceress made some person in her interest personate the apparition of the prophet, or that some demon attempted such a personification. I believe that it was indeed the spirit of Samuel-and I shall subjoin, as the best illustration of my own views, the following able testimonies.

The ingenious writers of the ENCYCLOPEDIA BRITTANNICA reason thus

"Some have thought there was nothing more than a trick, by which a cunning woman imposed upon Saul's credulity, making him believe that some confident of her own was the ghost of Samuel. But had that been the case, she would undoubtedly have made the pretended Samuel's answer, as pleasing to the king as possible, both to save her own life, which appears from the context to have been in danger, and likewise to have procured the larger reward. She would never have told her sovereign, she durst not have told him, that he himself should be shortly slain, and his sons with him; and that the host of Israel should be delivered into the hand of the Philistines.* For this reason many critics, both Jewish and Christian, have supposed that the apparition was really a demon, or evil angel, by whose assistance the woman was accustomed to work wonders, and to foretel future events. But it is surely very incred ible, that one of the apostate spirits of hell, should have upbraided Saul for applying to a sorceress, or should have accosted him in such words as these: 'Why hast thou disquieted me to bring me up? Wherefore dost thou ask of me, seeing the Lord is departed from thee, and is become thine enemy? For the Lord hath rent the kingdom out of thine hand, and given it to thy neighbor, even to David. Because thou obeyedst not

It was impossible that she could have prejudged the event of a battle than which nothing is more uncertain,

the voice of the Lord, therefore the Lord hath done this thing te thee this day.' It is to be observed farther, that what was here denounced against Saul was really prophetic, and that the event answered to the prophecy in every particular. Now, though we do not deny that there are created spirits of penetriiton vastly superior to that of the most enlarged human understanding; yet we dare maintain, that no finite intelligence could by its own mere capacity have ever found out the precise time of the two armies engaging, the success of the Philistines, the consequences of the victory, and the very names of the persons that were to fall in the battle. Saul and his sons were indeed men of tried bravery, and therefore likely to expose themselves to the greatest danger; but after the menaces which he received from the apparition, he would have been impelled, one should think, by common prudence, either to chicane with the enemy, or to retire from the field without exposing himself, his sons, and the whole army to certain and inevitable destruction; and bis acting differently, with the consequences of his conduct, were events which no limited understanding could either foresee or certainly foretel. If to these circumstances we add the suddenness of Samuel's appearance, with the effect which it had upon the sorceress herself, we shall find reason to believe that the apparition was that of no evil demon. There is not, we believe, upon record, another instance of any person's pretending to raise a ghost from below, without previously using some magical rites, or some form of incantation. As nothing of that kind is mentioned in the case before us, it is probable that Samuel appeared before he was called. It is likewise evident from the narrative, that the apparition was not what the woman expected; for we are told that when she saw Samuel, she cried out for fear. And when the king exhorted her not to be afraid, and asked what she saw, 'the woman said, I see gods (elohim) ascending out of the earth. Now, had she been accustomed to do such feats, and known that what she saw was only her subservient demon, it is not conceivable that she could have been so frightened, or have mistaken her familiar for elohim in any sense in which that word can be taken. We are therefore strongly inclined to adopt the opinion of those who hold that it was Samuel himself who appeared and prophecied, not called up by the wretched woman or her demons, but, to her utter confusion, and the

disgrace of her art, sent by God to rebuke Saul's madness in a most affecting and mortifying way, and to deter all others from ever applying to magicians or demons for assistance when refused comfort from Heaven. For though this hypothesis may, to a superficial thinker, seem to transgress the rule of Horace -nec Deus intersit, &c.—which is as applicable to the interpretation of scripture, as to the introduction of supernatural agency in human compositions; yet he who has studied the theocratical constitution of Israel, the nature of the office which was there termed regal, and by what means the administration was in emergencies conducted, will have a different opinion, and at once perceive the dignus vindice nodus."

Encyc. Brit. Vol, X. pt. ii. art. MAGIC:

Of the same opinion is the pious Mr. HERVEY

"1 Sam. xxviii, 19.-On this place the DUTCH translator of the Meditations has added a note; to correct, very probably, what he supposes a mistake. On the same supposition, I presume, the compilers of our Rubric ordered the last verse of Eccles. xlvi, to be omitted, in the daily service of the Church. But that the sentiment, hinted above," (an opinion coinciding with that just stated) "is strictly true; that it was w SAMUEL HIMSELF (not an infernal spirit, personating the prophet) who appeared to the female necromancer at Endor; appeared not in compliance with any diabolical incantation, but in pursuance of the divine commission; this, I think, is fully proved in the HISTORICAL ACCOUNT OF THE LIFE OF DAVID, vol. I. chap. 23."

Heyvey's Medit. Vol. I. p. 250' notes. Heptinstall's edit.

NOTE 2.-In the translation of David's lamentation over Jonaathan, I have not departed from the literal rendering of our own Bible, but where it appeared to me that the reading was amended or elucidated by the alteration. In rendering the 21st verse, "there the shield of the mighty is vilely cast away, the shield of Saul, the armor of the anointed with oil;" I have followed the translation of Dr. Geddes: who has the following note on the word 'armour"—"From the small change of one letter into another, of a very similar form, arises this opposite rendering. Interpreters made a shift to translate the present text thus; as if he had not been anointed with oil. By what rules of translation I know not." His translation of this lamentation is singularly beautiful throughout. He renders the beginning

of it-"O antelope of Israel! pierced on thine own mountains!" This rendering is correctly literal: but as the word ' also signifies ornamentum,* I have preferred the rendering "O beauty of Israel, &c." as in the Lecture.

NOTE 3.-Testimony of Menander, the historian, to the. drought in the days of Elijah, preserved by Josephus:

“Menander also notes this defect of rain in the acts of Ithobal, king of the Tyrians, speaking thus: "There was a defi., ciency of rain from the month of October, until October in the succeeding year. But he indeed praying there followed much thunder. He built the city of Botrys in Phenicia, and Auza in Lybia." And certainly he relates these things of the drought which happened in the time of Ahab, for at that time Ithobal DID reign over the Tyrians, as Menander himself writes."

Joseph. Antiq. Jud. Tom. I. lib. viii, cap. xiii, p. 378. Hudsoni edit.

Testimonies of Julian and of Cyprian, quoted by Grotius, relative to the fire which consumed the sacrifice of Elijah. Julianus in libro Cyrilli decimo.

Προσαγείν δε ιερεία βωμω και θύειν παρητεσατε. πις γαρ, φησιν, * κατείδεν αυτές επι Μωσέως τας θυσίας αναλίσκον απαξ τετο επι Μωσέως εγενετο, και ετι Ηλιο το Θέσετε WAASV JAGTU WONLUS XGores-Vide sequentia de igne cœlesti; Cyprianus Testimoniorum III. Item in sacrificiis quæcunque accepta habebat Deus, descendebat ignis de cœlo qui sacrificata consumeret." "Julian in the tenth book of Cyril: Ye refuse to bring sacrifices to the altar, and to present them, because that fire does not descend from heaven to consume the victims, as in the time of Moses. This happened indeed to Moses, and long after also to Elijah the Tishbite."" See what follows also concerning the fire from heaven; Cyprian, in the Third of their Testimonies, says"That in the sacrifices, what soever had acceptance with God, fire came down from heaven which consumed the things offered."

Grotius de Ver. Relig. Christ. sect. xvi, not. 106.

*See Taylor's Hebrew Concordance on the word