had a son called Jesua or Jesu. The father of this child was obliged to fly, and retired to Babylon. As for young Jesu, he was not sent to the schools; but (adds our author) he had the insolence to raise his head and uncover himself before the sacrificers, instead of appearing before them with his head bent down and his face covered, as was the custom-a piece of effrontery which was warmly rebuked; this caused his birth to be nquired into, which was found to be impure, and soon exposed him to ignominy.

This detestable book, Sepher Toldos Jeschu, was known in the second century: Celsus confidently cites it, and Origen refutes it in his ninth chapter.

There is another book also entitled "Toldos Jeschu," published by Huldric in 1703, which more closely follows the Gospel of the Infancy, but which is full of the grossest anachronisms. It places both the birth and death of Jesus Christ in the reign of Herod the Great, stating that complaints were made of the adultery of Panther and Mary the mother of Jesus, to that prince.

The author, who takes the name of Jonathan, and calls himself a contemporary of Jesus Christ, living at Jerusalem, pretends that Herod consulted, in the affair of Jesus Christ, the senators of a city in the land of Cæsarea. We will not follow so absurd an author through all his contradictions.

Yet it is under cover of all these calumnies that the Jews keep up their implacable hatred against the christians and the gospel. They have done their utmost to alter the chronology of the Old Testament, and to raise doubts and difficulties respecting the time of our Saviour's coming.

Ahmed-ben-Cassum-la-Andacousy, a Moor of Grenada, who lived about the close of the sixteenth century, cites an ancient Arabian manuscript, which was found, together with sixteen plates of lead engraven with Arabian characters, in a grotto near Grenada. Don Pedro y Quinones, archbishop of Grenada, has himself borne testimony to this fact. These leaden plates, called those of Grenada, were afterwards

carried to Rome, where, after several years investigation, they were at last condemned as apocryphal, in the pontificate of Alexander VII.; they contain only fabulous stories relating to the lives of Mary and her Son.

The name of Messiah, coupled with the epithet false, is still given to those impostors, who, at various times, have sought to abuse the credulity of the Jewish nation. There were some of these false Messiahs even befor the coming of the true Anointed of God. The wise Gamaliel mentions one Theodas,* whose history we read in Josephus's Jewish Antiquities, book xx. chap. 2. He boasted of crossing the Jordan without wetting his feet; he drew many people after him; but the Romans, having fallen upon his little troop, dispersed them, cut off the head of their unfortunate chief, and exposed it in Jerusalem.

Gamaliel also speaks of Judas the Galilean, who is doubtless the same of whom Josephus makes mention in the second chapter of the second book of the Jewish War. He says that this false prophet had gathered together nearly thirty thousand men; but hyperbole is the Jewish historian's characteristic.

In the apostolical times there was Simon, surnamed the magician, who contrived to bewitch the people of Samaria, so that they considered him as 'the great power of God."

In the following century, in the years 178 and 179 of the christian era, in the reign of Adrian, appeared the false Messiah Barcochebas, at the head of an army. The emperor sent against them Julius Severus, who, after several encounters, enclosed them in the town of Bither: after an obstinate defence it was carried, and Barcochebas taken and put to death. Adrian thought he could not better prevent the continual revolts of the Jews than by issuing an edict, forbidding them to go to Jerusalem; he also had guards stationed at the

Acts of the Apostles, v. 34, 35, 36. + Acts, viii. 9, 10.

gates of the city, to prevent the rest of the people of Israel from entering it.

We read in Socrates, an ecclesiastical historian, that in the year 434, there appeared in the island of Candia a false Messiah calling himself Moses. He said he was the ancient deliverer of the Hebrews, raised from the dead to deliver them again."

*

A century afterwards, in 530, there was in Palestine a false Messiah named Julian; he announced himself as a great conqueror, who, at the head of his nation, should destroy by arms the whole christian people. Seduced by his promises, the armed Jews. butchered many of the christians. The emperor Justinian sent troops against him; battle was given to the false Christ; he was taken, and condemned to the most ignominious death.

At the beginning of the eighth century, Serenus, a Spanish Jew, gave himself out as a Messiah, preached, had some disciples, and, like them, died in misery.

Several false Messiahs arose in the twelfth century. One appeared in France, in the reign of Louis the Young; he and all his adherents were hanged, without its ever being known what was the name of the master or of the disciples.

The thirteenth century was fruitful in false Messiahs; there appeared seven or eight in Arabia, Persia, Spain, and Moravia; one of them, calling himself David el Roy, passed for a very great magician; he reduced the Jews, and was at the head of a considerable party; but this Messiah was assassinated.

James Zeigler of Moravia, who lived in the middle of the sixteenth century, announced the approaching manifestation of the Messiah, born, as he declared, fourteen years before; he had seen him (he said) at Strasburg, and he kept by him with great care a sword and a sceptre, to place them in his hands so soon as he should be old enough to teach.

In the year 1624, another Zeigler confirmed the prediction of the former.

* Socrates, Hist. Eccl. lib. ii. cap. 38.

In the year 1666, Sabatei Sevi, born at Aleppo, called himself the Messiah foretold by the Zeiglers. He began with preaching on the highways and in the fields, the Turks laughing at him, while his disciples admired him. It appears that he did not gain over the mass of the Jewish nation at first; for the chiefs of the synagogue of Smyrna passed sentence of death against him; but he escaped with the fear only, and with banishment.

He contracted three marriages, of which it is asserted he did not consummate one, saying that it was beneath him so to do. He took into partnership one Nathan Levi, the latter personated the prophet Elias, who was to go before the Messiah. They repaired to Jerusalem, and Nathan there announced Sabatei Sevi as the deliverer of nations. The Jewish populace declared for them, but such as had anything to lose anathematized them.

To avoid the storm, Sevi fled to Constantinople, and from thence to Smyrna, whither Nathan Levi sent to him four ambassadors, who acknowledged and publicly saluted him as the Messiah. This embassy imposed on the people, and also on some of the doctors, who declared Sabetei Sevi to be the Messiah, and king of the Hebrews. But the synagogue of Smyrna condemned its king to be impaled.

Sabatei put himself under the protection of the cadi of Smyrna, and soon had the whole Jewish people on his side; he had two thrones prepared, one for himself, the other for his favourite wife; he took the title of king of kings, and gave to his brother, Joseph Sevi, that of king of Judah. He promised the Jews the certain conquest of the Ottoman empire; and even carried his insolence so far as to have the emperor's name struck out of the Jewish liturgy, and his own substituted.

He was thrown into prison at the Dardanelles; and the Jews gave out that his life was spared only because the Turks well knew he was immortal.

The governor of the Dardanelles grew rich by the presents which the Jews lavished, in order to visit their

king, their imprisoned Messiah, who, though in irons, retained all his dignity, and made them kiss his feet.

Meanwhile the sultan, who was holding his court at Adrianople, resolved to put an end to this farce: he sent for Sevi, and told him that if he was the Messiah he must be invulnerable; to which Sevi assented. The Grand Signor then had him placed as a mark for the arrows of his icoglans. The Messiah confessed that he was not invulnerable, and protested that God sent him only to bear testimony to the holy Mussulman religion. Being beaten by the ministers of the law he turned Mahometan; he lived and died equally despised by the Jews and Mussulmans; which cast such discredit on the profession of false Messiah, that Sevi was the last that appeared,*

METAMORPHOSIS.

It may very naturally be supposed, that the metamorphoses with which our earth abounds, suggested the imagination to the orientals, (who have imagined everything,) that the souls of men passed from one body to another. An almost imperceptible point becomes a grub, and that grub becomes a butterfly; an acorn is transformed into an oak; an egg into a bird; water becomes cloud and thunder; wood is changed into fire and ashes; everything, in short, in nature appears to be metamorphosed. What was thus obviously and distinctly perceivable in grosser bodies, was soon conceived to take place with respect to souls, which were considered slight, shadowy, and scarcely material figures. The idea of metempsychosis is perhaps the most ancient dogma of the known world, and prevails still in a great part of India and of China.

It is highly probable again, that the various metamorphoses which we witness in nature, produced those ancient fables which Ovid has collected and embellished in his admirable work. Even the Jews had their

* See the "Essai sur les Mœurs et l'Esprit des Nations," tom. iv. p. 196, where Sevi's history is given more in detail.