Ψαμμητίκου, πρότερον δὲ οὐκ ἔπινον οἶνον, οὐδὲ ἔσπενδον, ὡς φίλιον θεοῖς, ἀλλ' ὡς αἷμα τῶν πολεμησάντων ποτὲ τοῖς θεοῖς, ἐξ ὧν οἴονται πεσόντων καὶ τῇ γῇ συμμιγέντων ἀμπέ λους γενέσθαι. διὸ καὶ τὸ μεθύειν ἔκφρονας ποιεῖ καὶ παραπλῆγας, ἅτε δὴ τῶν προγόνων τοῦ αἵματος ἐμπιπλαμένους. Bibere autem cœperunt a Psammeticho, cum neque bibissent ante, neque diis libassent vinum, non id gratum diis rati, sed sanguinem eorum qui aliquando bellum diis intulissent: ex quorum cadaveribus terræ permixtis putant vites esse ortas. Itaque etiam ebrietas insanos facit et abalienat mente, impletis hominibus sanguine suorum majorum. Plutarch. de Iside.

Perhaps Androcydes had this fable in view: Androcydes sapientia clarus ad Alexandrum Magnum scripsit, intemperantiam ejus cohibens: Vinum poturus, Rex, memento te bibere sanguinem Terræ.' Plinius, xiv. 5.

Jerom, Ambrose, and other fathers have declaimed against matrimony, and recommended monkish abstinence, almost as much as Mañes, and have employed arguments as insignificant as those of the heretic.

a

Philosophy, natural, moral, and theological, hath received such great improvements in this and the last century, by the labours of the learned, and particularly the learned of this nation, and the Manichæan hypothesis is so very weak in all its parts, that there is no danger in exposing it fairly and impartially to public view, and no occasion for the mean artifice of misrepresenting it, and of charging its favourers with follies and enormities of which they were not guilty.

To suppose that matter, which is limited, dispersed, passive, and ever-divisible, is self-existing, independent, endued with sense, perception, life, and motion, essentially evil, and necessarily vitious; to add to this the spontaneous generation of evil dæmons and other evil beings out of this matter; to suppose God corporeally extended, and excluded from those parts of space which are occupied by body, but in all other respects perfect, is a system so un

a Cudworth, Boyle, Locke, Newton, &c.

b See in Bayle's Dict. the Adamites and the Turlupins, who probably have been wronged as well as the Manichæans.

philosophical, that it can never hold up its head or make its fortune in these days, or, at least, it can never be adopted by men of any sense and judgment.

Milton, judiciously, introduces Satan talking of his origin and generation according to the Manichæan system: v.

That we were form'd then say'st thou and the work
Of secondary hands, by task transferr'd

From Father to his Son? strange point and new!
Doctrine which we would know whence learn'd : who saw
When this creation was? remember'st thou

Thy making, while the Maker gave thee being ?
We know no time when we were not as now;
Know none before us: self-begot, self-rais'd
By our own quickning pow'r, when fatal course
Had circled his full orb, the birth mature
Of this our native heav'n.'

Bayle took a singular delight in adorning and improving the Manichæan objections against the doctrine of one selfexisting principle, and endeavoured to show that, upon the supposition that God is the author of all things, it is impossible to defend his wisdom and his goodness against the difficulties which arise from his causing or permitting natu. ral and moral evil. On the other hand he was very willing to allow that the Manichæan system was indefensible. The result of all this was, according to him, the triumph of scepticism, and the futility of human reason.

Many replies were made; and amongst others Le Clerc undertook to defend the justice, wisdom, and goodness of God against him, first in his Parrhasiana, and then in his Bibliotheque Choisie; in which controversy he had manifestly the advantage over Bayle.

A. D. 250. DIONYSIUS, bishop of Alexandria, in a letter to Fabius, bishop of Antioch, relates to him the following story; 'There was in our city an old Christian, one Serapion, whose conduct in other respects had ever been unblameable and exemplary, but who in the persecution had deserted, and afterwards had often begged to be forgiven and readmitted. His petition was rejected, and no regard was showed to him, because he had sacrificed.

Some time after he was taken very ill, and lay for three day's senseless and speechless. On the fourth day he came to himself a little, and calling to him his grandson, Child, said he, how long will you detain me here? hasten, I beseech you, and release me. Go, call me one of the presby ters. When he had said this, he lost his speech again. The boy hastened to call a presbyter. It was in the night time, and the presbyter himself was sick. But as I had ordered that pardon should be granted to all those who lay a dying, (especially if they had humbly begged it before) that they might depart in faith and hope, he gave the child a portion of the eucharist, and ordered him to a dip it in wine, and give it to the dying man. As the youth was drawing near, the old man recovered his senses, and said, You are come, my child, but the presbyter, I know, could not come himself. Do as you were ordered, and give me my dismission. So he received the eucharist, and instantly gave up the ghost. Doth it not appear from this that he had his time prolonged, till he was thus dismissed in peace, and that his crime was remitted, for the sake of the many good actions which he had performed in the long course of a virtuous life?' Apud Euseb. vi. 44.

If this wonderful thing happened just as Dionysius hath related it, it tended to a good and edifying purpose, at a time when it was matter of debate in what manner Lapsed Christians' should be treated by the church; and it showed that sinners truly penitent were not to be harshly used by their brethren, and excluded from the hopes of salvation; and that God was ready to receive those who with humility, and sorrow, and resolutions of amendment returned to him.

This Dionysius of Alexandria was one of Origen's disciples; he is called by Jerom, Vir eloquentissimus,' he was held in great esteem by Eusebius and by all the antient Christians; and from the large extracts of his writings produced by Eusebius, he appears to have been a learned, critical, acute, ingenious, elegant author. He was of an

a

'Arobežaι xeλúras. Valesius, aqua intinetam.' But I think, with Louth, it should rather be rendered, vino tinctam.'

illustrious family, had received a polite education, had been a professor of rhetoric in the days of his Paganism, and afterwards was a bishop and a confessor.

He pretends to have had some visions and revelations ; but whether it were really so, or whether he thought such sort of fictions harmless and lawful, or whether he had a warm imagination and was a little enthusiastical, it is impossible for us now to determine.

Some of the visions and revelations of those days seem to have been vouchsafed, to teach men that they might flee in time of persecution: but such admonitions were not extremely necessary, since the dictates of nature and reason taught it, and the Gospel had confirmed those dictates:

Scimus, et hoc nobis non altius imprimet Ammon.'

CYPRIAN was made bishop of Carthage A. D. 248. It hath been said of him that he was fond of spiritual power, and it cannot entirely be denied: but he had factious ecclesiastics and troublesome schismatics to deal with, which might lead him to insist somewhat the more on his prerogatives; and it is certain that in one point he was for restraining episcopal encroachments. He highly approved and recommended the method of appealing to the people in the election of bishops, and of asking their consent and approbation, and of allowing them a negative. Не thought that the bishops of a province had no right to make a cabal, and elect a bishop secretly by themselves, and obtrude him upon the church. But after Christianity was the established and the ruling religion, great inconveniences, and tumults, and seditions, and massacres arose from the popular elections of bishops, and ecclesiastical preferments became more lucrative, and were thought more worthy of a battle, or of mean tricks and solicitations.

omnium rerum vicissitudo est.' ́

b Cum ligneis uteremur calicibus, aureos sacerdotes habebamus: nunc aureos habemus calices, ligneos sacerdotes. Bonifacius Decret. part. iii. de Consecrat, distinct. i. can. 44.

Cyprian upon all occasions consulted his own clergy and people, and desired their consent. The bishops of Rome at that time began to take upon them and to domineer, and Stephen, dealing about his censures and excommunications, behaved himself with indecency and arrogance towards Cyprian and many others, in the affair of rebaptizing.

In a council of Carthage, consisting, of eighty-seven bishops, Cyprian said to them, 'None of us ought to set himself up as a bishop of bishops, or pretend tyrannically to constrain his colleagues, because each bishop hath a liberty and a power to act as he thinks fit, and can no more be judged by another bishop, than he can judge another. But we must all wait for the judgment of Jesus Christ, to whom alone belongs the power to set us over the church, and to judge of our actions.' Du Pin inserted these words in his Biblioth. i. p. 164. to buffet the pope by the hand of Cyprian.

Many passages there are in Cyprian's writings containing high notions of episcopal authority and ecclesiastical jurisdiction. Whilst he strenuously opposed the domination of one pope, he seemed in some manner to make as many popes as bishops, and mere arithmetical noughts' of the rest of the Christians; which yet, I believe, was not his intent.

In the persecution under Decius, he fled from Carthage, and was proscribed, and his effects were seized. He was censured by some persons as a deserter of his flock; but the decent constancy and the Christian piety with which he laid down his life afterwards, afford a presumption that he had not retired for want of courage.

His death was lamented even by many of the Pagans, whose esteem he had gained by his affable and charitable behaviour.

He often talks of his visions and revelations, some of which he had on occasions which in all appearance were small and inconsiderable enough, whilst he had none to

с

Episcopus sine consilio clericorum suorum clericos non ordinet, et civium testimonium quærat,' say the Canons of the Fourth Council of Carthage A. D. 398. if they be genuine. The Canon however is very reasonable.