feasting on a sacrifice. In this manner Abimelech, the Philistine, confirmed the covenant with Isaac, and Jacob with his father Laban, Gen. xxvi. 26-31; xxxi. 4446, 54. Sometimes they divided the parts of the victim, and passed between them, by which act the parties signified their resolution of fulfilling all the terms of the engagement, on pain of being divided or cut asunder as the sacrifice had been, if they should violate the covenant, Gen. xv. 9, 10, 17, 18; Jer. xxxiv. 18. Hence the Hebrew word charat, which properly signifies to divide, is applied allusively in scripture to the making of a covenant. When the law of Moses was established, the people feasted in their peace-offerings on a part of the sacrifice, in token of their reconciliation with God, Deut. rii. 6, 7. See CIRCUMCISION.

COURT, an entrance into a palace or house. (See House.) The great courts belonging to the temple of Jerusalem were three; the first called the court of the gentiles, because the gentiles were allowed to enter so far, and no farther; the second was the court of Israel, because all the Israelites, provided they were purified, had a right of admission into it; the third was that of the priests, where the altar of burnt-offerings stood, where the priests and Levites exercised their ministry. Common Israelites, who were desirous of offering sacrifices, were at liberty to bring their victims as far as the inner part of the court; but they could not pass a certain line of separation, which divided it into two; and they withdrew as soon as they had delivered their sacrifices and offerings to the priests, or had made their confession with the ceremony of laying their hands upon the head of the victim, if it were a sin-offering. Before the temple was built, there was a court belonging to the tabernacle, but not near so large as that of the temple, and encompassed only with pillars, and veils hung with cords.

CRANE. In Isaiah xxxviii. 14, and Jer. viii. 7, two birds are mentioned, the ww and the 1. The first in our version is translated crane, and the second swallow; but Bochart exactly reverses them, and the reasons he adduces are incontrovertible. Aristophanes curiously observes, that "it is time to sow when the crane migrates clamouring into Africa; she also bids the mariner suspend his rudder and take his rest, and the mountaineer to provide himself with raiment;" and Hesiod, "When thou hearest the voice of the crane, clamouring annually from the clouds on high, recollect that this is the signal for ploughing, and indicates the approach of showery winter."

Where do the cranes or winding swallows go,
Fearful of gathering winds and falling snow?
Conscious of all the coming ills, they fly
To milder regions and a southern sky.

PRIOR.

The prophet Jeremiah mentions this bird, thus intelligent of the seasons by an instinctive and invariable observation of their ap

pointed times, as a circumstance of reproach to the chosen people of God, who, although taught by reason and religion, "knew not the judgment of the Lord."

CREATION, in its primary import, signifies the bringing into being something which did not exist before. The term is therefore most generally applied to the original production of the materials whereof the visible world is composed. It is also used in a secondary or subordinate sense, to denote those subsequent operations of the Deity upon the matter so produced, by which the whole system of nature, and all the primitive genera of things, received their forms, qualities, and laws. The accounts of the creation of the world which have existed among different nations, are called Cosmogonies. Moses's is unquestionably the most ancient; and had it no other circumstance to recommend it, its superior antiquity alone would give it a just claim to our attention. It is evidently Moses's intention to give a history of man, and of religion, and an account of creation. In the way in which he has detailed it, it would have been foreign to his plan, had it not been necessary to obviate that most ancient and most natural species of idolatry, the worship of the heavenly bodies. His first care, therefore, is to affirm decidedly, that God created the heavens and the earth; and then he proceeds to mention the order in which the various objects of creation were called into existence. First of all, the materials, of which the future universe was to be composed, were created. These were jumbled together in one indigested mass, which the ancients called chaos, and which they conceived to be eternal; but which Moses affirms to have been created by the power of God. The materials of the chaos were either held in solution by the waters, or floated in them, or were sunk under them; and they were reduced into form by the Spirit of God moving upon the face of the waters. Light was the first distinct object of creation; fishes were the first living things; man was last in the order of creation.

2. The account given by Moses is distinguished by its simplicity. That it involves difficulties which our faculties cannot comprehend, is only what might be expected from a detail of the operations of the omnipotent mind, which can never be fully understood but by the Being who planned them. Most of the writers who come nearest to Moses in point of antiquity have favoured the world with cosmogonies; and there is a wonderful coincidence in some leading particulars between their accounts and his. They all have his chaos; and they all state water to have been the prevailing principle before the arrangement of the universe began. The systems became gradually more complicated, as the writers receded farther from the age of primitive tradition; and they increased in absurdity, in proportion to the degree of philosophy which was applied to the subject.

The problem of creation has been said to be, "Matter and motion being given, to form a world;" and the presumption of man has often led him to attempt the solution of this intricate question. But the true problem was, Neither matter nor motion being given, to form a world." At first, the cosmogonists contented themselves with reasoning on the traditional or historical accounts they had received; but it is irksome to be shackled by authority; and after they had acquired a smattering of knowledge, they began to think that they could point out a much bet.. ter way of forming the world than that which had been transmitted to them by the consenting voice of antiquity. Epicurus was most distinguished in this hopeful work of invention; and produced a cosmogony on the principle of a fortuitous concourse of atoms, whose extravagant absurdity has hitherto preserved it from oblivion. From his day to ours, the world has been annoyed with systems; but these are now modified by the theories of chemists and geologists, whose speculations, in so far as they proceed on the principle of induction, have sometimes been attended with useful results; but, when applied to solve the problem of creation, will serve, like the systems of their forerunners, to demonstrate the ignorance and the presumption of man.

3. The early cosmogonies are chiefly interesting from their resemblance to that of Moses; which proves that they have either been derived from him, or from some ancient prevailing tradition respecting the true history of creation. The most ancient author next to Moses, of whose writings any fragments remain, is Sanchoniatho, the Phenician.

His writings were translated by Philo Byblius; and portions of this version are preserved by Eusebius. These writings come to us rather in an apocryphal form; they contain, however, no internal evidence which can affect their authenticity; they pretty nearly resemble the traditions of the Greeks, and are, perhaps, the parent stock from which these traditions are derived. The notions detailed by Sanchoniatho are almost translated by Hesiod, who mentions the primeval chaos, and states epos, or love, to be its first offspring. Anaxagoras was the first among the Greeks who entertained tolerably accurate notions on the subject of creation he assumed the agency of an intelligent mind in the arrangement of the chaotic materials. These sentiments gradually prevailed among the Greeks; from whom they passed to the Romans, and were generally adopted, notwithstanding the efforts which were made to establish the doctrines of Epicurus by the nervous poetry of Lucretius. Ovid has collected the orthodox doctrines which prevailed on the subject, both among Greeks and Romans; and has expressed them with uncommon elegance and perspicuity in the first chapter of his "Metamorphoses." There is so striking a coinci

dence between his account and that of Moses that one would almost think that he was translating from the first chapter of Genesis; and there can be no doubt that the Mosaic writings were well known at that time, both among the Greeks and Romans. Megasthenes, who lived in the time of Seleucus Nicanor, affirms, that all the doctrines of the Greeks respecting the creation, and the constitution of nature, were current among the Bramins in India, and the Jews in Syria. He must, of course, have been acquainted with the writings of the latter, before he could make the comparison. Juvenal talks of the writings of Moses as well known :—

Tradidit arcano quodcunque volumine Moses.

We are therefore inclined to think that Ovid actually copied from the Bible; for he adopts the very order detailed by Moses. Moses mentions the works of creation in the following order: the separation of the sea from the dry land; the creation of the heavenly bodies; of marine animals; of fowls and land animals; of man. Observe now the order of the Roman poet :

Ante mare et terras, et quod tegit omnia cœlum
Unus erat toto naturæ vultus in orbe,
Quem dixere chaos, rudis, indigestaque moles.
Hanc Deus, et melior litem natura diremit.
Nam cœlo terras, et terras abscidit undis;
Et liquidum spisso secrevit ab aere cœlum.
Neu regio foret ulla suis animalibus orba;
Astra tenent cæleste solum, formæque deorum;
Cesserunt nitidis habitanda piscibus undœ:
Terra feras cepit, volucres agitabilis aer.
Sanctius his animal, mentisque capacius altæ
Deerat adhuc, et quod dominari in cætera posset :
Natus homo est.

"Before the seas, and this terrestrial ball,
And heav'ns' high canopy, that covers all,
One was the face of nature; if a face:
Rather, a rude and indigested mass:

A lifeless lump, unfashion'd, and unframed,
Of jarring seeds; and justly chaos named.

But God, or nature, while they thus contend,
To these intestine discords put an end;

Then earth from air, and seas from earth were driv'n,
And grosser air sunk from ethereal heav'n.
Thus when the God, whatever god was he,
Had form'd the whole, and made the parts agree,
That no unequal portions might be found,
He moulded earth into a spacious round.
Then, every void of nature to supply,
With forms of gods he fills the vacant sky:
New herds of beasts he sends, the plains to share:
New colonies of birds, to people air;

And to their oozy beds the finny fish repair.
A creature of a more exalted kind
Was wanting yet, and then was man design'd:
Conscious of thought, of more capacious breast,
For empire form'd, and fit to rule the rest:
Whether with particles of heav'nly fire

The God of nature did his soul inspire," &c.
DRYDEN.

}

Here we see all the principal objects of creation mentioned exactly in the same order which Moses had assigned to them in his writings; and when we consider what follows;-the war of the giants; the general corruption of the world; the universal deluge; the preservation of Deucalion and Pyrrha; their sacrifices to the gods on leaving the vessel in which they had been preserved; there can scarcely remain a doubt that Ovid borrowed, either directly or at

second hand, from Moses. What he says, too, is perfectly consistent with the received notions on the subject, though it is probable that they had never before been so regularly methodised. This train of reasoning would lead us to conclude that Ovid, and indeed the whole heathen world, derived their notions respecting the creation, and the early history of mankind, from the sacred scriptures and it shows how deficient their own resources were, when the pride of philosophy was forced to borrow from those whom it affected to despise. With regard to the western mythologists, then, there can be little doubt that their cosmogonies, at least such of them as profess to be historical, and not theoretical, are derived from Moses; and the same may be affirmed with regard to the traditions of the east: as they were the same with those of Greece in the time of Megasthenes, whose testimony to this effect is quoted both by Clemens Alexandrinus and Strabo, we may naturally conclude that they had the same origin.

4. The Hindoo mythology has grown, in the natural uninterrupted progress of corruption, to such monstrous and complicated absurdity, that in many cases it stands unique in extravagance. In the more ancient Hindoo writings, however, many sublime sentiments occur; and in the "Institutes of Menu," many passages are found relating to the creation, which bear a strong resemblance to the account given by Moses. They are thus given in an advertisement, prefixed to the fifth volume of the "Asiatic Researches," and are intended as a supplement to a former treatise on the Hindoo religion:

"This universe existed only in the first divine idea, yet unexpanded, as if involved in darkness, imperceptible, undefinable, undiscoverable by reason, and undiscovered by revelation, as if it were wholly immersed in sleep. When the sole self-existing Power, himself undiscerned, but making this world discernible, with five elements and other principles of nature, appeared with undiminished glory, expanding his idea, or dispelling the gloom. He, whom the mind alone can perceive, whose essence eludes the external organs, who has no visible parts, who exists from eternity, even he, the soul of all beings, whom no being can comprehend, shone forth in person. He, having willed to produce various beings from his own divine substance, first with a thought created the waters. The waters are called sara, because they are the production of Nara, or the Spirit of God; and since they were his first ayana, or place of motion, he thence is called Narayana, or moving on the waters. From that which is, the first cause, not the object of sense, existing everywhere in substance, not existing to our perception, without beginning or end, was produced the divine male. He framed the heaven above, and the earth beneath; in the midst he

placed the subtile ether, the eight regions, and the permanent receptacle of waters. He framed all creatures. He, too, first assigned to all creatures distinct names, distinct acts, and distinct occupations. He gave being to time, and the divisions of time; to the stars also, and the planets; to rivers, oceans, and mountains; to level plains, and uneven valleys. For the sake of distinguishing actions, he made a total difference between right and wrong. Having divided his own substance, the mighty Power became half male, half female. He whose powers are incomprehensible, having created this uniwas again absorbed in the spirit, changing the time of energy for the time of repose.

verse,

In these passages we have evidently a philosophical comment on the account of creation given by Moses, or as transmitted from the same source of primitive tradition. We also see in these passages the rudiments of the Platonic philosophy, the eternal ideas in the divine mind, &c.; and were any question to arise respecting the original author of these notions, we should have little hesitation in giving it against the Greeks. They were the greatest plagiaries both in literature and philosophy, and they have scarcely an article of literary property which they can call their own, except their poetry. Their sages penetrated into Egypt and India, and on their return stigmatised the natives of these countries as barbarians, lest they should be suspected of stealing their inventions.

5. The Chaldean cosmogony, according to Berosus, when divested of allegory, seems to resolve itself into this, that darkness and water existed from eternity; that Belus divided the humid mass, and gave birth to creation; that the human mind is an emanation from the divine nature. The cosmogony of the ancient Persians is very clumsy. They introduce two eternal principles, the one good, called Oromasdes, the other evil, called Arimanius; and they make these two principles contend with each other in the creation and government of the world. Each has his province, which he strives to enlarge; and Mithras is the mediator to moderate their contentions. This is the most inartificial plan that has been devised to account for the existence of evil, and has the least pretensions to a philosophical basis. The Egyptian cosmogony, according to the account given of it by Plutarch, seems to bear a strong resemblance to the Phenician, as detailed by Sanchoniatho. According to the Egyptian account, there was an eternal chaos, and an eternal spirit united with it, whose agency at last arranged the discordant materials, and produced the visible system of the universe. The cosmogony of the northern nations, as may be collected from the Edda, supposes an eternal principle prior to the formation of the world. The Orphic Fragments state everything to have existed

in God, and to proceed from him. The notion implied in this maxim is suspected to be pantheistic, that is, to imply the universe to be God; which, however, might be a more modern perversion. Plato supposed the world to be produced by the Deity, uniting eternal, immutable ideas, or forms, to variable matter. Aristotle had no cosmogony, because he supposed the world to be without beginning and without end. According to the Stoical doctrine, the divine nature, acting on matter, first produced moisture, and then the other elements, which are reciprocally convertible.

CRETE, an island in the Mediterranean, now called Candia, Titus i. 5. Nature had endowed this island with all that renders man happy; the inhabitants, likewise, had formerly a constitution which was renowned and frequently compared with that of the Spartans; but at this time, and even long before, all, even laws and morals, had sunk very low. The character of this nation was mutable, prone to quarrelling, to civil disturbances and frays, to robberies and violences. Avaricious and base to a degree of sordid greediness, they considered nothing as ignoble which gratified this inclination. Thence arose their treachery, their false and deceitful disposition, which had passed into a common proverb. Even in the times of purer morals they were decidedly addicted to wine; and their propensity to incontinence was frequently censured and noticed by the ancients. Religion itself was one cause of the many excesses of this nation. Many deities were born among them; they also showed their tombs and catacombs, and celebrated the feasts and mysteries of all. They therefore had continually holydays, diversions, and idle times, and one of their native poets, (Diodorus calls him eoλóyos,) gave them the testimony which Paul found to be so true, Titus i. 12. Jews also had established themselves among them, who according to all appearance could have improved here but very little in morality. The apostle seems to have considered them a more dangerous people than the inhabitants themselves.

CRIMSON, 75, 2 Chron. ii. 7, iii. 14, the name of a colour. Bochart supposes it to be the cochlea purpuraria, or purple from a kind of shell-fish taken near Mount Carmel. But as the name of the mount is said to mean a vineyard, one may rather suppose the colour to signify that of grapes; like the redness of the vesture of him who trod the wine-press, Isai. lxiii. 1, 2. What our version renders crimson, Isai. i. 18, Jer. iv. 30, should be scarlet.

CROSS, an ancient instrument of capital punishment. The cross was the punishment inflicted by the Romans, on servants who had perpetrated crimes, on robbers, assassins, and rebels; among which last Jesus was reckoned, on the ground of his making himself King or Messiah, Luke xxiii. 1-5,

13-15. The words in which the sentence was given were, "Thou shalt go to the cross.' The person who was subjected to this punishment was then deprived of all his clothes, excepting something around the loins. In this state of nudity he was beaten, sometimes with rods, but more generally with whips. Such was the severity of this flagellation, that numbers died under it. Jesus was crowned with thorns, and made the subject of mockery; but insults of this kind were not among the ordinary attendants of crucifixion. They were owing, in this case, merely to the petulant spirit of the Roman soldiers, Matt. xxvii. 29; Mark xv. 17; John xix. 2, 5. The criminal, having been beaten, was subjected to the further suffering of being obliged to carry the cross himself to the place of punishment, which was commonly a hill, near the public way, and out of the city. The place of crucifixion at Jerusalem was a hill to the northwest of the city. The cross, saupòs, a post, otherwise called the unpropitious or infamous tree, consisted of a piece of wood erected perpendicularly, and intersected by another at right angles near the top, so as to resemble the letter T. The crime for which the person suffered was inscribed on the transverse piece near the top of the perpendicular one.

There is no mention made in ancient writers of anything on which the feet of the person crucified rested. Near the middle, however, of the perpendicular beam, there projected a piece of wood, on which he sat, and which answered as a support to the body, since the weight of the body might otherwise have torn away the hands from the nails driven through them. The cross, which was erected at the place of punishment, being there firmly fixed in the ground, rarely exceeded ten feet in height. victim, perfectly naked, was elevated to the small projection in the middle: the hands were then bound by a rope round the transverse beam, and nailed through the palm.

The

The assertion that the persons who suffered crucifixion were not in some instances fastened to the cross by nails through the hands and feet, but were merely bound to it by ropes, cannot be proved by the testimony of any ancient writer whatever. That the feet, as well as the hands, were fastened to the cross by means of nails, is expressly asserted in the play of Plautus, entitled "Mostellaria," compared with Tertullian against the Jews, and against Marcion. In regard to the nailing of the feet, it may be furthermore observed, that Gregory Nazianzen has asserted, that one nail only was driven through both of them; but Cyprian, (de passione,) who had been a personal witness to crucifixions, and is, consequently, in this case, the better authority, states, on the contrary, that two nails or spikes were driven, one through each foot. The crucified person remained suspended in this way till he died, and the

corpse had become putrid. While he exhibited any signs of life, he was watched by a guard; but they left him when it appeared that he was dead. The corpse was not buried, except by express permission, which was sometimes granted by the emperor on his birth-day, but only to a very few. An exception, however, to this general practice was made by the Romans in favour of the Jews, on account of Deut. xxi. 22, 23; and in Judea, accordingly, crucified persons were buried on the same day. When, therefore, there was not a prospect that they would die on the day of the crucifixion, the executioners hastened the extinction of life, by kindling a fire under the cross, so as to suffocate them with the smoke, or by letting loose wild beasts upon them, or by breaking their bones upon the cross with a mallet, as upon an anvil. The Jews, in the times of which we are speaking, namely, while they were under the jurisdiction of the Romans, were in the habit of giving the criminal, before the commencement of his sufferings, a medicated drink of wine and myrrh, Prov. I. 6. The object of this was to produce intoxication, and thereby render the pains of the crucifixion less sensible to the sufferer. This beverage was refused by the Saviour for the obvious reason, that he chose to die with the faculties of his mind undisturbed and unclouded, Matt. xxvii. 34; Mark xv. 23. It should be remarked, that this sort of drink, which was probably offered out of kindness, was different from the vinegar which was subsequently offered to the Saviour by the Roman soldiers. The latter was a mixture of vinegar and water, denominated posca, and was a common drink for the soldiers in the Roman army, Luke xxiii. 36; John xix. 29.

2. Crucifixion was not only the most ignominious, it was likewise the most cruel, mode of punishment: so very much so, that Cicero is justified in saying, in respect to crucifixion," Ab oculis, auribusque et omni cogitatione hominum removendum esse." The sufferings endured by a person on whom this punishment is inflicted are narrated by George Gottlieb Richter, a German physician, in a "Dissertation on the Saviour's Crucifixion." The position of the body is unnatural, the arms being extended back, and almost immovable. In case of the least motion, an extremely painful sensation is experienced in the hands and feet, which are pierced with nails, and in the back, which is lacerated with stripes. The nails, being driven through the parts of the hands and feet which abound in nerves and tendons, create the most exquisite anguish. The exposure of so many wounds to the open air brings on an inflammation, which every moment increases the poignancy of the suffering. In those parts of the body which are distended or pressed, more blood flows through the arteries than can be carried back in the veins. The consequence is,

that a greater quantity of blood finds its way from the aorta into the head and stomach, than would be carried there by a natural and undisturbed circulation. The blood vessels of the head become pressed and swollen, which of course causes pain, and a redness of the face. The circumstance of the blood being impelled in more than ordinary quantities into the stomach is an unfavourable one also, because it is that part of the system which not only admits of the blood being stationary, but is peculiarly exposed to mortification. The aorta, not being at liberty to empty, in the free and undisturbed way as formerly, the blood which it receives from the left ventricle of the heart, is unable to receive its usual quantity. The blood of the lungs, therefore, is unable to find a free circulation. This general obstruction extends its effects likewise to the right ventricle, and the consequence is, an internal excitement, and exertion, and anxiety, which are more intolerable than the anguish of death itself. All the large ves sels about the heart, and all the veins and arteries in that part of the system, on account of the accumulation and pressure of blood, are the source of inexpressible misery. The degree of anguish is gradual in its increase; and the person crucified is able to live under it commonly till the third, and sometimes till the seventh, day. Pilate, therefore, being surprised at the speedy termination of the Saviour's life, inquired in respect to the truth of it of the centurion himself, who commanded the soldiers, Mark xv. 44. In order to bring their life to a more speedy termination, so that they might be buried on the same day, the bones of the two thieves were broken with mallets, John xix. 31-37; and in order to ascertain this point in respect to Jesus, namely, whether he was really dead, or whether he had merely fallen into a swoon, a soldier thrust his lance into his side; but no signs of life appeared, John xix. 31-37.

3. Our Saviour says, that whosoever will be his disciple must take up his cross and follow him, Matt. xvi. 24: by which is meant, that his disciples must be willing to suffer for him, in any way in which God, in the course of his providence, may call them to suffer; even to endure martyrdom, if called to it. The cross is also often put for the whole of Christ's sufferings, Eph. ii. 16; Heb. xii. 2; and the doctrine of his perfect atonement, Gal. vi. 14.

CROWN is a term properly taken for a cap of state worn on the heads of sovereign princes, as a mark of regal dignity. În scripture there is frequent mention made of crowns; and the use of them seems to have been very common among the Hebrews. The High Priest wore a crown, which was girt about his mitre, or the lower part of his bonnet, and was tied about his head. On the forepart was a plate of gold, with these words engraven on it: "Holiness to the Lord," Exod. xxviii. 36; xxix. 6. New-married per