proposition. Some human remains have been lately announced by a German geologist, but their influence on the subject has not yet been settled. The haste which is manifested, on scanty premises, to rush to a conclusion unfavourable to the authority of the Divine Volume, forms a miserable comment on the head and heart of modern "philosophers." Truth we love. The Sacred Volume urges us to "search for it as for hid treasures.” The Bible claims to be a communication from the God of truth, who is also the Author of nature. All his works harmonize. We are not debarred by the sacred Volume from searching the volume of nature. We go to it with eagerness, because "the earth is full of His glory." And we never had a scruple, that the Sacred Volume, rationally interpreted, would not accord with facts in the natu ral, and fitness in the moral world.

NOTICE

OF

DOCTOR CASTELL.

DR. Edmund Castle, or Castell, was a younger son of Robert Castell, Esq. of East Hatley, in the County of Cambridge; where he was born in 1606. He became a pensioner of Emmanuel College, Cambridge, in 1621 : from which he removed, many years afterwards, to St. John's College, for the advantage, as some have said, of the library there. In the early part of his life, he had been Vicar of Hatfield-Peverell, in Essex; and afterwards Rector of Woodham-Walter, in the same county; both which he resigned at different periods. He was also Rector of Higham-Gobion, in Bedfordshire; which benefice he retained till his death. He was appointed professor of Arabic in the University of Cambridge in 1666, and a prebendary of Canterbury in 1667. He was also chaplain in ordinary to king Charles the second. Possessed of these honours, he died in 1685.

The commencement of his labours upon the Lexicon appears to have been in the *same year, which presented

* Dr. Walton, in a preceding note, mentions the specimen of the Lexicon as then (1657) published; and speaks of more than one as employed in it. Nor has Castell omitted, in his Preface, to notice partners in his toil; yet some of them at length deterred by the immensity of the undertaking from further concurrence; some remaining long with him, as Murray, Beveridge, and Wansleb; but Lightfoot always, as

to the public Dr. Walton's proposals for his Bible. For this Lexicon, which was published in 1669, has been des

without him, he has said, his work could never have been so entire as it is. See Strype's Life of Lightfoot, p. xxi. It appears also that Mr. Samuel Clarke was another of the viri docti, alluded to by Dr. Walton, in the following very interesting account, in 1661, both of Castell and his work. "Dr. Castell, whose labours about the Biblia Polyglotta were not inferior to any one's, and Mr. Clarke, an assistant also in the Great Bible, persevering in their endeavours to do yet more good, about three years since printed some Proposals for the printing of Grammars and Lexicons for the Languages in the Great Bible. In Cambridge they found good acceptance, and Dr. Castell professeth he received no where so much encouragement for the work as there; and when some number of subscribers had paid the first sum, they began to open the press. But Mr. Clarke is called to an office in Oxford. Dr. Castell yet resolves to go on cum bono Deo; and with the assistance of such persons as were fit for the work, and patient, he hath finished all the first tome; the other tome now in the press, and the Grammars, will be finished as soon as may be with convenience. That which hath retarded the work, has been the paucity of subscribers, besides the unfaithfulness of some that subscribed.-Dr. Castell is a modest and retired person. Indefatigably studious, (and for many years his studies were devoted to these Eastern lan guages,) he hath sacrificed himself to this service; and is resolved, for the glory of God and the good of men, to go on in this work, though he die in it, and the sooner for the great pains it requires; so great that Petræus and some others, that were engaged by him to assist, were forced to desist, as being unable to endure such Herculean labours. I never see Dr. Castell, nor think of him, but his condition affects me. He hath worn his body in the unexpressible labours, which the preparations of such a work for the press require. He hath been forced to sell some part of his no great temporal estate to procure money for the paying off the workmen at the press; the money subscribed falling short, and there being such a scarcity of persons so nobly affected as to contribute. God preserve him in health, that he may lay the head-stone; God raise up some, that may move others of ample fortune to ennoble themselves, by encouraging a work of so universal and diffusive a good; God reward him in the comforts-of this life also! Persons, deserving highly for their endeavours of the public good, would have found no less encouragement in the heathen world. Such an one at Athens would have had the favour of the Prytaneum. Would such places were erected in Christendom!" Letters of Dr. Worthington to Hartlib, Ep.