was going out of the town, the devil gave her a kiss, received her homage, and imprinted on her upper lip and her right breast the mark which it is his custom to affix on all persons whom he recognises as his favourites. This seal of the devil is a small sign-manual, which, as demonological jurisconsults affirm, renders the skin insensible.

having recovered some small part of our senses, in what a horrid sink of stupid barbarism were we then immersed! Not a parliament, not a presidential court, but was occupied in trying sorcerers; not a great jurisconsult, who did not write memorials on possessions by the devil. France resounded with the cries of poor imbecile creatures whom the judges, after making them believe that they had danced "The devil ordered Michelle Chaudron round a cauldron, tortured and put to to bewitch two girls; and she immediately death without pity, in horrible torments. obeyed her lord. The relatives of the Catholics and Protestants were alike in-young women judicially charged her with fected with this absurd and frightful su-devilish practices, and the girls themselves perstition; the pretext being, that in one of the Christian gospels, it is said that disciples were sent to cast out devils. It was a sacred duty to put girls to the torture, in order to make them confess that they had lain with Satan, and that they had fallen in love with him in the form of a goat. All the particulars of the meetings of the girls with this goat were detailed in the trials of the unfortunate individuals. They were burned at last, whether they confessed or denied; and France was one vast theatre of judicial carnage.

were interrogated, and confronted with the accused. They testified that they constantly felt a swarming of ants in certain parts of their bodies, and that they were possessed. The physicians were then called in, or at least those who then passed for physicians. They visited the girls, and sought on Michelle's body for the devil's seal, which the procès-verbal calls the satanic marks. They thrust a large needle into the spot, and this of itself was a grievous torture. Blood flowed from the puncture; and Michelle made known, by her cries, that satanic marks I have before me a collection of these do not produce insensibility. The judges, infernal proceedings, made by a counsel-seeing no satisfactory evidence that Milor of the parliament of Bordeaux, named chelle Chaudron was a witch, had her put De Langre, and addressed to Monseigneur to the torture, which never fails to bring Silleri, chancellor of France, without forth proofs. The unfortunate girl, yieldMonseigneur Silleri's having ever thoughting at length to the violence of her torof enlightening those infamous magistrates.tures, confessed whatever was required of But, indeed, it would have been necessary her. to begin by enlightening the chancellor himself. What was France at that time! A continual St. Bartholomew-from the massacre of Vassy to the assassination of Marshal D'Ancre and his innocent wife. Will it be believed that, in the time of this very Bekker, a poor girl, named Mag-not cry out; therefore, the crime was sadalen Chaudron, who had been persuaded that she was a witch, was burned at Geneva ?

"The physicians again sought for the satanic mark. They found it in a small dark spot on one of her thighs. They applied the needle; but the torture had been so excessive, that the poor expiring creature scarcely felt the wound; she did

tisfactorily proved. But, as manners were becoming less rude, she was not burned until she had been hanged."

The following is a very exact summary Every tribunal in Christian Europe stil of the procès-verbal of this absurd and rings with similar condemnations: so long horrid act, which is not the last monu-did this barbarous imbecility endure, tha ment of the kind :even in our own day, at Wurtzburg, i "Michelle, having met the devil as she Franconia, there was a witch burned i

1750. And what a witch! A young woman of quality, the abbess of a convent! and in our own times, under the empire of Maria Theresa of Austria! These horrors, by which Europe was so long filled, determined Bekker to fight against the devil. In vain was he told, in prose and in verse, that he was doing wrong to attack him, seeing that he was extremely like him, being horribly ugly: nothing could stop him. He began with absolutely denying the power of Satan; and even grew so bold as to maintain that he does not exist. "If," said he, "there were a devil, he would revenge the war which I make upon him.”

Bekker reasoned but too well in saying, that if the devil existed, he would punish him. His brother ministers took Satan's part, and suspended Bekker; for heretics will also excommunicate; and, in the article of cursing, Geneva mimics Rome.

Bekker enters on his subject in the second volume. According to him, the serpent which seduced our first parents was not a devil, but a real serpent; as Balaam's ass was a real ass, and as the whale that swallowed Jonas was a real whale. It was so decidedly a real serpent, that all its species, which had before{ walked on their feet, were condemned to crawl on their bellies. No serpent, no animal of any kind, is called Satan, or Belzebub, or Devil, in the Pentateuch. There is not so much as an allusion to Satan. The Dutch destroyer of Satan does, indeed, admit the existence of angels; but at the same time he assures us, that it cannot be proved by reasoning. "And if there are any," says he, in the ghth chapter of his second volume, "it s hard to say what they are. The Scripture tells us nothing about their nature, in what the nature of a spirit consists. The Bible was made, not for angels, but men; Jesus was made a man for us,

an angel."

If Bekker has so many scruples conterning angels, it is not to be wondered that he has some concerning devils;

and it is very amusing to see into what contortions he puts his mind, in order to avail himself of such texts as appear to be in his favour, and to evade such as are against him.

He does his utmost to prove that the devil had nothing to with the afflictions of Job; and here he is even more prolix than the friends of that holy man.

There is great probability that he was condemned only through the ill-humour of his judges at having lost so much time in reading his work. If the devil himself had been forced to read Bekker's World Bewitched, he could never have forgiven the fault of having so prodigiously wearied him.

One of our Dutch divine's greatest difficulties is to explain these words:-" Jesus was transported by the spirit into the desert, to be tempted by the devil." No text can be clearer. A divine may write against Belzebub as much as he pleases, but he must of necessity admit his existence; he may then explain the difficult texts if he can.

Whoever desires to know precisely what the devil is, may be informed by referring to the Jesuit Scott: no one has spoken of him more at length: he is much worse than Bekker.

Consulting history, where the ancient origin of the devil is to be found in the doctrine of the Persians, Ahrimanes, the bad principle, corrupts all that the good principle had made salutary. Among the Egyptians, Typhon does all the harm he can; while Oshireth, whom we call Osiris, does, together with Isheth, or Isis, all the good of which he is capable.

Before the Egyptians and Persians, Mozazor, among the Indians, had revolted against God, and became the devil, but God had at last pardoned him. If Bekker and the Socinians had known this anecdote of the fall of the Indian angels and their restoration, they would have availed themselves of it to support their opinion that hell is not perpetual, and to give hopes of salvation to such of the damned as read their books.

BELIEF.

The Jews, as has already been observed, never spoke of the fall of the angels in the Old Testament; but it is mentioned in the New.

About the period of the establishment of Christianity, a book was attributed to Enoch, the seventh man after Adam," concerning the devil and his associates. Enoch gives us the names of the leaders of the rebellious and the faithful angels, but he does not say that war was in heaven; on the contrary, the fight was upon a mountain of the earth, and it was for the possession of young women.

St. Jude cites this book in his Epistle: -"And the angels, which kept not their first estate, but left their own habitation, he hath reserved in everlasting chains under darkness, unto the judgment of the great day.... Woe unto them, for they have gone in the way of Cain.... And Enoch, also, the seventh from Adam, prophesied of these...."

so enormous a power ought not to be attributed to him as that with which, even down to our own times, he has been believed to be invested. It is too much to have immolated to him a woman of quality of Wurtzburg, Magdalen Chaudron, the curate of Gaupidi, the wife of Marshal d'Ancre, and more than a hundred thousand other wizards and witches, in the space of thirteen hundred years, in Christian states. Had Belthazar Bekker been content with paring the devil's nails, he would have been very well received; but when a curate would annihilate the devil, he loses his cure.

BELIEF.

We shall see, at the article CERTAINTY, that we ought often to be very uncertain of what we are certain of; and that we may fail in good sense, when deciding according to what is called common sense. But what is it that we call believing?

A Turk comes and says to me, "I believe that the angel Gabriel often descended from the empyrean, to bring Mahomet leaves of the Alcoran, written on blue "vellum.'

Well, Mustapha, and on what does thy shaven head found its belief of this incre dible thing?

St. Peter, in his second Epistle, alludes to the book of Enoch, when he says:"For if God spared not the angels that sinned, but cast them down to hell, and delivered them into chains of darkness.." Bekker must have found it difficult to resist passages so formal. However, he was even more inflexible on the subject of devils than on that of angels: he would "On this :-That there are the greatnot be subdued by the book of Enoch, est probabilities that I have not been dethe seventh man from Adam; he main-ceived in the relation of these improbable tained that there was no more a devil than there was a book of Enoch. He said that the devil was imitated from ancient mythology, that it was an old story revived, and that we are nothing more than plagiarists.

We may at the present day be asked, why we call that Lucifer the evil spirit, whom the Hebrew version, and the book attributed to Enoch, named Samyaza. It is, because we understand Latin better than Hebrew.

But whether Lucifer be the planet Venus, or the Samyaza of Enoch, or the Satan of the Babylonians, or the Mozazor of the Indians, or the Typhon of the Egyptians, Bekker was right in saying that

prodigies; that Abubeker the father-inlaw, Ali the son-in-law, Aisha or Aisse the daughter, Omar, and Osman, certified the truth of the fact in the presence of fifty thousand men-gathered together all the leaves, read them to the faithful, and attested that not a word had been altered.

"That we have never had but one Koran, which has never been contradicted by another Koran. That God has never permitted the least alteration to be made in this book.

"That its doctrine and precepts are the perfection of reason. Its doctrine consists in the unity of God, for whom we must live and die; in the immortality of the soul; the eternal rewards of the just

and punishments of the wicked; and the mission of our great prophet Mahomet, proved by victories.

God, as he is sure that the city of Stambol exists? as he is sure that the Empress Catherine II. sent a fleet from the remotest seas of the North to land troops

"Its precepts are:-To be just and valiant; to give alms to the poor; to ab-in Peloponnesus-a thing as astonishing

stain from that enormous number of women whom the Eastern princes, and in particular the petty Jewish kings, took to themselves without scruple; to renounce the good wines of Engaddi and Tadmor, which those drunken Hebrews have so praised in their books; to pray to God five times a day, &c.

as the journey from Mecca to Jerusalem in one night-and that this fleet destroyed that of the Ottomans in the Dardanelles?

The truth is, that Mustapha believes what he does not believe. He has been accustomed to pronounce, with his mollah, certain words which he takes for ideas. To believe is very often to doubt.

Why do you believe that? says Harpagon. I believe it because I believe it, answers Master Jacques; and most men might return the same answer.

"This sublime religion has been confirmed by the miracle of all others the finest, the most constant, and best verified in the history of the world; that Mahomet, persecuted by the gross and absurd' Believe me fully, my dear reader, when scholastic magistrates who decreed his I say, one must not believe too easily. arrest, and obliged to quit his country, But what shall we say of those who returned victorious; that he made his would persuade others of what they themimbecile and sanguinary enemies his foot-selves do not believe? and what of the stool; that he all his life fought the bat-monsters who persecute their brethren in tles of the Lord; that with a small num- the humble and rational doctrine of doubt ber he always triumphed over the greater and self-distrust? number; that he and his successors have converted one-half of the earth ; and that, with God's help, we shall one day convert the other half."

BETHSHEMESH.

Of the fifty thousand and seventy Jews struck with sudden death for having looked upon the Ark; of the five golden Emeroids paid by the Philistines; and of Dr. Kennicott's Incredulity.

Nothing can be arrayed in more dazzling colours. Yet Mustapha, while believing so firmly, always feels some small shadows of doubt arising in his soul, when MEN of the world will perhaps be astohe hears any difficulties started respecting nished to find this word the subject of an the visits of the angel Gabriel; the sura article; but we here address only the or chapter brought from heaven to declare learned, and ask their instruction. that the great prophet was not a cuckold; Bethshemesh was a village belonging or the mare Borak, which carried him into God's people, situated, according to one night from Mecca to Jerusalem. commentators, two miles north of JeruMustapha stammers; he makes very badsalem. answers, at which be blushes; yet he not only tells you that he believes, but would also persuade you to believe. You press Mustapha; he still gapes and stares, and at last goes away to wash himself in bonour of Alla, beginning his ablution at the elbow, and ending with the forefinger.

The Phoenicians having, in Samuel's time, beaten the Jews, and taken from them their Ark of alliance in the battle, in which they killed thirty thousand of their men, were severely punished for it by the Lord :

"Percussit eos in secretiori parte natium, et ebullierunt villæ et agri....et Is Mustapha really persuaded-con-nati sunt mures, et facta est confusio vinced of all that he has told us? Is he mortis magna in civitate." Literally: perfectly sure that Mahomet was sent by "He struck them in the most secret part

of the buttocks; and the fields and the farm-houses were troubled.... and there sprung up mice; and there was a great confusion of death in the city."

The prophets of the Phoenicians, or Philistines, having informed them that they could deliver themselves from the scourge only by giving to the Lord five golden mice and five golden emeroids, and sending him back the Jewish Ark, they fulfilled this order, and, according to the express command of their prophets, sent back the Ark, with the mice and emeroids, on a waggon drawn by two cows, with each a sucking-calf, and without a driver.

him. Nearly all Bibles agree in these expressions: seventy men of the people, and fifty thousand of the populace.— "De populo septuaginta viros, et quinquaginta millia plebis."

The reverend Doctor Kennicott says to the right reverend the lord bishop of Oxford, that formerly there were strong prejudices in favour of the Hebrew text; but that, for seventeen years, his lordship and himself have been freed from their prejudices, after the deliberate and attentive perusal of this chapter.

In this we differ from Dr. Kennicott; and the more we read this chapter, the more we reverence the ways of the Lord, which are not our ways. It is impossible (says Kennicott) for the candid reader not to feel astonished and affected at the contemplation of fifty thousand men de{stroyed in one village-men, too, employed in gathering the harvest.

These two cows, of themselves, took the Ark straight to Bethshemesh. The men of Bethshemesh approached the Ark, in order to look at it; which liberty was punished yet more severely than the profanation by the Phoenicians had been. The Lord struck with sudden death, seventy men of the people, and fifty thou-dred thousand persons, at least, in that sand of the populace.

This does, it is true, suppose a hun

village; but should the doctor forget, that the Lord had promised Abraham that his posterity should be as numerous as the

The Jews and the Christians (adds he) have not scrupled to express their repugnance to attach faith to this destruction of fifty thousand and seventy men.

The reverend Doctor Kennicott, an Irishman, printed in 1768 a French commentary on this occurrence, and dedi-sands of the sea? cated it to the Bishop of Oxford. At the head of this commentary, he entitles himself Doctor of Divinity, member of the Royal Society of London, of the Palatine Academy, of the Academy of Gottingen, We answer, that we are Christians, and and of the Academy of Inscriptions at have no repugnance_to_attach_faith_to Paris. All that I know of the matter is, whatever is in the Holy Scriptures. We that he is not of the Academy of Inscrip- answer, with the reverend father Calmet, tions at Paris. Perhaps he is one of its that "if we were to reject whatever is excorrespondents. His vast erudition maytraordinary and beyond the reach of our have deceived him; but titles are distinct from things.

He informs the public, that his pamphlet is sold at Paris by Saillant and Mofini, at Rome by Monaldini, at Venice by Pasquali, at Florence by Cambiagi, at Amsterdam by Marc-Michel Rey, at the Hague by Gosse, at Leyden by Jaquau, and in London by Beckett, who receives subscriptions.

In this pamphlet he pretends to prove that the Scripture text has been corrupted. Here we must be permitted to differ with

conception, we must reject the whole Bible." We are persuaded that the Jews, being under the guidance of God himself, could experience no events but such as were stamped with the seal of the Divinity, and quite different from what hap pened to other men. We will even venture to advance, that the death of these fifty thousand and seventy men is one of the least surprising things in the Old Testament.

We are struck with astonishment still more reverential, when Eve's serpent and