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from pork, the abomination of the kitchen utensils of strangers: all these things bear witness, that the little Hebrew people, whatever aversion they might have to the great Egyptian nation, had retained a vast number of their old masters customs. The driving of the goat Azazel into the desert, as laden with the sins of the people, is a plain imitation of an Egyptian practice; the very rabbins allow, that the word Azazel is not Hebrew. Where, then, is the improbability of the Hebrews having imitated the Egyptians in circumcision; it was no more than the Arabs their neighbours had done?

It is not at all strange that God, having sanctified baptism, which is of such an ancient date among the Asiatics, should likewise have sanctified circumcision, of no less antiquity among the Africans. It has already been noticed, that it is in his power to annex his graces to such signs as he shall please to chuse.

Again, the Jews, ever since their circumcision under Joshua, have constantly retained this custom down to the present time. The Arabians have also adhered to it; but the Egyptians, who, at first, circumcised both male and female children, in process of time discontinued this operation on the females, and, at length, limited it to priests, astrologers, and prophets. This we learn from Clement of Alexandria and Origen. None of the Ptolemies appear to have been circumcised.

The Latin authors, who contemptuously call the Jews" Curtus apella; credat Judæus apella, "curti Judæi," give no such epithets to the Egyptians. At present the whole people of Egypt are circumcised, but from another reason,

because

because Mahometism borrowed the ancient circumcision practised in Arabia.

It is this Arabian circumcision which has been introduced among the Ethiopians, where both females and males are still circumcised.

It must be acknowledged that this ceremony of circumcision seems, at first, something odd; but let it be observed, that the oriental priests consecrated themselves to the deities by particular marks. An ivy leaf was engraved with a bodkin on Bacchus's priests. Lucian tells us, that the votaries of the goddess Isis made certain characters on their wrists and necks; the priests of Cybele emasculated themselves.

It is very likely that the Egyptians, who revered the inftrument of generation, and carried the figure of it in pompous processions, took it into their heads to offer up to Isis and Osiris, by whom every thing on earth was engendered, a small part of that member, by which those deities had appointed that the human species should be perpetuated. The eastern customs are so extremely different from ours, that to a man of ever so little reading, nothing should appear strange. A Parisian, on being told that the Hottentots cut out one of their male children's testicles, is quite astonished; and perhaps a Hottentot is equally surprised that the Parisians retain both.

CONVULSION FITS.

ABOUT the year 1724, dancings were seen in St. Medard's church-yard; many were the miracles wrought there; one the Duchess Du Maine has immortalized in a song:

"Un décroteur à la royale,
Du talon gauche estropié,
Obtint pour grace speciale
D'être boiteux de l'autre pied."

The substance of which is: that " a tip-top "shoe japanner, lame in his left foot, obtained, "as a special favour, that his right should be"come as bad."

The miraculous fits are known to have conti nued till a guard was placed at the church-yard:

"De par le roi défense à Dieu
De plus frequentur en ce lieu."

"God is hereby forbidden, in the King's "name, ever more to come within this place.'

"

The Jesuits, as is likewise known, being unable to perform any such miracles, since their Xavier had exhausted all the society's gifts by raising nine persons from the dead, by way of counterpoise to the credit of the Jansenists engraved a print of Christ in a Jesuit's habit; and it is farther known that a wag of the Jansenist party put under the print,

"Admirez l'artifice extrême
De ces moines ingenieux;
Ils vous ont habillé comme eux,

Mon Dieu, de peur qu'on ne vous aime."

"The contrivance of these cunning monks! "That thou mayest not be loved, O God, they "have dressed thee up in their garb."

The Jansenists, the better to prove that Jesus Christ could never have put on the habit of a Je

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suit, filled Paris with convulsions, and drew every body to their party. Carré de Montgeron, a Counsellor of Parliament, went and delivered to the King a collection in quarto of all their miracles, attested by a thousand witnesses; for which, with very good reason, he was put under confinement, and obliged to go through a regimen to bring him to his senses: but truth is al-' ways too strong for persecution; the miracles went on for thirty years successively, without any intermission. Sister Rose, sister Illuminated, sister Promised, sister Devout, were perpetually sent for to people's houses: they used to have themselves whipped, and no marks of it were to be seen the next day. They could bear, without any shew of pain, to be beaten on the breasts with sticks (no wonder; since it had been well fenced for the exhibition of such a farce); they were laid before a great fire, with their faces copiously plaistered over with pomatum, and did not burn. At length, as time improves all arts, the scenery ended in sticking swords into their fleshy parts, and crucifying them; even a celebrated divine had likewise the honour of being extended on the cross, and all this to convince the world that a certain bull was absurd and ridiculous, which might have been done at a much cheaper rate. Yet have both Jansenists and Jesuits, one and all, leagued together against the Spirit of Laws, and against....., and against... and against and against

.; and, after such doings, we have the face to laugh at the Laplanders, the Samoyedes, and the Negroes! COUNTRY.

A

COUNTRY.

Country is composed of several families; and as self-love generally leads us to stand up for, and support our particular families, when a con-. trary interest does not intervene; so, from the like self-love, a man stands up for his town or village, which he calls his native home.

The more extended this native home is, the less we love it, for division weakens love; it is. impossible in nature to have a tender love for a family so numerous as scarce to be known.

The candidate, amidst his ambitious intrigues to be chosen ædile, tribune, prætor, consul, dictator, makes a noise about his love for his country, whereas it is only himself that he loves; every one is for securing to himself the freedom of lying at his own home, and that it shall be in no man's power to turn him out; every one is for be ing sure of his life and fortune., Thus the whole society coinciding in the like wishes, private interest becomes that of the public; and an individual, in praying only for himself, prays in effect for the whole community.

Every state on the whole earth indisputably has originally been a republic; it is the natural progress of human nature; a number of families. at first entered into an alliance to secure one another against bears and wolves; and that which. had plenty of grain, bartered with another which had nothing but wood.

On our discovery of America, all the several tribes throughout that vast part of the world were found divided into republics; but there were

only

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