flesh must have been common among the Jews, as he foretels them in chap. xxxix, that God will give them not only to eat the horses of their enemies, but even the riders, and the other great warriors. This is clear and positive (7); and indeed why might not the Jews have been man-eaters, since this only was wanting to render the chosen people of God the most abominable upon

earth.

I have read in the anecdotes of the history of England, in Cromwell's time, of a woman who kept a tallow-chandler's shop at Dublin, whose candles were remarkably good and made of the fat of Englishmen. Some time after one of her customers complaining that her candles were not so good as usual, why, said she, for this month past I have had few or no Englishmen. I would fain know who was most guilty, they who murdered the English, or this woman who made such good candles of their tallow?

APIS.

(") This is a strange perversion of Ezekiel: the chapter above-mentioned contains God's judgment upon Gog, Israel's victory, and the feaft of the fowls. The prophet foretels a complete victory over Gog, his princes, and his army. The field where they are slain is compared to a table of entertainment, and the feathered fowls and beasts of the field are invited to partake of it. "Come and gather yourselves to my sacrifice, ye shall eat the flesh of the mighty, and drink the blood of the princes of the earth; ye shall be filled at my table with horses and chariots." that is, with horsemen and those who ride in chariots. Is this a proof, that the eating of human flesh was common among the Jews, because, after the slaughter of an enemy, their dead bodies were exposed to the feathered fowls and beasts of the field?

APIS.

WAS it as a god, as a symbol, or as an ox, that Apis was worshipped at Memphis? I am inclined to think that it was as a god by the fanatics, and only as a mere symbol by the wise, whilst the stupid people worshipped the ox. Was it well in Cambyses, when he had conquered Egypt, to kill this ox with his own hands? why not? he gave the weak to see that their god might be roasted, and nature not stir a finger to revenge such a sacrilege. The Egyptians have been greatly cried up; but I, for my part, scarce know a more contemptible people. There must ever have been both in their temper and government, some radical vice, by which they have been kept in a perpetual servitude. I allow that in those times of which we have scarce any knowledge, they overran the earth, but since the historical ages, they have been subdued by all who thought it worth their while; by the Assyrians, the Persians, the Greeks, the Romans, the Arabians, the Mamelucs, the Turks; in short, by every body except our CROISES, these being more imprudent than the Egyptians were cowardly. It was the corps of Mamelucs which defeated the French.

Per

haps there are but two tolerable things in this nation; the first, a freedom of conscience; they who worshipped an ox never compelling those who worshipped a monkey to change their religion; the second, the hatching of chickens in

ovens.

We have many pompous accounts of their pyramids; but these very pyramids are monuments

of

of their slavery, for the whole nation must have been made to work on them, otherwise such unwieldy masses could never have been finished. And what is the use of them? Why, forsooth, in a little room within them is kept the mummy of some prince or governor, which his soul is, at the term of a thousand years, to re-animate. But if they expected this resurrection of the bodies, why take out the brain before embalming them? Were the Egyptians to rise again without brains ?

THE APOCALYPSE.

JUSTIN MARTYR, who wrote in the year

170 of our æra, is the first that mentions the Apocalypse, attributing it, in his Dialogue with Tryphon, to the apostle John the Evangelist. This Jew asks him whether he does not believe that Jerusalem is one day to be restored in all its former splendor? Justin answers him that it is the belief of all Christians who have a right way of thinking. "There was," says he, 66 among us a respectable person named John, one of Jesus's twelve apostles; he has foretold that the faithful shall dwell a thousand years in Je"rusalem."

The thousand years reign went current a long time among the Christians, and this period was in great repute among the gentiles. At the end of a thousand years the souls of the Egyptians returned into their bodies; the souls in Virgil's purgatory underwent a purification for the same space of time, ET MILLE PER ANNOS. The Millenarian new Jerusalem was to have twelve

gates

gates, in remembrance of the twelve apostles, the form square, the length, breadth, and height, twelve thousand stades, that is five hundred leagues; so that the houses must have been five hundred leagues high: this could not but make it to those living in the upper story something troublesome : but however, this is what the Apocalypse says (8), chap. xxi.

Though Justin be the first who attributes the Apocalypse to St. John, some persons disallow his testimony, seeing, in the same dialogue with the Jew Tryphon, he says that, according to the apostle's narrative, at Jesus Christ's going down into Jordan, the waters of that river boiled, and were all in a flame; yet not a jot of this is to be found in the apostolic writings.

The same St. Justin confidently cites the oracles of the Sybils, and farther pretends to have seen the remains of the little houses in the Pharos of Egypt, where the seventy-two interpreters were shut up in Herod's time. For such an assertion the author seems to have been him self a proper subject for confinement.

St. Irenæus, next in succession, and who also held the Millenium, says, that he was informed by an old man, that St. John composed the Apocalypse: but it has been objected to St. Irenæus,

that

(*) The description of the New Jerusalem is entirely figurative; so that to take each metaphor in a literal sense is ridiculous. The length, and the breadth, and the height of it are represented equal, to denote that in the new city all parts shall be equal in perfection. The design of the whole is only to shew, that the mansions of the blessed will be most glorious places.

that he has written, there can be but four gospels, as there are but four parts of the world, and four cardinal winds, and that Ezekiel saw only four beasts. This reasoning he calls a demonstration; and it must be owned, that Irenæus' demonstrating carries as much weight as Justin's seeing.

Clement of Alexandria, in his ELECTA, mentions only an Apocalypse of St. Peter's, which was highly respected. Tertullian, a warm stickler for the Millenium, not only affirms that St. John has predicted this resurrection, and reign in the city of Jerusalem, but that this Jerusalem was then forming in the air; that all the Christians in Palestine, and the very Pagans, had seen it forty nights successively, but unluckily this city disappeared at day-light.

Origen, in his preface to St. John's Gospel, quotes the oracles of the Apocalypse, but he likewise quotes the oracles of the Sybils: yet St. Dionysius of Alexandria, who wrote about the middle of the third century, says in one of his fragments preserved by Eusebius, that almost all the doctors rejected the Apocalypse, as a senseless book, that, instead of being written by St. John, the author of it was one Cerinthus, who borrowed a respectable name, to give the greater weight to his chimeras.

The council of Laodicea, held in 360, did not admit the Apocalypse among the canonical books; and it was something odd, that Laodicea, a church to which the Apocalypse was directed, should reject a treasure particularly appointed for it; and even the bishop of Ephesus, a member of the council, should also reject this book of St. John, though buried in his metropolis.