himself to the people as a great conqueror, who at the head of his nation should destroy all Christians whatever; and the Jews were so far seduced by his promises, that they ran to arms, and massacred great numbers of Christians. The emperor Justinian's forces engaging him, the false Christ was taken and executed.

In the beginning of the eighth century, Serenus, a Spanish Jew, stood for the Messiahship, preached and gained followers; but the upshot was, that both followers and leader came to a miserable end.

The twelfth century produced several false Messiahs, particularly one in France under Lewis the Younger; but both he and his adherents were hanged, without so much as the names of master or disciples being known.

The thirteenth century was still more fertile in false Messiahs; of these the more remarkable were seven or eight who appeared in Arabia, in Persia, in Spain, and Moravia: one of them who stiled himself David el Re, is reckoned to have been a very great magician; his artifices so far succeeded with the Jews, that he saw himself at the head of a considerable party; but this fair prospect terminated in his being murdered,

James Zieglerne, a Moravian, who lived in the middle of the 16th century, promulgated the approach of the Messiah's manifestation, assuring the people that this Messiah had been born fourteen years before, and that he himself had seen him at Strasburgh; and carefully kept a sword and a scepter, to put into his hands when he should be of age to teach.

In the year 1624 another Zieglerne confirmed the former prediction.

In the year 1666 Zabathei Sevi, a native of Aleppo, gave himself out to be the Messiah, foretold by the Zieglernes. He began by preaching in the highways and fields, and while his disciples admired him, the Turks laughed at him. It appears that at first his preaching had no very extraordinary success, for the chiefs of the Smyrna synagogue went so far as to pronounce sentence of death against him; but his punishment was mitigated to exile.

He contracted three marriages without consummating any, saying it was beneath him. He took a partner named Nathan-Levi, who was to act the part of Elias, as the Messiah's harbinger. They repaired to Jerusalem, and Nathan there preached up Zabathei-Sevi as the deliverer of the nations. The Jewish populace declared for him, whilst they who had any thing to lose anathematized him.

Sevi, to shun the storm, withdrew to Constantinople, and from thence to Smyrna: Nathan Levi deputed to him four ambassadors, who, besides acknowledging his dignity, did him homage publicly as Messiah; this embassy dazzled the commonalty and even some doctors, who declared Zabathei-Sevi, Messiah, and king of the Hebrews; but the Smyrna synagogue condemned their king to be impaled.

Zabathei put himself under the cadi of Smyrna's protection, and soon had on his side the whole Jewish people; he even had two thrones set up, one for himself and the other for his favourite spouse, assuming the title of king of kings: his brother Sevi he created king of Judah; and to the Jews themselves he gave the most positive assurances, that the Ottoman empire S 4 should

should soon be their own; in the height of his insolence, he had the emperor's name struck out of the Jewish Liturgy, and his own substituted in its stead.

He was confined in the castle of the Dardanelles, and the Jews gave out that his life was spared, only because the Turks very well knew him to be immortal. The governor of the Dardanelles made a great fortune by the presents which the Jews poured on him for leave to visit their king, their Messiah, who in his fetters maintained his dignity, and even the ceremony of kissing his feet.

The Sultan, however, who then kept his court at Adrianople, was for putting an end to this farce; and sending for Sevi told him, that if he was the Messiah, he must be invulnerable. This Sevi allowed; but on the grand seignior's ordering him to be placed as a mark for his icoglans or pages to discharge their arrows at, the Messiah owned that he was not invulnerable, and protested that God sent him only to bear testimony to the holy Mahometan religion. After undergoing a severe flagellation by the ministers of the law, he turned Mahometan, and lived and died despised both by Jews and Mussulmen. This adventure has brought the profession of a false Messiah into such disrepute, that since Sevi nobody has taken it up.

METAMORPHOSIS,

METEMPSYCHOSIS.

Is it not very natural that all the various meta

morphoses with which the earth may be said to

be

be covered, should have led the orientals, whose imagination is so luxuriant, to imagine that our souls passed from one body to another? An almost imperceptible point grows to be a worm, and this worm becomes a butterfly; an acorn changes to an oak, an egg to a bird; water becomes clouds and thunder; wood is turned into fire and ashes: in a word, all nature is more or less a metamorphosis. Souls being accounted tenuous forms, were soon concluded to partake of that property, which was sensibly seen in more dense and heavy bodies. The metempsychosis is perhaps the most ancient doctrine in the known world, and still prevails in a great of India and China.

part

It is likewise very natural that those ancient fables, collected and embellished by Ovid in his admirable work, took rise from the several metamorphoses with which our eyes are conversant. The very Jews have not been without their metamorphoses. If Niobe was changed into marble, Hedith, Lot's wife, was turned into salt. As Euridice was detained in hell for looking back, a like indiscretion cost Lot's wife her human nature. The country town in Phrygia where lived the hospitable Baucis and Philemon, is changed into a lake; the same submersion has befallen Sodom. Arius's daughters turned water into oil; the Scripture mentions a change something similar, but more sacred and real. Cadmus was turned into a serpent, and the like was seen in Aaron's rod.

The pagan deities very often assumed a human disguise; and when angels appeared to the Jews, it was always as men; with Abraham they partook of a repast. St. Paul, in his epistle to the Co

rinthians,

rinthians, says, that the messenger of Satan cuffed him: Άγγελος Σατανα με κολαφίζει

MIRACLE (1)

A Miracle, in the energetic sense of the word,

means something wonderful; and thus every thing is a miracle. The order of nature, the rotation of a hundred millions of globes round a million

(1) As our author does not absolutely deny the possibility of miracles, but acknowledges those which have been operated in favour of our holy religion by Christ and his apostles, he cannot be charged on that account with infidelity. But viewing the matter in a philosophic light, and abstracted from faith, he starts several doubts, which had he dealt with candour, he ought to have solved. He seems to have borrowed great part of this article from the Essay on Miracles, written by the learned historian Mr. Hume, whom he imitates in his cant language of resting our holy religion on faith, and not on reason; a test which he says it is by no means fitted to endure.

It has been the practice of modern deists to deny the possibility of miracles in general: observing that the frame and order of the world is preserved according to fixed laws or rules in an uniform manner, they weakly conclude, that there are in matter certain necessary laws or powers, the result of which they call the course of nature; this they think impossible to be changed, and consequently that there can be no miracle. But if they would consider things duly, they would find that lifeless matter is utterly incapable of obeying any laws, or of being 'endued with any powers; and therefore what they call the course of nature can be nothing more than the arbitrary will and pleasure of God, acting continually upon matter, according to certain rules of uniformity

and