a Jew, who lived at Nineveh, knew the Angel Raphael, who took a journey with his son, to help him in getting a sum of money due to him by Gabel, likewise a Jew.

In the Jewish laws, i. e. in Leviticus and Deuteronomy, not the least mention is made of the existence of angels, much less of worshipping them; accordingly the Sadducees believed no such thing.

But in the histories of the Jews they frequently occur; these angels were corporeal, and with wings at their back, as the Mercury of the Pagans had at his heels. Sometimes they concealed their wings under their apparel. Bodies they surely had, for they ate and drank; and the inhabitants of Sodom were for abusing the angels who had come on a visit to Lot.

The antient Jewish tradition, according to Ben Maimon, makes ten degrees or orders of angels. 1. The Chaios Acodesh, pure, holy. 2. The Osamins, rapid. 3. The Oralim, the strong. 4. The Chasmalim, the flames. 5. The Seraphim, sparks. 6. The Malachim, angels, messengers, deputies. 7. The Eloim, the gods, or judges. 8. The Ben Eloim, children of the gods. 9. Cherubim, images. 10. Ychim, the animated.

The history of the fall of the angels is not to be met with in the books of Moses; the first word of it is in the prophet Isaiah, who, in a divine rapture, calls out to the king of Babylon, "What is become of the exacter of tributes? the fir-trees and cedars rejoice at thy overthrow: how art thou fallen from heaven, O HELEL, thou morning star?" This HELEL has been rendered by the Latin word Lucifer; the appellation of Luci

B 4

fer

fer has afterwards been allegorically transferred to the prince of the angels who dared to make war in heaven. And lastly, this name, originally signifying phosphorus, and the dawn of day, is come to denote the devil.

The Christian religion is founded on the fall of the angels: the rebels were tumbled down from the spheres of bliss into hell, in the center of the earth, and became devils. A devil tempted Eve under the figure of a serpent, and brought damnation upon mankind, till Jesus came to deliver them, triumphing over the devil, who, however, still tempts us. Yet is this fundamental tradition to be found only in the apocryphal book of Noah (5), and there quite differently from the received traditions.

St. Austin, in his hundred and ninth letter, expressly attributes ethereal or very thin bodies both to good and bad angels. Pope Gregory II. has reduced the ten degrees of Jewish angels to nine choirs, to nine hierarchies or orders. These are the Seraphim, the Cherubim, Thrones, Dominions, Virtues, Powers, Archangels, and lastly, the Angels, from whom the other eight hierarchies receive their appellation.

The

(5) If our author means by fundamental tradition the "Fall of the angels," as he seems to do, he is certainly mistaken when he says it is to be found only in the apochryphal book of Noah: for in the 2d of St. Peter, c. ii. ver. 4. it is expressly said, "For if God "spared not the angels that sinned, but cast them "down to hell, and delivered them into chains of "darkness." The like we find in the epistle of St. Jude, ver. 6. "And the angels which kept not their "first estate, but left their own habitation, he hath "reserved in everlasting chains under darkness."

The Jews had in the temple two cherubim, each with two heads, one of an ox, the other of an eagle, with six wings: but for some time past they have been painted as a flying head, with two little wings under the ears, as angels and archangels are under the figure of young persons, with two wings at their back. As to the thrones and dominions, the pencil has not yet presumed to meddle with them.

St. Thomas, question 118, article 2, says, That the thrones are as near to God as the cherubim and seraphim, because it is on them that God sits. Scotus has computed the angels to amount to a thousand millions. The ancient mythology of good and bad genii having spread itself into Greece, and so on to Rome, it has there been sanctified, and to every man has been assigned a good and evil angel; one assisting him, and the other annoying him, from his cradle to his coffin: but, whether these good and evil angels continually shift stations from one to another, or whether they are relieved by others of their order, is not yet known. Hereupon St. Thomas's Summary of Divinity may be consulted.

Neither is it exactly known, where the angels keep themselves, whether in the air, the void, or the planets; this God has thought fit to conceal from us.

ANTHROPOPHAGI,

OR MAN-EATERS.

THAT there have been Anthropophagi, or man-eaters, is but too true; such were found in America, and there may be some still; and in

ancient

ancient time it was not the Cyclops alone who sometimes fed upon human flesh. Juvenal relates, that among the Egyptians, that people so famous for its laws, so wise, and so very devout as to worship crocodiles and onions, the Tintirites ate one of their enemies who had fallen into their hands. And this is not a tale on hear-say: this inhuman act was committed almost under his eyes, he being then in Egypt, and but a little way from Tintira. He farther quotes the Gascons and the Sagontines, who used to eat their countrymen.

In 1725, four Mississippi savages were brought to Fontainbleau, where I had the honour of conversing with them. One being a lady of the country, I took the liberty to ask her, whether she had ever eaten men, to which, with an unconcerned frankness, she answered in the affirmative: On my appearing something shocked, she excused herself, saying, that it was better, after killing an enemy, to eat him, than to leave him to be devoured by beasts, and that conquerors deserved the preference. We in pitched battles or encounters kill our neighbours, and, for a most scanty hire, prepare a most plentiful meal for ravens and worms. Herein it is that lies the horror, here is the guilt; what signifies it to a dead man being eaten by a soldier, or a crow, or a dog?

We shew a greater respect to the dead than the living; but both claim our regard. The policed nations, as they are called, were in the right not to spit their enemies, as from eating neighbours they would soon come to eat countrymen, by which the social virtues would be reduced to a low ebb. But the policed nations, far from having been always so, were for a long time wild and savage, and amidst the multitude of revolu

tions

tions in this globe, the human race has been sometimes very numerous, and sometimes very thin. The present case' of the elephants, lions, and tygers, whose species are very much decreased, has been that of man. In times, when a coun try was bare of inhabitants, they lived chiefly by hunting; scarce any other arts or trades were known among them; and the custom of feeding on what they had killed, almost naturally led them to treat their enemies like their deer and boars. The sacrifice of human victims was the effect of superstition, the eating them was owing to necessity.

Which is the greater crime, to hold a solemn assembly, in order to plunge a knife, by way of honouring the Deity, into the heart of a beautiful girl, adorned with fillets and ribbons; or to pick the bones of an ugly fellow, whom we have killed in our own defence?

Yet we have more instances of sacrificing girls and boys, than of eating them; there is scarce a known nation where such sacrifices have not obtained. Among the Jews it was called the Anathema; this was a real sacrifice, and the 27th chapter of Leviticus enjoins not to spare the souls which have been devoted: but in no place are they ordered to eat them; they are only threatened with it; and Moses, as we have seen, says to the Jews, that if they fail in observing his ceremonies, they shall not only be plagued with the itch, but that mothers shall eat their children ("). In Ezekiel's time, indeed, the eating of human flesh

(") This is denounced as a curse, that the mothers shall eat their children through extreme hunger.