Jewish writers, the history of the Hebrews was less celebrated, even less known, than that of any other people whose memory Antiquity hath brought down to us. But, known or unknown, it is somewhat hard, methinks, that GREECE must not be allowed the honour of producing one single Hero; but all must be fetched from PALESTINE. One would have thought the very number of the Gentile worthies, and the scarcity of the Jewish, might have induced our critics, in mere charity, to employ some home-spun Pagans, for Heroes of a second rate, at least. But this, it seems, would look too like a sacrilegious compromise. So, an expedient is contrived to lessen that disparity in their number: and Moses alone is discovered to be Apollo, Pan, Priapus, Cecrops, Minos, Orpheus, Amphion, Tiresias, Janus, Evander, Romulus, and about some twenty more of the Pagan Gods and Heroes. So says the learned and judicious Mr. Huet *: who, not content to seize, as lawful prize, all he meets within the waste of fabulous times, makes cruel inroads into the cultivated ages of history, and will scarce allow Rome its own Founder †.

Nay, so jealous are they of this fairy honour paid to Scripture, that I have met with those who thought the BIBLE much disparaged, to suppose

* See note [P] at the end of this Book.

+ Si fidem sequimur historiæ, fabulosa pleraque de eo [Romulo] narrari. Prop. iv. c. 9. § 8.

VOL. III.

F

any

any other origin of human sacrifices than the command to Abraham, to offer up his son. The contending for so extraordinary an honour being not unlike that of certain Grammarians, who, out of due regard to the glory of former times, will not allow either the great or small-por to be of modern growth, but vindicate those special blessings to this highly-favoured Antiquity.

The other party then, who esteem the fables a corruption of Pagan history, appear in general to be right. But the misfortune is, the spirit of system seems to possess these likewise, while they allow nothing to Jewish history: For, that reasoning, which makes them give the Egyptian and Phenician a share with the Grecian, should consequentially have disposed them to admit the Jewish into partnership; though it might perhaps contribute least to the common stock. And he who does not see that Philemon and Baucis is taken from the story of Lot, must be, very near, blind: Though het who can discover the expedition of the Israelites

* La fable de Philemon et de Baucis-les personages sont inconnus, et j'en ai rien d'interessant à en dire: car de penser avec Mr.Huet, qu'elle nous cache l'histoire des Anges qui allerent visiter Abraham, c'est une de ces imaginations hazardées dans lesquelles ce savant prelat, &c. Banier, les Metam. d'Ovid. explic. des fables 7, 8, 9, & 10. lib. viii.

+ See Lavaur, one of the best and latest supporters of this system, in his Histoire de la Fable conferée

raelites from Egypt to Palestine, in the fable of the Argonauts, must certainly be gifted with the second-sight.

Lastly, as it is the fault of these to allow nothing to Jewish history, so it is the fault of both to allow nothing to the system of the Allegorists: for though without all question the main body of the ancient, fables is the corruption of civil History, yet it is as certain, that some few, especially of the late ones, were invented to convey physical and moral

TRUTHS.

Such was the original of the fables in general But we must be a little more explicit concerning that species of them called the METAMORPHOSIS.

The metempsychosis was the method, the religious ancients* employed to explain the ways of Providence; which, as they were seen to be unequal here, were supposed to be set right hereafter.

But

avec l'Histoire Sainte. Ainsi cette fable est toute composée des traditions que les Chananéens ou Pheniciens avoint repandues dans leurs voyages. On y voit des traits defigurez par ces traditions, mais CERTAINEMENT pris de l'histoire des Israëlites sous Moyse et sous Josué. Cap. Jason & les Argonautes, à la fin.

* But this being the voice of our common nature, it is no wonder we should find the doctrine of the metempsychosis operating, as an old Opinion, amongst the uninstructed natives of South America. See Char

levoix's Hist. of Paraguay, vol. ii.

P. 151.

But this inequality was never thought so great, as to leave no footsteps of a superintendency: For the people of old argued thus: If there were no inequality, nothing would want to be set right; and if there were nothing but inequality, there would be no one to set it right. So that a regular Providence, and none at all, equally destroyed their foundation of a future state.

It being then believed, that a Providence was administered here as well as hereafter, though not with equal vigour in both states; it was natural for them to suppose that the mode of it might be much the same, throughout. And as the way of punishing, in a different state, was by a transmigration of the soul; so in this, it was by a transformation of the body: The thing being the same, with only a little difference in the ceremonial of the transaction the soul in the first case going to the body; and, in the latter, the body coming to the soul: This being called the metamorphosis; and That, the metempsychosis. Thus, each made a part of the popular doctrine of Providence. And it is remarkable, that wherever the doctrine of transmigration was received, either in ancient or modern times, there the belief of transformation hath prevailed likewise *. It is true, that in support of the

* The modern eastern tales are full of metamorphoses; and it is to be noted that those people, before they embraced Mahometanism, were Pagans, and believers of the metempsychosis.

first part of this superstition, Reason only suffered; in support of the latter, the Senses too were violated. But minds grossly passioned, never want attested facts to support their extravagances. What principally contributed to fix their belief of the metamorphosis was, in my opinion, the strong and disordered imagination of a melancholy habit; a habit, more than any other, producing religious fear, and most affected by what it produces. There was a common distemper, arising from this habit, well known to the Greek physicians by the name of the LYCANTHROPY; where the patient fancied himself turned into a wolf, or other savage animal. Why the disordered imagination should take this ply, is not hard to conceive, if we reflect that the metempsychosis made part of the popular doctrine of Providence; and that a metamorphosis was, as we have said, the same mode of punishment, differing only in time and place. For the religious belief, we may be assured, would work strongly on a diseased fancy, racked by a consciousness of crimes, to which that habit is naturally obnoxious; and, as it did in the case of Nebuchadnezzar, make the patient conclude himself the object of divine justice. Indeed, Daniel's prediction of that monarch's disgrace, evidently shews it to have been the effect of divine vengeance; yet the circumstances of his punishment, as recorded in holy Writ, seem to shew, that it was inflicted by common and natural means. And that the vulgar superstition generally gives the bias to the career