two passages shew that the Jews had very much spiritualized their deity, but do not explain what that deity was.

Volney, in a note to his "Ruins of Empires," appears to say, that the God worshipped at the Egyptian Thebes was similarly unrepresentable. He seems to refer to the following passage in Plutarchus (de Isid. et Osir. ch. 21; p. 359, edit. Xyl.):

εις ΔΕ ΤΑΣ ΓΡΑΦΑΣ ΤΩΝ ΤΙΜΩΜΕΝΩΝ ΖΩΩΝ, ΤOΥC ΜΕΝ ΑΛΛΟΥΣ ΣΥΝΤΕΤΑΓΜΕΝΑ ΤΕΛΕΙΝ : ΜΟΝΟΥΕ ΔΕ ΜΗ ΔΙΔΟΝΑΙ ΤΟΥΣ ΘΗΒΑΪΔΑ KATOIKOYNTAC 'ως ΘΝΗΤΟΝ ΘΕΟΝ ΟΥΔΕΝΑ ΝΟΜΙΖΟΝΤΑΣ, ΑΛΛΑ ΤΟΝ ΚΑΛΟΥΣΙΝ ΑΥΤΟΙ ΚΝΗΦ, ΑΓΕΝΝΗΤΟΝ ΟΝΤΑ ΚΑΙ ΑΘΑΝΑΤΟΝ.”

But all the critics seem agreed that the word rpapac is faulty, and that we ought to read тpopac or TAOAC. And it is notorious, that this Theban Deity, Knêph, or the Agatho-dæmon, was repre-sented, either under a human, or more probably a serpentine form. 8 I think, therefore, that Count Volney, if he refers to the above passage of Plutarchus concerning Cneph, is wrong to say:-"voilà le dieu que Moïse, élevé à Héliopolis, adopta par pré-férence, mais qu'il n'inventa point.

But (unless orthodoxy forbids us) may we not believe, that Moses really did invent this heavenly Deity? I think I have read, that some Chinese philosopher invented a very similar but more

Meiners (de vero Deo, p. 35, note) not only reads TAOAC for гpapac; but even says that Plutarchus was wrong to dissent from Herodotus, who mentions (B. 2, ch. 74) that the Thebans buried their sacred serpents in the temple of Jupiter. De Brosses, in his "Dieux Fetiches" (p. 87, & p. 80, edit. 1760), quoting this passage, also reads rpadac, which I suppose therefore is the reading of Amyot. The brazen (or copper) Serpent which saved the Hebrews (vid. Numbers, ch. 21, v. 9) is, I think, the only emblem common to both Yéhouh and Knêph. Jablonski (Panth. Ægypt. p. 84, note) justi-fies the reading of TAPAC, by shewing that this word ought to be read instead of TроOAc, in a similar passage of Diodor. Sic. (B. 1, p. 76, edit. Wechel). Jablonski (p. 85) bids us recollect, that, not only the serpent, but also the crocodile, the eagle, and the ram, were held sacred by the Thebans. He supposes (p. 94-98) that the an-thropomorphous egg-vomiting deity, mentioned by Eusebius (Præp. Evang. B. 3, ch. xi, p. 115), was not Cneph (Cnouph, or Ichanou-phi, the "good spirit") but Camêphi (the "guardian of Egypt") here meaning Vulcan.

perfect being, doubtless in order to reclaim the people from a gross material idololatry. Perhaps, however, Moses may only have preserved, or restored, the very ancient idea, that the Gods were not anthropomorphous. Thus the Persians, even in the time of Herodotus (vid. B. 1, ch. 131), considered that the Gods were not of human shape, and that the supreme deity was the entire circle of the heavens. Thus also the ancient Greeks are said to have worshipped the Gods without any visible representation, till the time of Cecrops; and according to Plutarchus (Op. vol. 1, p. 65, Xyl.) the Romans, for the first hundred and sixty years after Numa, had no statues in their temples. Moreover, Lucianus (de Syria Deâ, ch. 3) says: "In the most ancient times the temples even of the Egyptians were without statues"; but Dr. Potter (Antiq. vol. 1, p. 225) seems to think Lucianus is perhaps mistaken.

It is probable that Arnobius ( adv. Gentes, B. 3, ch. 12, edit. Orell.) is wrong in saying that the Sadducees attributed forms (or corporeity) to God.

Philo Judæus seems to have believed that Matter is coeval with God. (vid. Brucker, Hist. Phil., vol. 2, p. 804).

According to most of the Rabbi, God cannot be defined. He is only to be known by his attributes and names, which coincide with his essence. His essence is absolutely perfect, and entirely spiritual. (vid. Brucker, vol. 2, p. 874, 875, 877).

According to the Rabbi David Nicto (as quoted in the Dict. des Ath., p. 307), God and Nature, Nature and God, are one.

The Cabbalists, who denied the existence of Matter, conceived that the Divine essence could be divided. The Cabbalists called the Deity a fountain of infinite light, and a hidden and inex-haustible sea. They imagined that certain Sephiroth, or emana-tions from the latent deity, produced and govern all things. (vid. Brucker, vol. 2, pp. 980, 996, 1015, & 1031).

Mahommed is (however falsely) reported God is a round' body, and extremely cold.

9 vid. Brucker, vol. 2, p. 724.

10 to have said, that

10 vid. Histoire de la religion des Turcs, par Michel Baudier, 1641, quoted in the Dict. des Ath., p. 260.

1 Euthymius Zigabenus, in his "Dogmatic Panoply," also says that the Mohammedan Deity is spherical; but Reland (de relig. Mohamm. p. 106) seems to reject this assertion, when maintaining

Okail, or Lebid, the poet of Mahommed, said: "All that is not God is nothing: for God is all things.'

3

According to the orthodox Mahommedan theologians, God is the name of the necessarily existing essence. He is uniform, eter-nal, the first and last, the interior and exterior. He is not a corporeal form, nor a circumscribed substance, nor a defined

measure.

Certain Mahommedan theologians, mentioned by Maimonides, (vid. Brucker, vol. 3, p. 56) were unwilling to call God the first cause for, if God, as the necessary cause, has existed from eternity, therefore (according to them) the thing caused, or effected, viz: the world, must also have existed from eternity.

A Mahommedan sect, apparently that entitled the Zendikai, main-tained (vid. Brucker, vol. 3, p. 138) that there was no God but the four elements; and that the soul was not spiritual or immor-tal, but a compound of the four elements.

The Soofs of Persia believe, that God, or the eternal immuta-ble Being, draws out from his own substance, not only (human) souls, but whatever is corporeal and material in the universe. Creation therefore is only an extraction, production, or extension, of the divine substance, drawn, like a spider's web out of the en

that Mohammed's Deity is incorporeal. But the God of Xenopha-nes was spherical (vid. pseud.-Origen. ap. Brucker, vol. 1, p. 1151) and yet was perhaps incorporeal. Moreover some of the Stoics (ex. gr., vid. Manil. astron. B. 1, v. 204) attributed a spherical form to the Deity. It seems a very general and reasonable idea. Nevertheless some religionists have adopted what an Arian called "a triangular superstition." (see the treatise upon St. Matthew, quoted in Lard-ner's works, vol. 3, p. 63). Albeit Vieira, a Portuguese preacher, has said (vid. Dict. des Ath. p. 502) "if the Almighty should happen to appear in a geometrical form, it would surely be the circular, in preference to the triangular, the square, or the pentagonal. reminds one of the famous definition, that God is a circle, whose centre is every where and circumference no where. God had already been said to be "every where and no where" by Philo Judæus, whose deity appears to have been " celestial space. (vid. Mosheim, note to Cudworth's Intell. Syst. vol. 2, p. 364).

2 vid. Dict. des Ath. p. 311.

This

3 vid. Algazel. ap. Pocock, quoted by Brucker, vol. 3, p. 158; conf. Reland. de relig. Mahomm. p. 8-13, edit. 1705.

-trails of the Deity. These theologians compare the Deity to a vast ocean, in which swim innumerable phials full of water, so that the water, if the bottles are broken, return again to the ocean from which they were taken.'

The Brahmins, when asked to shew God, trace a circle, as if they said, God is (but) the great circle of Nature (see the Voya-ges de Dillon, as referred to in the Dict. des Ath. p. 162, 163). It appears too that they describe a triangle in this circle (vid. Dict. des Ath. p. 323). They believe God to be the father, and mother, of men and of all things. Albeit if I may judge from the only original work which I possess upon the subject of Brahminism, the Deity recommended by the Indian Vedas, (notwithstanding some too literal expressions about Light, Void Space, &c.) is neverthe-less very similar to our own modern Jehovah. For, according to the Ved: "He from whom the universal world proceeds, who is the Lord of the Universe, and he whose work is the universe,

is the Supreme Being. But I suppose the Brahmins cannot de-fine (or give a positive account of) their Deity; for, according to the Veds: "The Supreme Being is not comprehensible by vi-sion, or by any other of the organs of sense; nor can he be con-ceived by means of devotion or virtuous practices. "He sees every thing, though never seen; hears every thing, though never directly heard of. He is neither short, nor is he long; inaccessible to the reasoning faculty; nor to be compassed by description; beyond the limits of the explanation of the Ved, or of human conception."

The Deity of the more ancient Chinese seems to answer almost

vid. Brucker (vol. 5, p. 808, 809), who considers this system as neither Spinozistical, nor Stoical, but rather Cabbalistical, and Zoroastrian. The l'Esprit de l'Encyl. (art. "Asiatiques" by Dide-rot) says of the doctrine of the Soofis; "Ils ne vous paieront, dis-je, que de ces sortes de comparaisons, qui n'ont aucun rapport avec Dieu, et qui ne sont bonnes que pour jeter de la poudre aux yeux d'un peuple ignorant."

5 A short tract drawn up by Rommohun Roy, Calcutta, 1816, 4to. pp. 14.

6 I am afraid an infidel would say: "This negative language is wonderfully sublime; but all that it means is, that nothing is not any-thing-a truism which metaphysicians should abandon to etymolo-gists. Such might be the argument of an infidel. For my part, I, of course, protest against it.

"

exactly to the Zeus, or Jupiter, of the Stoics (vid. Brucker, vol. 5, p. 888, 889; & conf. p. 897, 898). He is the soul_inhabiting the whole world, but more especially the heavens. The soul of man emanates from this universal soul, and reverts to it.

According to later Chinese philosophers, (or to those who flou-rished between the 12th. and the 15th. centuries after Christ,) there has existed from all eternity, a cause of all things, called Li, which is an incorruptible and infinite being (vid. Brucker, vol. 5, p. 890, 891). This universal cause has neither life, nor intelligence, nor authority, nor body, nor figure; and, thô it is not spiritual, yet, as if spiritual, it can only be comprehended by the intellect. 7

I cannot discover any very accurate account of the Deity men-tioned in that highly to be reverenced volume of mysterious tracts, entitled "the New Testament." The three first gospels contain the miraculous life and death of a certain "Galilæan peasant, who was rather an enemy to hypocrisy than a theologian. In the fourth gospel, we meet with a personified Logos, whose doctrine may, to our limited faculties, appear vague. The Acts, or Adven-tures, of some of the apostles (principally of the blessed Paul of Tarsus) are as interesting as they are true; but this book is in general more narrational than didactic. The Letters, written by the above mentioned holy Paul, say but little of the Deity: for they chiefly turn upon dissensions with the Jews, and upon money matters. Similarly the other apostolic circulars appear (humanly speaking) to be mere pastoral charges; and are, moreover, unen-cumbered with those matters of fact, which are useless except to historians. The Apocalypse, with which the whole concludes, is very sublime and brilliant, being full of dragons, thrones, trum-pets, fire, and brimstone; but it contains very little abstract theo-logy.

And indeed no orthodox believer will expect positive metaphy-sical information from the New Testament, or from any other of the writings of our ancient Christian sages. Yesús preached, in general, only a calm morality, combined with a species of inde

7 I confess that my intellect does not comprehend it; and indeed the whole of Brucker's account of the Chinese Philosophy is so en-tirely above my comprehension, that I have not the courage to inves-tigate any further concerning the doctrines, either of the Chinese, or of the Japanese, or of any other of the ultra-orientals.