Anti-Pedobaptists.

Anti-Pedobaptists.A name given to those who object to the baptism of infants. The word is derived from the Greek words signifyingagainst,a child, andI baptize.Unitarians.Those Christians who are usually designated by this name in the United States, and who are also calledLiberal Christians, are mostly Congregationalists, and are found principally in New England.They acknowledge no other rule of faith and practice than the holy Scriptures, which they consider it the duty of every man to search for himself, prayerfully, and with the best exercise of his understanding. They reject all creeds of human device, as generally unjust to the truth of God and the mind of man, tending to produce exclusiveness, bigotry, and divisions, and at best of doubtful value. They regard, however, with favor the earliest creed on record, commonly called the Apostles', as approaching nearest to the simplicity of the gospel, and as imbodying the grand points of the Christian faith.They adopt the words of St. Paul, (1 Cor. 8:6,)“To us there is but one God, the Father, of whom are all things, and we in him; and one Lord Jesus Christ, by whom are all things, and we by him.”They make great account of the doctrine of God's paternal character and government, and continually set it forward as the richest source of consolation, and the most powerful motive to repentance and improvement.Receiving and trusting in Christ as their Lord, Teacher, Mediator, Intercessor, Savior, they hold in less esteem[pg 197]than many other sects, nice theological questions and speculations concerning his precise rank, and the nature of his relation to God. They feel that by honoring him asthe Son of God, they honor him as he desired to be honored; and that by obeying and imitating him, they in the best manner show their love.They believe that the Holy Ghost is not a distinct person in the Godhead, but thatpower of God, thatdivine influence, by which Christianity was established through miraculous aids, and by which its spirit is still shed abroad in the hearts of men.They advocate the most perfect toleration. They regardcharityas the crowning Christian grace,—the end of the commandment of God. They consider a pure and lofty morality as not only inseparable from true religion, but the most acceptable service that man can render to his Maker, and the only indubitable evidence of a believing heart.They believe that sin is its own punishment, and virtue its own rewarder; that the moral consequences of a man's good or evil conduct go with him into the future life, to afford him remorse or satisfaction; that God will be influenced in all his dealings with the soul by mercy and justice, punishing no more severely than the sinner deserves, and always for a benevolent end. Indeed, the greater part of the denomination are Restorationists.Unitarians consider that, besides the Bible, all the Ante-Nicene fathers—that is, all Christian writers for three centuries after the birth of Christ—give testimony in their favor, against the modern popular doctrine of the Trinity. As forantiquity, it is their belief that it is really on their side.In theFirst Epistle of Clement to the Corinthians, which was written towards the close of the first century,—and the evidence for the genuineness of which is stronger than for that of any other of the productions attributed to the apostolical fathers,—the supremacy of the Father is asserted or implied throughout, and Jesus is spoken of in terms mostly[pg 198]borrowed from the Scriptures. He is once called the“sceptre of the majesty of God;”and this highly-figurative expression is the most exalted applied to him in the whole Epistle.Justin Martyr, the most distinguished of the ancient fathers of the church, who flourished in the former part of the second century, and whose writings (with the exception of those attributed to theapostolicfathers) are the earliest Christian records next to the New Testament, expressly says,“We worship God, the Maker of the universe, offering up to him prayers and thanks. But, assigning to Jesus, who came to teach us these things, and for this end was born, the‘second place’after God, we not without reason honor him.”The germ and origin of the doctrine of the Trinity, the Unitarians find in the speculations of those Christianized philosophers of the second century, whose minds were strongly tinctured with the Platonic philosophy, combined with theemanation system, as taught at Alexandria, and held by Philo. From this time they trace the gradual formation of the doctrine through successive ages down to Athanasius and Augustine; the former of whom, A. D. 362, was the first to insist upon the equality of the Holy Ghost with the Father and the Son; and the latter, about half a century afterwards, was the first to insist upon their numerical unity.In all ages of the church, there have been many learned and pious men who have rejected the Trinity as unscriptural and irrational. The first attempt, at the council of Nice, to establish and make universal the Trinitarian creed, caused disturbances and dissensions in the church, which continued for ages, and produced results the most deplorable to every benevolent mind which exaltscharityover faith.Soon after the reformation, the Unitarian faith was avowed by Martin Cellarius, who was then finishing his studies at Wittenberg, where Luther was professor. In 1546, the Unitarian opinions made a considerable movement in Italy, and several persons of learning and eminence were[pg 199]put to death. In 1553, Michael Servetus was burned for this heresy, at Geneva. The elder Socinus made his escape from this persecution, and spread his views throughout several countries of Europe, more particularly in Poland, where a large part of the Reformed clergy embraced them, and were separated, in 1565, from the communion of the Calvinists and Lutherans.In England, the number of Unitarians was considerable, according to Strype, as early as 1548; and in 1550, he represents the Unitarian doctrine as spreading so fast that the leading Churchmen were alarmed, and“thought it necessary to suppress its expression by rigid measures.”These“rigid measures,”such as imprisonment and burning, were successful for a time. But afterwards, the“heresy”gained new and able supporters, such as Biddle, Firmin, Dr. S. Clarke, Dr. Lardner, Whiston, Emlyn, Sir Isaac Newton, &c., and has been spreading to this day.In the north of Ireland, the Unitarians compose several presbyteries. There are also congregations of Unitarians in Dublin, and in other southern cities of the kingdom.In Scotland, there are chapels of this character in Edinburgh, Glasgow, and other principal places.In the United States, Unitarian opinions were not prevalent till towards the close of the last century. Since that time, however, they have advanced rapidly, and have been embraced by some of the wisest and best men in the land.Of late years, the Congregational Unitarians have generally abstained from controversy, in the United States. They have, however, published and circulated extensively a large number of tracts, of a doctrinal and practical character. They have at the present time assumed apositivecondition, gained a strong and permanent hold amongst the Christian sects, and are manifesting new signs of vitality and usefulness.The following proof-texts are some of those upon which the Unitarians rest their belief in the inferiority of the Son to the Father:—John 8:17, 18. John 17:3. Acts 10:38 1 Tim. 2:5. 1 John 4:14. Rom. 8:34 1 Cor. 11:3.[pg 200]John 10:29. John 14:28. Matt. 19:17. John 17:21. John 20:17. 1 Cor. 8:5, 6. John 10:25; 7:16, 17, 8:28; 5:19, 20; 8:49, 50. Matt. 20:23. John 6:38, 57; 5:30. Mark 13:32. Luke 6:12. John 11:41, 42. Matt. 27:46. Acts 2:22-24. Phil. 2:11. Col. 1:15. Rev. 3:14. Heb. 3:3. Matt. 12:18. Luke 2:52.Brownists.A denomination which sprung up in England towards the close of the sixteenth century. They derive their name from their leader, Robert Brown.This denomination did not differ in point of doctrine from the church of England, or from the other Puritans; but they apprehended, according to Scripture, that every church ought to be confined within the limits of a single congregation, and that the government should be democratical. They maintained the discipline of the church of England to be Popish and antichristian, and all her ordinances and sacraments invalid. Hence they forbade their people to join with them in prayer, in hearing the word, or in any part of public worship. They not only renounced communion with the church of England, but with all other churches, except such as were of the same model.Puritans.This name was given to a party which appeared in England in the year 1565, who opposed the liturgy and ceremonies of the church of England.They acquired this denomination from their professed design to establish a purer form of worship and discipline.[pg 201]Those who were first styledPuritanswere Presbyterians, but the term was afterwards applied to others who differed from the church of England.Those who separated from the church of England were also styledDissenters.Bourignonists.The followers of Antoinette Bourignon, a lady in France, who pretended to particular inspirations. She was born at Lisle, in 1616. At her birth, she was so deformed that it was debated some days in the family whether it was not proper to stifle her as a monster; but, her deformity diminishing, she was spared, and afterwards obtained such a degree of beauty, that she had her admirers. From her childhood to her old age she had an extraordinary turn of mind. She set up for a reformer, and published a great number of books, filled with very singular notions; the most remarkable of which are entitled“The Light of the World,”and“The Testimony of Truth.”In her confession of faith, she professes her belief in the Scriptures, the divinity and atonement of Christ. She believed, also, that man is perfectly free to resist or receive divine grace; that God is ever unchangeable love towards all his creatures, and does not inflict any arbitrary punishment, but that the evils they suffer are the natural consequence of sin; that religion consists not in outward forms of worship, nor systems of faith, but in an entire resignation to the will of God. She held many extravagant notions, among which, it is said, she asserted that Adam, before the fall, possessed the principles of both sexes, that, in an ecstasy, God represented Adam to her mind in his original state, as also the beauty of the first world, and how he had drawn from it the chaos; and that every thing was bright, transparent, and darted forth life and ineffable glory, with a number of other wild ideas. She dressed like a hermit,[pg 202]and travelled through France, Holland, England, and Scotland. She died at Franeker, in the province of Frise, October 30, 1680.Jews.A complete system of the religious doctrines of the Jews is contained in the five books of Moses, their great lawgiver, who was raised up to deliver them from their bondage in Egypt, and to conduct them to the possession of Canaan, the promised land.The principal sects among the Jews, in the time of our Savior, were the Pharisees, who placed religion in external ceremony; the Sadducees, who were remarkable for their incredulity; and the Essenes, who were distinguished by an austere sanctity.The Pharisees and Sadducees are frequently mentioned in the New Testament; and an acquaintance with their principles and practices serves to illustrate many passages in the sacred history. At present, the Jews have two sects—the Caraites, who admit no rule of religion but the law of Moses; and the Rabbinists, who add to the laws the tradition of the Talmud, a collection of the doctrines and morality of the Jews. The expectation of a Messiah is the distinguishing feature of their religious system. The wordMessiahsignifies one anointed, or installed into an office by an unction.Christians believe that Jesus Christ is the Messiah, in whom all the Jewish prophecies are accomplished. The Jews, infatuated with the idea of a temporal Messiah, who is to subdue the world, still wait for his appearance.The most remarkable periods in the history of the Jews are the call of Abraham, the giving of the law by Moses, their establishment in Canaan under Joshua, the building of the temple by Solomon, the division of the tribes, their captivity in Babylon, their return under Zerubbabel and the[pg 203]destruction of their city and temple by Titus, afterwards emperor, A. D. 70.Maimonides, an illustrious rabbi, drew up for the Jews, in the eleventh century, a confession of faith, which all Jews admit. It is as follows:—“1. I believe, with a true and perfect faith, that God is the Creator, whose name be blessed, Governor, and Maker, of all creatures, and that he hath wrought all things, worketh and shall work forever.“2. I believe, with a perfect faith, that the Creator, whose name be blessed, isone, and that such a unity as in him can be found in none other, and that he alone hath been our God, is, and forever shall be.“3. I believe, with a perfect faith, that the Creator, whose name be blessed, is not corporeal, nor to be comprehended with any bodily property, and that there is no bodily essence that can be likened unto him.“4. I believe, with a perfect faith, the Creator, whose name be blessed, to be the first and the last, that nothing was before him, and that he shall abide the last forever.“5. I believe, with a perfect faith, that the Creator, whose name be blessed, is to be worshipped, and none else.“6. I believe, with a perfect faith, that all the words of the prophets are true.“7. I believe, with a perfect faith, the prophecies of Moses, our master,— may he rest in peace;—that he was the father and chief of all wise men that lived before him, or ever shall live after him.“8. I believe, with a perfect faith, that all the law which at this day is found in our hands, was delivered by God himself to our master, Moses. God's peace be with him.“9. I believe, with a perfect faith, that the same law is never to be changed, nor another to be given us of God, whose name be blessed.“10. I believe, with a perfect faith, that God, whose name be blessed, understandeth all the works and thoughts of[pg 204]men, as it is written in the prophets. He fashioneth their hearts alike; he understandeth all their works.“11. I believe, with a perfect faith, that God will recompense good to them that keep his commandments, and will punish them who transgress them.“12. I believe, with a perfect faith, that the Messiah is yet to come; and, although he retard his coming, yet I will wait for him till he come.“13. I believe, with a perfect faith, that the dead shall be restored to life, when it shall seem fit unto God the Creator, whose name be blessed, and memory celebrated, world without end.Amen.”This people constitute one of the most singular and interesting portions of mankind. For about three thousand years, they have existed as a distinct nation; and, what is remarkable, by far the greatest part of this time they have been in bondage and captivity.The calling of Abraham, the father and founder of this nation; the legislation of Moses; the priesthood of Aaron: the Egyptian bondage; the conquest of Canaan, and the history of the Jews to the coming of the Messiah; their cruel and injurious treatment of this august and innocent personage,—are facts which the Scriptures disclose, and with which, it is presumed, every reader is well acquainted.For about eighteen hundred years, this wonderful people have maintained their peculiarities of religion, language, and domestic habits, among Pagans, Mahometans, and Christians, and have suffered a continued series of reproaches, privations, and miseries, which have excited the admiration and astonishment of all who have reflected on their condition.The siege and destruction of Jerusalem by Titus, the Roman general, was one of the most awful and distressing scenes that mortals ever witnessed; and the details, as given by Josephus, are enough to make humanity shudder. During the siege, which lasted nearly five months, upwards of eleven hundred thousand Jews perished. John and Simon,[pg 205]the two generals of the Hebrews, who were accounted the ringleaders of the rebellious nation, with seven hundred of the most beautiful and vigorous of the Jewish youth, were reserved to attend the victor's triumphal chariot. The number taken captive, during this fatal contest, amounted to ninety-seven thousand; many of whom were sent into Syria, and the other provinces, to be exposed in public theatres, to fight like gladiators, or to be devoured by wild beasts. The number of those destroyed in the whole war, of which the taking of the holy city was the bloody and tremendous consummation, is computed to have been one million, four hundred and sixty thousand.In addition to the terrors of the Roman sword, this devoted nation was exposed to famine, pestilence, and the implacable fury of contending parties among themselves, which all conspired together to make the siege of Jerusalem surpass, in horror, every account of any other siege in the records of the world.A small portion, indeed, of this wretched, ruined nation were permitted to remain, and establish themselves in Judea, who, by degrees, reorganized a regular system of government, which became the centre of Jewish operations, not only for those in Judea, but for such as were dispersed in other nations. But the yoke of foreign masters was so grievous and burdensome, that they were continually restless and impatient; and, in consequence of a general revolt under the emperor Adrian, in 134, they were a second time slaughtered in multitudes, and were driven to madness and despair. Bither, the place of their greatest strength, was compelled to surrender, and Barchochba, their leader, who pretended to be the Messiah, was slain, and five hundred and eighty thousand fell by the sword in battle, besides vast numbers who perished by famine, sickness, fire, and other calamities.Kings have enacted the severest laws against them, and employed the hand of executioners to ruin them. The seditious multitudes, by murders and massacres, have committed outrages against them, if possible, still more violent and[pg 206]tragical. Besides their common share in the sufferings of society, they have undergone a series of horrid and unutterable calamities, which no other description of men has ever experienced in any age, or in any country. Princes and people, Pagans, Mahometans, and Christians, disagreeing in so many things, have united in the design of exterminating this fugitive and wretched race, but have not succeeded. They have been banished, at different times, from France, Germany, Spain, Bohemia, Hungary, and England; and from some of these kingdoms they have been banished and recalled many times in succession.The Romans and Spaniards have probably done more than any other nations to oppress and destroy this people; and the inquisition has doomed multitudes of them to torture and death.At different times, they were accused of poisoning wells, rivers, and reservoirs of water, and, before any proof of these strange and malicious charges was produced, the populace in many parts of Germany, Italy, and France, have fallen upon them with merciless and murderous severity. At one time, the German emperor found it necessary to issue an edict for their banishment, to save them from the rage of his exasperated and unrestrained subjects.As the Jews have generally been thebankersandbrokersof the people among whom they have resided, and have made a show of much wealth, this has tempted their avaricious adversaries to impose upon them enormous taxes and ruinous fines.Muley Archy, a prince of one of the Barbary states, by seizing the property of a rich Jew, was enabled to dispossess his brother of the throne of Morocco.The English parliament of Northumberland, in 1188, for the support of a projected war, assessed the Jews with 60,000 pounds, while only 70,000 were assessed upon the Christians; which proves either that the Jews were immensely rich, or that the parliament was extremely tyrannical.The English king John was unmercifully severe upon this[pg 207]afflicted people. In 1210, regardless of the costly freedom he had sold them, he subjected them all, as a body, to a fine of 60,000 marks. The ransom required by this same unfeeling king, of a rich Jew of Bristol, was 10,000 marks of silver; and on his refusing to pay this ruinous fine, he ordered one of his teeth to be extracted every day; to which the unhappy man submitted seven days, and on the eighth day he agreed to satisfy the king's rapacity. Isaac of Norwich was, not long after, compelled to pay a similar fine. But the king, not satisfied with these vast sums extorted from these injured Israelites, in the end confiscated all their property, and expelled them from the kingdom.About the beginning of the 16th century, the Jews in Persia were subjected to a tax of two millions of gold. Long would be the catalogue of injuries of this kind, which this outcast and hated nation has sustained. Numerous are the cases in which those who have become deeply in debt to them for borrowed money, have procured their banishment, and the confiscation of their property, as the readiest way to cancel their demands; and, as they have ever been addicted to usurious practices, they have, by this means, furnished plausible pretexts to their foes to fleece and destroy them.The fraternal disposition of this people led them to seek the society of each other; and, notwithstanding the wideness of their dispersion, in process of time, they, by uniting under different leaders, formed two communities of considerable extent, known by the name of the eastern and western Jews. The western Jews inhabited Egypt, Judea, Italy, and other parts of the Roman empire; the eastern Jews settled in Babylon, Chaldea, Persia, &c. The head of the western division was known by the name of the patriarch, while he who presided over the eastern Jews, was called the prince of the captivity. The office of patriarch was abolished, by imperial laws, about 429, from which time the western Jews were solely under the rule of the chiefs of their synagogues, whom they called primates. But the princes of the captivity had a longer and more splendid sway. They resided at[pg 208]Babylon, or Bagdad, and exercised an extensive authority over their brethren, as far down as the 12th century. About this period, a Jewish historian asserts that he found, at Bagdad, the prince of the captivity, lineally descended from David, and permitted, by the caliph, to exercise the rights of sovereignty over the Jews from Syria to Indostan.The existence of a succession of these imaginary potentates, from the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans, the Jews have ever been strenuous in maintaining, partly to aggrandize their nation, and partly to deprive Christians of the benefit of an argument furnished by the prophecy of Jacob, concerning the termination of the Jewish polity and independence, soon after the coming of the Messiah.Notwithstanding the world, in general, has shown a spirit of hostility and contempt for the remnant of Israel, yet they have found a few, in every age, who, either from motives of policy or justice, have treated them with kindness and respect. The first Mahometan caliphs, a number of the Roman pontiffs, and some of the Asiatic and European sovereigns, have shown them friendship and protection. Don Solomon, a learned and illustrious Jew of Portugal, in the 12th century, was raised to the highest military command in that kingdom. Casimir the Great, of Poland, in the 14th century, received the Jews as refugees into his kingdom, and granted them extensive privileges; and from that time to the present, they have been more numerous in that country than in any other in Europe.For many centuries, this persecuted race found a favorite asylum in Holland, and, by their dexterity and success in commerce, became very affluent.Cromwell, seeing the benefit which the Netherlands had derived from this money-making and money-lending community, was very desirous to recall them to England, from which they had been exiled about three hundred and fifty years. The celebrated Manasses Ben Israel had many interviews with the Protector; and so high were the expectations of the Israelites, from the clemency and authority of this illustrious[pg 209]statesman, that they began to look up to him as the promised Messiah. And, although Cromwell's friendly proposals, as to their recall, were overruled by the bigoted and intolerant policy of the times, yet, from that period, they have found favor and protection in England, and have been much more numerous and prosperous there than formerly.In France and the United States, the Jews are admitted to equal rights with all other citizens, which cannot be said of any other nations in Christendom. In the United States, they have acquired this freedom, of course, with all other citizens of this free country. In France, they were admitted to it by Bonaparte; and afterwards, in 1807, by his directions, they convened a Grand Sanhedrim, consisting, according to ancient custom, of 70 members, exclusive of the president. The number and distinction of the spectators of this Sanhedrim greatly added to the solemnity of the scene. This venerable assembly passed and agreed to various articles respecting the Mosaic worship, and their civil and ecclesiastical concerns.The extreme aversion of the Jews to every thing which bears the Christian name, and their obstinate attachment to their ancient religion, have, in former years, discouraged all attempts to convert them to the Christian faith. And not only has their conversion been neglected, but for many centuries they have been persecuted, plundered, and destroyed, by those who have called themselves Christians; they have not been permitted to enter their churches as worshippers, nor their dwellings as guests, nor reside in their territories, where Pagans and Mahometans have found an unmolested abode. While we, then, blame the blindness and incredulity of the descendants of Abraham, let us lament the folly and unkindness of the professed disciples of the mild and compassionate Redeemer. But a different spirit is now prevailing in many parts of Christendom, and a new era, as to the tribes of Israel, seems about to burst upon the world. Societies are formed in Europe and America for their benefit, and a disposition is said to be increasing, among the Jews, favorable[pg 210]to that Messiah and that religion which they have so long hated and rejected.The history of this people certainly forms a striking evidence of the truth of divine revelation. They are a living and perpetual miracle, continuing to subsist as a distinct and peculiar race for upwards of three thousand years, intermixed among almost all the nations of the world, flowing forward in a full and continued stream, like the waters of the Rhone, without mixing with the waves of the expansive lake through which the passage lies to the ocean of eternity.Indian Religions.“Lo, the poor Indian! whose untutored mindSees God in clouds, or hears him in the wind;His soul proud science never taught to strayFar as the solar walk, or milky way;Yet simple nature to his hope has given,Behind the cloud-topped hill, an humbler heaven—Some safer world in depth of woods embraced,Some happier island in the watery waste,Where slaves once more their native land behold,No fiends torment, no Christians thirst for gold.To be, contents his natural desire;He asks no angel's wing, no seraph's fire;But thinks, admitted to that equal sky,His faithful dog will bear him company.”—Pope.The natives ofCanadahave an idea of the Supreme Being; and they all, in general, agree in looking upon him as the First Spirit, and the Governor and the Creator of the world. It is said that almost all the nations of the Algonquin language give this Sovereign Being the appellation of the Great Hare. Some, again, call him Michabou, and others Atahocan. Most of them hold the opinion that he was born upon the waters, together with his whole court, entirely composed of four-footed animals, like himself; that[pg 211]he formed the earth of a grain of sand, which he took from the bottom of the ocean; and that he created man of the bodies of the dead animals. There are, likewise, some who mention a god of the waters, who opposed the designs of the Great Hare, or, at least, refused to be assisting to him. This god is, according to some, the Great Tiger. They have a third, called Matcomek, whom they invoke in the winter season.The Agreskoui of the Hurons, and the Agreskouse of the Iroquois, is, in the opinion of these nations, the Sovereign Being, and the god of war. These Indians do not give the same original to mankind with the Algonquins; they do not ascend so high as the first creation. According to them, there were, in the beginning, six men in the world; and, if you ask them who placed them there, they answer you, they do not know.The gods of the Indians have bodies, and live much in the same manner as themselves, but without any of those inconveniences to which they are subject. The wordspirit, among them, signifies only a being of a more excellent nature than others.According to the Iroquois, in the third generation there came a deluge, in which not a soul was saved; so that, in order to repeople the earth, it was necessary to change beasts into men.Beside the First Being, or the Great Spirit, they hold an infinite number of genii, or inferior spirits, both good and evil, who have each their peculiar form of worship.They ascribe to these beings a kind of immensity and omnipresence, and constantly invoke them as the guardians of mankind. But they never address themselves to the evil genii, except to beg of them to do them no hurt.They believe in the immortality of the soul, and say that the region of their everlasting abode lies so far westward, that the souls are several months in arriving at it, and have vast difficulties to surmount. The happiness which they hope to enjoy is not believed to be the recompense of virtue[pg 212]only; but to have been a good hunter, brave in war, &c., are the merits which entitle them to this paradise, which they, and the other American natives, figure as a delightful country, blessed with perpetual spring, whose forests abound with game, whose rivers swarm with fish, where famine is never felt, and uninterrupted plenty shall be enjoyed without labor or toil.The natives ofNew Englandbelieved not only a plurality of gods, who made and governed the several nations of the world, but they made deities of every thing they imagined to be great, powerful, beneficial, or hurtful to mankind. Yet they conceived an Almighty Being, who dwells in the south-west regions of the heavens, to be superior to all the rest. This Almighty Being they called Kichtan, who at first, according to their tradition, made a man and woman out of a stone, but, upon some dislike, destroyed them again; and then made another couple out of a tree, from whom descended all the nations of the earth; but how they came to be scattered and dispersed into countries so remote from one another, they cannot tell. They believed their Supreme God to be a good being, and paid a sort of acknowledgment to him for plenty, victory, and other benefits.But there is another power, which they calledHobamocko, (the devil,) of whom they stood in greater awe, and worshipped merely from a principle of fear.The immortality of the soul was universally believed among them. When good men die, they said, their souls go to Kichtan, where they meet their friends, and enjoy all manner of pleasures; when wicked men die, they go to Kichtan also, but are commanded to walk away, and wander about in restless discontent and darkness forever.After the coming of the white people, the Indians inNew Jersey, who once held a plurality of deities, supposed there were only three, because they saw people of three kinds of complexion, viz., English, negroes, and themselves.It was a notion generally prevailing among them, that the same God who made them did not make us, but[pg 213]that they were created after the white people; and it is probable they supposed their God gained some special skill by seeing the white people made, and so made them better; for it is certain they considered themselves and their methods of living, which they said their God expressly prescribed for them, vastly preferable to the white people and their methods.With regard to a future state of existence, many of them imagined that the Chichung, i. e., the shadow, or what survives the body, will, at death, go southward, to some unknown, but curious place,—will enjoy some kind of happiness, such as hunting, feasting, dancing, or the like; and what they suppose will contribute much to their happiness in the next state, is, that they shall never be weary of these entertainments.Those who have any notion about rewards and sufferings in a future state, seem to imagine that most will be happy, and that in the delightful fields, chasing the game, or reposing themselves with their families; but the poor, frozen sinners cannot stir one step towards that sunny region. Nevertheless, their misery has an end; it is longer or shorter, according to the degree of their guilt; and, after its expiation, they are permitted to become inhabitants of the Indian paradise.The Indians ofVirginiagave the names ofOkee,Quioccos, orKiwasa, to the idol which they worshipped. These names might possibly be so many epithets, which they varied according to the several functions they ascribed to this deity, or the different notions they might form to themselves of it in their religious exercises and common discourses. Moreover, they were of opinion that this idol is not one sole being, but that there were many more of the same nature, besides the tutelary gods. They gave the general name of Quioccos to all these genii, or beings, so that the name of Kiwasa might be particularly applied to the idol in question.These savages consecrated chapels and oratories to this deity, in which the idol was often represented under a variety of shapes. They even kept some of these in the most retired[pg 214]parts of their houses, to whom they communicated their affairs, and consulted them upon occasion. In this case, they made use of them in the quality of tutelary gods, from whom they supposed they received blessings on their families.The sacerdotal vestment of their priests was like a woman's petticoat plaited, which they put about their necks, and tied over the right shoulder; but they always kept one arm out, to use it as occasion required. This cloak was made round at bottom, and descended no lower than the middle of the thigh; it was made of soft, well-dressed skins, with the hair outwards.These priests shaved their heads close, the crown excepted, where they left only a little tuft, that reached from the top of the forehead to the nape of the neck, and even on the top of the forehead. They here left a border of hair, which, whether it was owing to nature, or the stiffness contracted by the fat and colors with which they daubed themselves, bristled up, and came forward like the corner of a square cap.The natives of Virginia had a great veneration for their priests; and the latter endeavored to procure it, by daubing themselves all over in a very frightful manner, dressing themselves in a very odd habit, and tricking up their hair after a very whimsical manner. Every thing they said was considered as an oracle, and made a strong impression on the minds of the people; they often withdrew from society, and lived in woods or in huts, far removed from any habitation. They were difficult of access, and did not give themselves any trouble about provisions, because care was always taken to set food for them near their habitations. They were always addressed in cases of great necessity. They also acted in the quality of physicians, because of the great knowledge they were supposed to have of nature. In fine, peace or war was determined by their voice; nor was any thing of importance undertaken without first consulting them.They had not any stated times nor fixed days, on which they celebrated their festivals, but they regulated them only by the different seasons of the year; as, for instance, they[pg 215]celebrated one day at the arrival of their wild birds, another upon the return of the hunting season, and for the maturity of their fruits; but the greatest festival of all was at harvest time. They then spent several days in diverting themselves, and enjoyed most of their amusements, such as martial dances and heroic songs.After their return from war, or escaping some danger, they lighted fires, and made merry about them, each having his gourd-bottle, or his little bell, in his hand. Men, women, and children, often danced in a confused manner about these fires. Their devotions, in general, consisted only of acclamations of joy, mixed with dances and songs, except in seasons of sorrow and affliction, when they were changed into howlings. The priests presided at this solemnity, dressed in their sacerdotal ornaments, part of which were the gourd-bottle, the petticoat above mentioned, and the serpents' or weasels' skins, the tails of which were dexterously tied upon their heads like a tiara, or triple crown. These priests began the song, and always opened the religious exercise, to which they often added incantations, part of the mysteries of which were comprehended in the songs. The noise, the gestures, the wry faces, in a word, every thing, contributed to render these incantations terrible.

Anti-Pedobaptists.A name given to those who object to the baptism of infants. The word is derived from the Greek words signifyingagainst,a child, andI baptize.Unitarians.Those Christians who are usually designated by this name in the United States, and who are also calledLiberal Christians, are mostly Congregationalists, and are found principally in New England.They acknowledge no other rule of faith and practice than the holy Scriptures, which they consider it the duty of every man to search for himself, prayerfully, and with the best exercise of his understanding. They reject all creeds of human device, as generally unjust to the truth of God and the mind of man, tending to produce exclusiveness, bigotry, and divisions, and at best of doubtful value. They regard, however, with favor the earliest creed on record, commonly called the Apostles', as approaching nearest to the simplicity of the gospel, and as imbodying the grand points of the Christian faith.They adopt the words of St. Paul, (1 Cor. 8:6,)“To us there is but one God, the Father, of whom are all things, and we in him; and one Lord Jesus Christ, by whom are all things, and we by him.”They make great account of the doctrine of God's paternal character and government, and continually set it forward as the richest source of consolation, and the most powerful motive to repentance and improvement.Receiving and trusting in Christ as their Lord, Teacher, Mediator, Intercessor, Savior, they hold in less esteem[pg 197]than many other sects, nice theological questions and speculations concerning his precise rank, and the nature of his relation to God. They feel that by honoring him asthe Son of God, they honor him as he desired to be honored; and that by obeying and imitating him, they in the best manner show their love.They believe that the Holy Ghost is not a distinct person in the Godhead, but thatpower of God, thatdivine influence, by which Christianity was established through miraculous aids, and by which its spirit is still shed abroad in the hearts of men.They advocate the most perfect toleration. They regardcharityas the crowning Christian grace,—the end of the commandment of God. They consider a pure and lofty morality as not only inseparable from true religion, but the most acceptable service that man can render to his Maker, and the only indubitable evidence of a believing heart.They believe that sin is its own punishment, and virtue its own rewarder; that the moral consequences of a man's good or evil conduct go with him into the future life, to afford him remorse or satisfaction; that God will be influenced in all his dealings with the soul by mercy and justice, punishing no more severely than the sinner deserves, and always for a benevolent end. Indeed, the greater part of the denomination are Restorationists.Unitarians consider that, besides the Bible, all the Ante-Nicene fathers—that is, all Christian writers for three centuries after the birth of Christ—give testimony in their favor, against the modern popular doctrine of the Trinity. As forantiquity, it is their belief that it is really on their side.In theFirst Epistle of Clement to the Corinthians, which was written towards the close of the first century,—and the evidence for the genuineness of which is stronger than for that of any other of the productions attributed to the apostolical fathers,—the supremacy of the Father is asserted or implied throughout, and Jesus is spoken of in terms mostly[pg 198]borrowed from the Scriptures. He is once called the“sceptre of the majesty of God;”and this highly-figurative expression is the most exalted applied to him in the whole Epistle.Justin Martyr, the most distinguished of the ancient fathers of the church, who flourished in the former part of the second century, and whose writings (with the exception of those attributed to theapostolicfathers) are the earliest Christian records next to the New Testament, expressly says,“We worship God, the Maker of the universe, offering up to him prayers and thanks. But, assigning to Jesus, who came to teach us these things, and for this end was born, the‘second place’after God, we not without reason honor him.”The germ and origin of the doctrine of the Trinity, the Unitarians find in the speculations of those Christianized philosophers of the second century, whose minds were strongly tinctured with the Platonic philosophy, combined with theemanation system, as taught at Alexandria, and held by Philo. From this time they trace the gradual formation of the doctrine through successive ages down to Athanasius and Augustine; the former of whom, A. D. 362, was the first to insist upon the equality of the Holy Ghost with the Father and the Son; and the latter, about half a century afterwards, was the first to insist upon their numerical unity.In all ages of the church, there have been many learned and pious men who have rejected the Trinity as unscriptural and irrational. The first attempt, at the council of Nice, to establish and make universal the Trinitarian creed, caused disturbances and dissensions in the church, which continued for ages, and produced results the most deplorable to every benevolent mind which exaltscharityover faith.Soon after the reformation, the Unitarian faith was avowed by Martin Cellarius, who was then finishing his studies at Wittenberg, where Luther was professor. In 1546, the Unitarian opinions made a considerable movement in Italy, and several persons of learning and eminence were[pg 199]put to death. In 1553, Michael Servetus was burned for this heresy, at Geneva. The elder Socinus made his escape from this persecution, and spread his views throughout several countries of Europe, more particularly in Poland, where a large part of the Reformed clergy embraced them, and were separated, in 1565, from the communion of the Calvinists and Lutherans.In England, the number of Unitarians was considerable, according to Strype, as early as 1548; and in 1550, he represents the Unitarian doctrine as spreading so fast that the leading Churchmen were alarmed, and“thought it necessary to suppress its expression by rigid measures.”These“rigid measures,”such as imprisonment and burning, were successful for a time. But afterwards, the“heresy”gained new and able supporters, such as Biddle, Firmin, Dr. S. Clarke, Dr. Lardner, Whiston, Emlyn, Sir Isaac Newton, &c., and has been spreading to this day.In the north of Ireland, the Unitarians compose several presbyteries. There are also congregations of Unitarians in Dublin, and in other southern cities of the kingdom.In Scotland, there are chapels of this character in Edinburgh, Glasgow, and other principal places.In the United States, Unitarian opinions were not prevalent till towards the close of the last century. Since that time, however, they have advanced rapidly, and have been embraced by some of the wisest and best men in the land.Of late years, the Congregational Unitarians have generally abstained from controversy, in the United States. They have, however, published and circulated extensively a large number of tracts, of a doctrinal and practical character. They have at the present time assumed apositivecondition, gained a strong and permanent hold amongst the Christian sects, and are manifesting new signs of vitality and usefulness.The following proof-texts are some of those upon which the Unitarians rest their belief in the inferiority of the Son to the Father:—John 8:17, 18. John 17:3. Acts 10:38 1 Tim. 2:5. 1 John 4:14. Rom. 8:34 1 Cor. 11:3.[pg 200]John 10:29. John 14:28. Matt. 19:17. John 17:21. John 20:17. 1 Cor. 8:5, 6. John 10:25; 7:16, 17, 8:28; 5:19, 20; 8:49, 50. Matt. 20:23. John 6:38, 57; 5:30. Mark 13:32. Luke 6:12. John 11:41, 42. Matt. 27:46. Acts 2:22-24. Phil. 2:11. Col. 1:15. Rev. 3:14. Heb. 3:3. Matt. 12:18. Luke 2:52.Brownists.A denomination which sprung up in England towards the close of the sixteenth century. They derive their name from their leader, Robert Brown.This denomination did not differ in point of doctrine from the church of England, or from the other Puritans; but they apprehended, according to Scripture, that every church ought to be confined within the limits of a single congregation, and that the government should be democratical. They maintained the discipline of the church of England to be Popish and antichristian, and all her ordinances and sacraments invalid. Hence they forbade their people to join with them in prayer, in hearing the word, or in any part of public worship. They not only renounced communion with the church of England, but with all other churches, except such as were of the same model.Puritans.This name was given to a party which appeared in England in the year 1565, who opposed the liturgy and ceremonies of the church of England.They acquired this denomination from their professed design to establish a purer form of worship and discipline.[pg 201]Those who were first styledPuritanswere Presbyterians, but the term was afterwards applied to others who differed from the church of England.Those who separated from the church of England were also styledDissenters.Bourignonists.The followers of Antoinette Bourignon, a lady in France, who pretended to particular inspirations. She was born at Lisle, in 1616. At her birth, she was so deformed that it was debated some days in the family whether it was not proper to stifle her as a monster; but, her deformity diminishing, she was spared, and afterwards obtained such a degree of beauty, that she had her admirers. From her childhood to her old age she had an extraordinary turn of mind. She set up for a reformer, and published a great number of books, filled with very singular notions; the most remarkable of which are entitled“The Light of the World,”and“The Testimony of Truth.”In her confession of faith, she professes her belief in the Scriptures, the divinity and atonement of Christ. She believed, also, that man is perfectly free to resist or receive divine grace; that God is ever unchangeable love towards all his creatures, and does not inflict any arbitrary punishment, but that the evils they suffer are the natural consequence of sin; that religion consists not in outward forms of worship, nor systems of faith, but in an entire resignation to the will of God. She held many extravagant notions, among which, it is said, she asserted that Adam, before the fall, possessed the principles of both sexes, that, in an ecstasy, God represented Adam to her mind in his original state, as also the beauty of the first world, and how he had drawn from it the chaos; and that every thing was bright, transparent, and darted forth life and ineffable glory, with a number of other wild ideas. She dressed like a hermit,[pg 202]and travelled through France, Holland, England, and Scotland. She died at Franeker, in the province of Frise, October 30, 1680.Jews.A complete system of the religious doctrines of the Jews is contained in the five books of Moses, their great lawgiver, who was raised up to deliver them from their bondage in Egypt, and to conduct them to the possession of Canaan, the promised land.The principal sects among the Jews, in the time of our Savior, were the Pharisees, who placed religion in external ceremony; the Sadducees, who were remarkable for their incredulity; and the Essenes, who were distinguished by an austere sanctity.The Pharisees and Sadducees are frequently mentioned in the New Testament; and an acquaintance with their principles and practices serves to illustrate many passages in the sacred history. At present, the Jews have two sects—the Caraites, who admit no rule of religion but the law of Moses; and the Rabbinists, who add to the laws the tradition of the Talmud, a collection of the doctrines and morality of the Jews. The expectation of a Messiah is the distinguishing feature of their religious system. The wordMessiahsignifies one anointed, or installed into an office by an unction.Christians believe that Jesus Christ is the Messiah, in whom all the Jewish prophecies are accomplished. The Jews, infatuated with the idea of a temporal Messiah, who is to subdue the world, still wait for his appearance.The most remarkable periods in the history of the Jews are the call of Abraham, the giving of the law by Moses, their establishment in Canaan under Joshua, the building of the temple by Solomon, the division of the tribes, their captivity in Babylon, their return under Zerubbabel and the[pg 203]destruction of their city and temple by Titus, afterwards emperor, A. D. 70.Maimonides, an illustrious rabbi, drew up for the Jews, in the eleventh century, a confession of faith, which all Jews admit. It is as follows:—“1. I believe, with a true and perfect faith, that God is the Creator, whose name be blessed, Governor, and Maker, of all creatures, and that he hath wrought all things, worketh and shall work forever.“2. I believe, with a perfect faith, that the Creator, whose name be blessed, isone, and that such a unity as in him can be found in none other, and that he alone hath been our God, is, and forever shall be.“3. I believe, with a perfect faith, that the Creator, whose name be blessed, is not corporeal, nor to be comprehended with any bodily property, and that there is no bodily essence that can be likened unto him.“4. I believe, with a perfect faith, the Creator, whose name be blessed, to be the first and the last, that nothing was before him, and that he shall abide the last forever.“5. I believe, with a perfect faith, that the Creator, whose name be blessed, is to be worshipped, and none else.“6. I believe, with a perfect faith, that all the words of the prophets are true.“7. I believe, with a perfect faith, the prophecies of Moses, our master,— may he rest in peace;—that he was the father and chief of all wise men that lived before him, or ever shall live after him.“8. I believe, with a perfect faith, that all the law which at this day is found in our hands, was delivered by God himself to our master, Moses. God's peace be with him.“9. I believe, with a perfect faith, that the same law is never to be changed, nor another to be given us of God, whose name be blessed.“10. I believe, with a perfect faith, that God, whose name be blessed, understandeth all the works and thoughts of[pg 204]men, as it is written in the prophets. He fashioneth their hearts alike; he understandeth all their works.“11. I believe, with a perfect faith, that God will recompense good to them that keep his commandments, and will punish them who transgress them.“12. I believe, with a perfect faith, that the Messiah is yet to come; and, although he retard his coming, yet I will wait for him till he come.“13. I believe, with a perfect faith, that the dead shall be restored to life, when it shall seem fit unto God the Creator, whose name be blessed, and memory celebrated, world without end.Amen.”This people constitute one of the most singular and interesting portions of mankind. For about three thousand years, they have existed as a distinct nation; and, what is remarkable, by far the greatest part of this time they have been in bondage and captivity.The calling of Abraham, the father and founder of this nation; the legislation of Moses; the priesthood of Aaron: the Egyptian bondage; the conquest of Canaan, and the history of the Jews to the coming of the Messiah; their cruel and injurious treatment of this august and innocent personage,—are facts which the Scriptures disclose, and with which, it is presumed, every reader is well acquainted.For about eighteen hundred years, this wonderful people have maintained their peculiarities of religion, language, and domestic habits, among Pagans, Mahometans, and Christians, and have suffered a continued series of reproaches, privations, and miseries, which have excited the admiration and astonishment of all who have reflected on their condition.The siege and destruction of Jerusalem by Titus, the Roman general, was one of the most awful and distressing scenes that mortals ever witnessed; and the details, as given by Josephus, are enough to make humanity shudder. During the siege, which lasted nearly five months, upwards of eleven hundred thousand Jews perished. John and Simon,[pg 205]the two generals of the Hebrews, who were accounted the ringleaders of the rebellious nation, with seven hundred of the most beautiful and vigorous of the Jewish youth, were reserved to attend the victor's triumphal chariot. The number taken captive, during this fatal contest, amounted to ninety-seven thousand; many of whom were sent into Syria, and the other provinces, to be exposed in public theatres, to fight like gladiators, or to be devoured by wild beasts. The number of those destroyed in the whole war, of which the taking of the holy city was the bloody and tremendous consummation, is computed to have been one million, four hundred and sixty thousand.In addition to the terrors of the Roman sword, this devoted nation was exposed to famine, pestilence, and the implacable fury of contending parties among themselves, which all conspired together to make the siege of Jerusalem surpass, in horror, every account of any other siege in the records of the world.A small portion, indeed, of this wretched, ruined nation were permitted to remain, and establish themselves in Judea, who, by degrees, reorganized a regular system of government, which became the centre of Jewish operations, not only for those in Judea, but for such as were dispersed in other nations. But the yoke of foreign masters was so grievous and burdensome, that they were continually restless and impatient; and, in consequence of a general revolt under the emperor Adrian, in 134, they were a second time slaughtered in multitudes, and were driven to madness and despair. Bither, the place of their greatest strength, was compelled to surrender, and Barchochba, their leader, who pretended to be the Messiah, was slain, and five hundred and eighty thousand fell by the sword in battle, besides vast numbers who perished by famine, sickness, fire, and other calamities.Kings have enacted the severest laws against them, and employed the hand of executioners to ruin them. The seditious multitudes, by murders and massacres, have committed outrages against them, if possible, still more violent and[pg 206]tragical. Besides their common share in the sufferings of society, they have undergone a series of horrid and unutterable calamities, which no other description of men has ever experienced in any age, or in any country. Princes and people, Pagans, Mahometans, and Christians, disagreeing in so many things, have united in the design of exterminating this fugitive and wretched race, but have not succeeded. They have been banished, at different times, from France, Germany, Spain, Bohemia, Hungary, and England; and from some of these kingdoms they have been banished and recalled many times in succession.The Romans and Spaniards have probably done more than any other nations to oppress and destroy this people; and the inquisition has doomed multitudes of them to torture and death.At different times, they were accused of poisoning wells, rivers, and reservoirs of water, and, before any proof of these strange and malicious charges was produced, the populace in many parts of Germany, Italy, and France, have fallen upon them with merciless and murderous severity. At one time, the German emperor found it necessary to issue an edict for their banishment, to save them from the rage of his exasperated and unrestrained subjects.As the Jews have generally been thebankersandbrokersof the people among whom they have resided, and have made a show of much wealth, this has tempted their avaricious adversaries to impose upon them enormous taxes and ruinous fines.Muley Archy, a prince of one of the Barbary states, by seizing the property of a rich Jew, was enabled to dispossess his brother of the throne of Morocco.The English parliament of Northumberland, in 1188, for the support of a projected war, assessed the Jews with 60,000 pounds, while only 70,000 were assessed upon the Christians; which proves either that the Jews were immensely rich, or that the parliament was extremely tyrannical.The English king John was unmercifully severe upon this[pg 207]afflicted people. In 1210, regardless of the costly freedom he had sold them, he subjected them all, as a body, to a fine of 60,000 marks. The ransom required by this same unfeeling king, of a rich Jew of Bristol, was 10,000 marks of silver; and on his refusing to pay this ruinous fine, he ordered one of his teeth to be extracted every day; to which the unhappy man submitted seven days, and on the eighth day he agreed to satisfy the king's rapacity. Isaac of Norwich was, not long after, compelled to pay a similar fine. But the king, not satisfied with these vast sums extorted from these injured Israelites, in the end confiscated all their property, and expelled them from the kingdom.About the beginning of the 16th century, the Jews in Persia were subjected to a tax of two millions of gold. Long would be the catalogue of injuries of this kind, which this outcast and hated nation has sustained. Numerous are the cases in which those who have become deeply in debt to them for borrowed money, have procured their banishment, and the confiscation of their property, as the readiest way to cancel their demands; and, as they have ever been addicted to usurious practices, they have, by this means, furnished plausible pretexts to their foes to fleece and destroy them.The fraternal disposition of this people led them to seek the society of each other; and, notwithstanding the wideness of their dispersion, in process of time, they, by uniting under different leaders, formed two communities of considerable extent, known by the name of the eastern and western Jews. The western Jews inhabited Egypt, Judea, Italy, and other parts of the Roman empire; the eastern Jews settled in Babylon, Chaldea, Persia, &c. The head of the western division was known by the name of the patriarch, while he who presided over the eastern Jews, was called the prince of the captivity. The office of patriarch was abolished, by imperial laws, about 429, from which time the western Jews were solely under the rule of the chiefs of their synagogues, whom they called primates. But the princes of the captivity had a longer and more splendid sway. They resided at[pg 208]Babylon, or Bagdad, and exercised an extensive authority over their brethren, as far down as the 12th century. About this period, a Jewish historian asserts that he found, at Bagdad, the prince of the captivity, lineally descended from David, and permitted, by the caliph, to exercise the rights of sovereignty over the Jews from Syria to Indostan.The existence of a succession of these imaginary potentates, from the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans, the Jews have ever been strenuous in maintaining, partly to aggrandize their nation, and partly to deprive Christians of the benefit of an argument furnished by the prophecy of Jacob, concerning the termination of the Jewish polity and independence, soon after the coming of the Messiah.Notwithstanding the world, in general, has shown a spirit of hostility and contempt for the remnant of Israel, yet they have found a few, in every age, who, either from motives of policy or justice, have treated them with kindness and respect. The first Mahometan caliphs, a number of the Roman pontiffs, and some of the Asiatic and European sovereigns, have shown them friendship and protection. Don Solomon, a learned and illustrious Jew of Portugal, in the 12th century, was raised to the highest military command in that kingdom. Casimir the Great, of Poland, in the 14th century, received the Jews as refugees into his kingdom, and granted them extensive privileges; and from that time to the present, they have been more numerous in that country than in any other in Europe.For many centuries, this persecuted race found a favorite asylum in Holland, and, by their dexterity and success in commerce, became very affluent.Cromwell, seeing the benefit which the Netherlands had derived from this money-making and money-lending community, was very desirous to recall them to England, from which they had been exiled about three hundred and fifty years. The celebrated Manasses Ben Israel had many interviews with the Protector; and so high were the expectations of the Israelites, from the clemency and authority of this illustrious[pg 209]statesman, that they began to look up to him as the promised Messiah. And, although Cromwell's friendly proposals, as to their recall, were overruled by the bigoted and intolerant policy of the times, yet, from that period, they have found favor and protection in England, and have been much more numerous and prosperous there than formerly.In France and the United States, the Jews are admitted to equal rights with all other citizens, which cannot be said of any other nations in Christendom. In the United States, they have acquired this freedom, of course, with all other citizens of this free country. In France, they were admitted to it by Bonaparte; and afterwards, in 1807, by his directions, they convened a Grand Sanhedrim, consisting, according to ancient custom, of 70 members, exclusive of the president. The number and distinction of the spectators of this Sanhedrim greatly added to the solemnity of the scene. This venerable assembly passed and agreed to various articles respecting the Mosaic worship, and their civil and ecclesiastical concerns.The extreme aversion of the Jews to every thing which bears the Christian name, and their obstinate attachment to their ancient religion, have, in former years, discouraged all attempts to convert them to the Christian faith. And not only has their conversion been neglected, but for many centuries they have been persecuted, plundered, and destroyed, by those who have called themselves Christians; they have not been permitted to enter their churches as worshippers, nor their dwellings as guests, nor reside in their territories, where Pagans and Mahometans have found an unmolested abode. While we, then, blame the blindness and incredulity of the descendants of Abraham, let us lament the folly and unkindness of the professed disciples of the mild and compassionate Redeemer. But a different spirit is now prevailing in many parts of Christendom, and a new era, as to the tribes of Israel, seems about to burst upon the world. Societies are formed in Europe and America for their benefit, and a disposition is said to be increasing, among the Jews, favorable[pg 210]to that Messiah and that religion which they have so long hated and rejected.The history of this people certainly forms a striking evidence of the truth of divine revelation. They are a living and perpetual miracle, continuing to subsist as a distinct and peculiar race for upwards of three thousand years, intermixed among almost all the nations of the world, flowing forward in a full and continued stream, like the waters of the Rhone, without mixing with the waves of the expansive lake through which the passage lies to the ocean of eternity.Indian Religions.“Lo, the poor Indian! whose untutored mindSees God in clouds, or hears him in the wind;His soul proud science never taught to strayFar as the solar walk, or milky way;Yet simple nature to his hope has given,Behind the cloud-topped hill, an humbler heaven—Some safer world in depth of woods embraced,Some happier island in the watery waste,Where slaves once more their native land behold,No fiends torment, no Christians thirst for gold.To be, contents his natural desire;He asks no angel's wing, no seraph's fire;But thinks, admitted to that equal sky,His faithful dog will bear him company.”—Pope.The natives ofCanadahave an idea of the Supreme Being; and they all, in general, agree in looking upon him as the First Spirit, and the Governor and the Creator of the world. It is said that almost all the nations of the Algonquin language give this Sovereign Being the appellation of the Great Hare. Some, again, call him Michabou, and others Atahocan. Most of them hold the opinion that he was born upon the waters, together with his whole court, entirely composed of four-footed animals, like himself; that[pg 211]he formed the earth of a grain of sand, which he took from the bottom of the ocean; and that he created man of the bodies of the dead animals. There are, likewise, some who mention a god of the waters, who opposed the designs of the Great Hare, or, at least, refused to be assisting to him. This god is, according to some, the Great Tiger. They have a third, called Matcomek, whom they invoke in the winter season.The Agreskoui of the Hurons, and the Agreskouse of the Iroquois, is, in the opinion of these nations, the Sovereign Being, and the god of war. These Indians do not give the same original to mankind with the Algonquins; they do not ascend so high as the first creation. According to them, there were, in the beginning, six men in the world; and, if you ask them who placed them there, they answer you, they do not know.The gods of the Indians have bodies, and live much in the same manner as themselves, but without any of those inconveniences to which they are subject. The wordspirit, among them, signifies only a being of a more excellent nature than others.According to the Iroquois, in the third generation there came a deluge, in which not a soul was saved; so that, in order to repeople the earth, it was necessary to change beasts into men.Beside the First Being, or the Great Spirit, they hold an infinite number of genii, or inferior spirits, both good and evil, who have each their peculiar form of worship.They ascribe to these beings a kind of immensity and omnipresence, and constantly invoke them as the guardians of mankind. But they never address themselves to the evil genii, except to beg of them to do them no hurt.They believe in the immortality of the soul, and say that the region of their everlasting abode lies so far westward, that the souls are several months in arriving at it, and have vast difficulties to surmount. The happiness which they hope to enjoy is not believed to be the recompense of virtue[pg 212]only; but to have been a good hunter, brave in war, &c., are the merits which entitle them to this paradise, which they, and the other American natives, figure as a delightful country, blessed with perpetual spring, whose forests abound with game, whose rivers swarm with fish, where famine is never felt, and uninterrupted plenty shall be enjoyed without labor or toil.The natives ofNew Englandbelieved not only a plurality of gods, who made and governed the several nations of the world, but they made deities of every thing they imagined to be great, powerful, beneficial, or hurtful to mankind. Yet they conceived an Almighty Being, who dwells in the south-west regions of the heavens, to be superior to all the rest. This Almighty Being they called Kichtan, who at first, according to their tradition, made a man and woman out of a stone, but, upon some dislike, destroyed them again; and then made another couple out of a tree, from whom descended all the nations of the earth; but how they came to be scattered and dispersed into countries so remote from one another, they cannot tell. They believed their Supreme God to be a good being, and paid a sort of acknowledgment to him for plenty, victory, and other benefits.But there is another power, which they calledHobamocko, (the devil,) of whom they stood in greater awe, and worshipped merely from a principle of fear.The immortality of the soul was universally believed among them. When good men die, they said, their souls go to Kichtan, where they meet their friends, and enjoy all manner of pleasures; when wicked men die, they go to Kichtan also, but are commanded to walk away, and wander about in restless discontent and darkness forever.After the coming of the white people, the Indians inNew Jersey, who once held a plurality of deities, supposed there were only three, because they saw people of three kinds of complexion, viz., English, negroes, and themselves.It was a notion generally prevailing among them, that the same God who made them did not make us, but[pg 213]that they were created after the white people; and it is probable they supposed their God gained some special skill by seeing the white people made, and so made them better; for it is certain they considered themselves and their methods of living, which they said their God expressly prescribed for them, vastly preferable to the white people and their methods.With regard to a future state of existence, many of them imagined that the Chichung, i. e., the shadow, or what survives the body, will, at death, go southward, to some unknown, but curious place,—will enjoy some kind of happiness, such as hunting, feasting, dancing, or the like; and what they suppose will contribute much to their happiness in the next state, is, that they shall never be weary of these entertainments.Those who have any notion about rewards and sufferings in a future state, seem to imagine that most will be happy, and that in the delightful fields, chasing the game, or reposing themselves with their families; but the poor, frozen sinners cannot stir one step towards that sunny region. Nevertheless, their misery has an end; it is longer or shorter, according to the degree of their guilt; and, after its expiation, they are permitted to become inhabitants of the Indian paradise.The Indians ofVirginiagave the names ofOkee,Quioccos, orKiwasa, to the idol which they worshipped. These names might possibly be so many epithets, which they varied according to the several functions they ascribed to this deity, or the different notions they might form to themselves of it in their religious exercises and common discourses. Moreover, they were of opinion that this idol is not one sole being, but that there were many more of the same nature, besides the tutelary gods. They gave the general name of Quioccos to all these genii, or beings, so that the name of Kiwasa might be particularly applied to the idol in question.These savages consecrated chapels and oratories to this deity, in which the idol was often represented under a variety of shapes. They even kept some of these in the most retired[pg 214]parts of their houses, to whom they communicated their affairs, and consulted them upon occasion. In this case, they made use of them in the quality of tutelary gods, from whom they supposed they received blessings on their families.The sacerdotal vestment of their priests was like a woman's petticoat plaited, which they put about their necks, and tied over the right shoulder; but they always kept one arm out, to use it as occasion required. This cloak was made round at bottom, and descended no lower than the middle of the thigh; it was made of soft, well-dressed skins, with the hair outwards.These priests shaved their heads close, the crown excepted, where they left only a little tuft, that reached from the top of the forehead to the nape of the neck, and even on the top of the forehead. They here left a border of hair, which, whether it was owing to nature, or the stiffness contracted by the fat and colors with which they daubed themselves, bristled up, and came forward like the corner of a square cap.The natives of Virginia had a great veneration for their priests; and the latter endeavored to procure it, by daubing themselves all over in a very frightful manner, dressing themselves in a very odd habit, and tricking up their hair after a very whimsical manner. Every thing they said was considered as an oracle, and made a strong impression on the minds of the people; they often withdrew from society, and lived in woods or in huts, far removed from any habitation. They were difficult of access, and did not give themselves any trouble about provisions, because care was always taken to set food for them near their habitations. They were always addressed in cases of great necessity. They also acted in the quality of physicians, because of the great knowledge they were supposed to have of nature. In fine, peace or war was determined by their voice; nor was any thing of importance undertaken without first consulting them.They had not any stated times nor fixed days, on which they celebrated their festivals, but they regulated them only by the different seasons of the year; as, for instance, they[pg 215]celebrated one day at the arrival of their wild birds, another upon the return of the hunting season, and for the maturity of their fruits; but the greatest festival of all was at harvest time. They then spent several days in diverting themselves, and enjoyed most of their amusements, such as martial dances and heroic songs.After their return from war, or escaping some danger, they lighted fires, and made merry about them, each having his gourd-bottle, or his little bell, in his hand. Men, women, and children, often danced in a confused manner about these fires. Their devotions, in general, consisted only of acclamations of joy, mixed with dances and songs, except in seasons of sorrow and affliction, when they were changed into howlings. The priests presided at this solemnity, dressed in their sacerdotal ornaments, part of which were the gourd-bottle, the petticoat above mentioned, and the serpents' or weasels' skins, the tails of which were dexterously tied upon their heads like a tiara, or triple crown. These priests began the song, and always opened the religious exercise, to which they often added incantations, part of the mysteries of which were comprehended in the songs. The noise, the gestures, the wry faces, in a word, every thing, contributed to render these incantations terrible.

Anti-Pedobaptists.A name given to those who object to the baptism of infants. The word is derived from the Greek words signifyingagainst,a child, andI baptize.

A name given to those who object to the baptism of infants. The word is derived from the Greek words signifyingagainst,a child, andI baptize.

Unitarians.Those Christians who are usually designated by this name in the United States, and who are also calledLiberal Christians, are mostly Congregationalists, and are found principally in New England.They acknowledge no other rule of faith and practice than the holy Scriptures, which they consider it the duty of every man to search for himself, prayerfully, and with the best exercise of his understanding. They reject all creeds of human device, as generally unjust to the truth of God and the mind of man, tending to produce exclusiveness, bigotry, and divisions, and at best of doubtful value. They regard, however, with favor the earliest creed on record, commonly called the Apostles', as approaching nearest to the simplicity of the gospel, and as imbodying the grand points of the Christian faith.They adopt the words of St. Paul, (1 Cor. 8:6,)“To us there is but one God, the Father, of whom are all things, and we in him; and one Lord Jesus Christ, by whom are all things, and we by him.”They make great account of the doctrine of God's paternal character and government, and continually set it forward as the richest source of consolation, and the most powerful motive to repentance and improvement.Receiving and trusting in Christ as their Lord, Teacher, Mediator, Intercessor, Savior, they hold in less esteem[pg 197]than many other sects, nice theological questions and speculations concerning his precise rank, and the nature of his relation to God. They feel that by honoring him asthe Son of God, they honor him as he desired to be honored; and that by obeying and imitating him, they in the best manner show their love.They believe that the Holy Ghost is not a distinct person in the Godhead, but thatpower of God, thatdivine influence, by which Christianity was established through miraculous aids, and by which its spirit is still shed abroad in the hearts of men.They advocate the most perfect toleration. They regardcharityas the crowning Christian grace,—the end of the commandment of God. They consider a pure and lofty morality as not only inseparable from true religion, but the most acceptable service that man can render to his Maker, and the only indubitable evidence of a believing heart.They believe that sin is its own punishment, and virtue its own rewarder; that the moral consequences of a man's good or evil conduct go with him into the future life, to afford him remorse or satisfaction; that God will be influenced in all his dealings with the soul by mercy and justice, punishing no more severely than the sinner deserves, and always for a benevolent end. Indeed, the greater part of the denomination are Restorationists.Unitarians consider that, besides the Bible, all the Ante-Nicene fathers—that is, all Christian writers for three centuries after the birth of Christ—give testimony in their favor, against the modern popular doctrine of the Trinity. As forantiquity, it is their belief that it is really on their side.In theFirst Epistle of Clement to the Corinthians, which was written towards the close of the first century,—and the evidence for the genuineness of which is stronger than for that of any other of the productions attributed to the apostolical fathers,—the supremacy of the Father is asserted or implied throughout, and Jesus is spoken of in terms mostly[pg 198]borrowed from the Scriptures. He is once called the“sceptre of the majesty of God;”and this highly-figurative expression is the most exalted applied to him in the whole Epistle.Justin Martyr, the most distinguished of the ancient fathers of the church, who flourished in the former part of the second century, and whose writings (with the exception of those attributed to theapostolicfathers) are the earliest Christian records next to the New Testament, expressly says,“We worship God, the Maker of the universe, offering up to him prayers and thanks. But, assigning to Jesus, who came to teach us these things, and for this end was born, the‘second place’after God, we not without reason honor him.”The germ and origin of the doctrine of the Trinity, the Unitarians find in the speculations of those Christianized philosophers of the second century, whose minds were strongly tinctured with the Platonic philosophy, combined with theemanation system, as taught at Alexandria, and held by Philo. From this time they trace the gradual formation of the doctrine through successive ages down to Athanasius and Augustine; the former of whom, A. D. 362, was the first to insist upon the equality of the Holy Ghost with the Father and the Son; and the latter, about half a century afterwards, was the first to insist upon their numerical unity.In all ages of the church, there have been many learned and pious men who have rejected the Trinity as unscriptural and irrational. The first attempt, at the council of Nice, to establish and make universal the Trinitarian creed, caused disturbances and dissensions in the church, which continued for ages, and produced results the most deplorable to every benevolent mind which exaltscharityover faith.Soon after the reformation, the Unitarian faith was avowed by Martin Cellarius, who was then finishing his studies at Wittenberg, where Luther was professor. In 1546, the Unitarian opinions made a considerable movement in Italy, and several persons of learning and eminence were[pg 199]put to death. In 1553, Michael Servetus was burned for this heresy, at Geneva. The elder Socinus made his escape from this persecution, and spread his views throughout several countries of Europe, more particularly in Poland, where a large part of the Reformed clergy embraced them, and were separated, in 1565, from the communion of the Calvinists and Lutherans.In England, the number of Unitarians was considerable, according to Strype, as early as 1548; and in 1550, he represents the Unitarian doctrine as spreading so fast that the leading Churchmen were alarmed, and“thought it necessary to suppress its expression by rigid measures.”These“rigid measures,”such as imprisonment and burning, were successful for a time. But afterwards, the“heresy”gained new and able supporters, such as Biddle, Firmin, Dr. S. Clarke, Dr. Lardner, Whiston, Emlyn, Sir Isaac Newton, &c., and has been spreading to this day.In the north of Ireland, the Unitarians compose several presbyteries. There are also congregations of Unitarians in Dublin, and in other southern cities of the kingdom.In Scotland, there are chapels of this character in Edinburgh, Glasgow, and other principal places.In the United States, Unitarian opinions were not prevalent till towards the close of the last century. Since that time, however, they have advanced rapidly, and have been embraced by some of the wisest and best men in the land.Of late years, the Congregational Unitarians have generally abstained from controversy, in the United States. They have, however, published and circulated extensively a large number of tracts, of a doctrinal and practical character. They have at the present time assumed apositivecondition, gained a strong and permanent hold amongst the Christian sects, and are manifesting new signs of vitality and usefulness.The following proof-texts are some of those upon which the Unitarians rest their belief in the inferiority of the Son to the Father:—John 8:17, 18. John 17:3. Acts 10:38 1 Tim. 2:5. 1 John 4:14. Rom. 8:34 1 Cor. 11:3.[pg 200]John 10:29. John 14:28. Matt. 19:17. John 17:21. John 20:17. 1 Cor. 8:5, 6. John 10:25; 7:16, 17, 8:28; 5:19, 20; 8:49, 50. Matt. 20:23. John 6:38, 57; 5:30. Mark 13:32. Luke 6:12. John 11:41, 42. Matt. 27:46. Acts 2:22-24. Phil. 2:11. Col. 1:15. Rev. 3:14. Heb. 3:3. Matt. 12:18. Luke 2:52.

Those Christians who are usually designated by this name in the United States, and who are also calledLiberal Christians, are mostly Congregationalists, and are found principally in New England.

They acknowledge no other rule of faith and practice than the holy Scriptures, which they consider it the duty of every man to search for himself, prayerfully, and with the best exercise of his understanding. They reject all creeds of human device, as generally unjust to the truth of God and the mind of man, tending to produce exclusiveness, bigotry, and divisions, and at best of doubtful value. They regard, however, with favor the earliest creed on record, commonly called the Apostles', as approaching nearest to the simplicity of the gospel, and as imbodying the grand points of the Christian faith.

They adopt the words of St. Paul, (1 Cor. 8:6,)“To us there is but one God, the Father, of whom are all things, and we in him; and one Lord Jesus Christ, by whom are all things, and we by him.”They make great account of the doctrine of God's paternal character and government, and continually set it forward as the richest source of consolation, and the most powerful motive to repentance and improvement.

Receiving and trusting in Christ as their Lord, Teacher, Mediator, Intercessor, Savior, they hold in less esteem[pg 197]than many other sects, nice theological questions and speculations concerning his precise rank, and the nature of his relation to God. They feel that by honoring him asthe Son of God, they honor him as he desired to be honored; and that by obeying and imitating him, they in the best manner show their love.

They believe that the Holy Ghost is not a distinct person in the Godhead, but thatpower of God, thatdivine influence, by which Christianity was established through miraculous aids, and by which its spirit is still shed abroad in the hearts of men.

They advocate the most perfect toleration. They regardcharityas the crowning Christian grace,—the end of the commandment of God. They consider a pure and lofty morality as not only inseparable from true religion, but the most acceptable service that man can render to his Maker, and the only indubitable evidence of a believing heart.

They believe that sin is its own punishment, and virtue its own rewarder; that the moral consequences of a man's good or evil conduct go with him into the future life, to afford him remorse or satisfaction; that God will be influenced in all his dealings with the soul by mercy and justice, punishing no more severely than the sinner deserves, and always for a benevolent end. Indeed, the greater part of the denomination are Restorationists.

Unitarians consider that, besides the Bible, all the Ante-Nicene fathers—that is, all Christian writers for three centuries after the birth of Christ—give testimony in their favor, against the modern popular doctrine of the Trinity. As forantiquity, it is their belief that it is really on their side.

In theFirst Epistle of Clement to the Corinthians, which was written towards the close of the first century,—and the evidence for the genuineness of which is stronger than for that of any other of the productions attributed to the apostolical fathers,—the supremacy of the Father is asserted or implied throughout, and Jesus is spoken of in terms mostly[pg 198]borrowed from the Scriptures. He is once called the“sceptre of the majesty of God;”and this highly-figurative expression is the most exalted applied to him in the whole Epistle.

Justin Martyr, the most distinguished of the ancient fathers of the church, who flourished in the former part of the second century, and whose writings (with the exception of those attributed to theapostolicfathers) are the earliest Christian records next to the New Testament, expressly says,“We worship God, the Maker of the universe, offering up to him prayers and thanks. But, assigning to Jesus, who came to teach us these things, and for this end was born, the‘second place’after God, we not without reason honor him.”

The germ and origin of the doctrine of the Trinity, the Unitarians find in the speculations of those Christianized philosophers of the second century, whose minds were strongly tinctured with the Platonic philosophy, combined with theemanation system, as taught at Alexandria, and held by Philo. From this time they trace the gradual formation of the doctrine through successive ages down to Athanasius and Augustine; the former of whom, A. D. 362, was the first to insist upon the equality of the Holy Ghost with the Father and the Son; and the latter, about half a century afterwards, was the first to insist upon their numerical unity.

In all ages of the church, there have been many learned and pious men who have rejected the Trinity as unscriptural and irrational. The first attempt, at the council of Nice, to establish and make universal the Trinitarian creed, caused disturbances and dissensions in the church, which continued for ages, and produced results the most deplorable to every benevolent mind which exaltscharityover faith.

Soon after the reformation, the Unitarian faith was avowed by Martin Cellarius, who was then finishing his studies at Wittenberg, where Luther was professor. In 1546, the Unitarian opinions made a considerable movement in Italy, and several persons of learning and eminence were[pg 199]put to death. In 1553, Michael Servetus was burned for this heresy, at Geneva. The elder Socinus made his escape from this persecution, and spread his views throughout several countries of Europe, more particularly in Poland, where a large part of the Reformed clergy embraced them, and were separated, in 1565, from the communion of the Calvinists and Lutherans.

In England, the number of Unitarians was considerable, according to Strype, as early as 1548; and in 1550, he represents the Unitarian doctrine as spreading so fast that the leading Churchmen were alarmed, and“thought it necessary to suppress its expression by rigid measures.”These“rigid measures,”such as imprisonment and burning, were successful for a time. But afterwards, the“heresy”gained new and able supporters, such as Biddle, Firmin, Dr. S. Clarke, Dr. Lardner, Whiston, Emlyn, Sir Isaac Newton, &c., and has been spreading to this day.

In the north of Ireland, the Unitarians compose several presbyteries. There are also congregations of Unitarians in Dublin, and in other southern cities of the kingdom.

In Scotland, there are chapels of this character in Edinburgh, Glasgow, and other principal places.

In the United States, Unitarian opinions were not prevalent till towards the close of the last century. Since that time, however, they have advanced rapidly, and have been embraced by some of the wisest and best men in the land.

Of late years, the Congregational Unitarians have generally abstained from controversy, in the United States. They have, however, published and circulated extensively a large number of tracts, of a doctrinal and practical character. They have at the present time assumed apositivecondition, gained a strong and permanent hold amongst the Christian sects, and are manifesting new signs of vitality and usefulness.

The following proof-texts are some of those upon which the Unitarians rest their belief in the inferiority of the Son to the Father:—John 8:17, 18. John 17:3. Acts 10:38 1 Tim. 2:5. 1 John 4:14. Rom. 8:34 1 Cor. 11:3.[pg 200]John 10:29. John 14:28. Matt. 19:17. John 17:21. John 20:17. 1 Cor. 8:5, 6. John 10:25; 7:16, 17, 8:28; 5:19, 20; 8:49, 50. Matt. 20:23. John 6:38, 57; 5:30. Mark 13:32. Luke 6:12. John 11:41, 42. Matt. 27:46. Acts 2:22-24. Phil. 2:11. Col. 1:15. Rev. 3:14. Heb. 3:3. Matt. 12:18. Luke 2:52.

Brownists.A denomination which sprung up in England towards the close of the sixteenth century. They derive their name from their leader, Robert Brown.This denomination did not differ in point of doctrine from the church of England, or from the other Puritans; but they apprehended, according to Scripture, that every church ought to be confined within the limits of a single congregation, and that the government should be democratical. They maintained the discipline of the church of England to be Popish and antichristian, and all her ordinances and sacraments invalid. Hence they forbade their people to join with them in prayer, in hearing the word, or in any part of public worship. They not only renounced communion with the church of England, but with all other churches, except such as were of the same model.

A denomination which sprung up in England towards the close of the sixteenth century. They derive their name from their leader, Robert Brown.

This denomination did not differ in point of doctrine from the church of England, or from the other Puritans; but they apprehended, according to Scripture, that every church ought to be confined within the limits of a single congregation, and that the government should be democratical. They maintained the discipline of the church of England to be Popish and antichristian, and all her ordinances and sacraments invalid. Hence they forbade their people to join with them in prayer, in hearing the word, or in any part of public worship. They not only renounced communion with the church of England, but with all other churches, except such as were of the same model.

Puritans.This name was given to a party which appeared in England in the year 1565, who opposed the liturgy and ceremonies of the church of England.They acquired this denomination from their professed design to establish a purer form of worship and discipline.[pg 201]Those who were first styledPuritanswere Presbyterians, but the term was afterwards applied to others who differed from the church of England.Those who separated from the church of England were also styledDissenters.

This name was given to a party which appeared in England in the year 1565, who opposed the liturgy and ceremonies of the church of England.

They acquired this denomination from their professed design to establish a purer form of worship and discipline.

Those who were first styledPuritanswere Presbyterians, but the term was afterwards applied to others who differed from the church of England.

Those who separated from the church of England were also styledDissenters.

Bourignonists.The followers of Antoinette Bourignon, a lady in France, who pretended to particular inspirations. She was born at Lisle, in 1616. At her birth, she was so deformed that it was debated some days in the family whether it was not proper to stifle her as a monster; but, her deformity diminishing, she was spared, and afterwards obtained such a degree of beauty, that she had her admirers. From her childhood to her old age she had an extraordinary turn of mind. She set up for a reformer, and published a great number of books, filled with very singular notions; the most remarkable of which are entitled“The Light of the World,”and“The Testimony of Truth.”In her confession of faith, she professes her belief in the Scriptures, the divinity and atonement of Christ. She believed, also, that man is perfectly free to resist or receive divine grace; that God is ever unchangeable love towards all his creatures, and does not inflict any arbitrary punishment, but that the evils they suffer are the natural consequence of sin; that religion consists not in outward forms of worship, nor systems of faith, but in an entire resignation to the will of God. She held many extravagant notions, among which, it is said, she asserted that Adam, before the fall, possessed the principles of both sexes, that, in an ecstasy, God represented Adam to her mind in his original state, as also the beauty of the first world, and how he had drawn from it the chaos; and that every thing was bright, transparent, and darted forth life and ineffable glory, with a number of other wild ideas. She dressed like a hermit,[pg 202]and travelled through France, Holland, England, and Scotland. She died at Franeker, in the province of Frise, October 30, 1680.

The followers of Antoinette Bourignon, a lady in France, who pretended to particular inspirations. She was born at Lisle, in 1616. At her birth, she was so deformed that it was debated some days in the family whether it was not proper to stifle her as a monster; but, her deformity diminishing, she was spared, and afterwards obtained such a degree of beauty, that she had her admirers. From her childhood to her old age she had an extraordinary turn of mind. She set up for a reformer, and published a great number of books, filled with very singular notions; the most remarkable of which are entitled“The Light of the World,”and“The Testimony of Truth.”In her confession of faith, she professes her belief in the Scriptures, the divinity and atonement of Christ. She believed, also, that man is perfectly free to resist or receive divine grace; that God is ever unchangeable love towards all his creatures, and does not inflict any arbitrary punishment, but that the evils they suffer are the natural consequence of sin; that religion consists not in outward forms of worship, nor systems of faith, but in an entire resignation to the will of God. She held many extravagant notions, among which, it is said, she asserted that Adam, before the fall, possessed the principles of both sexes, that, in an ecstasy, God represented Adam to her mind in his original state, as also the beauty of the first world, and how he had drawn from it the chaos; and that every thing was bright, transparent, and darted forth life and ineffable glory, with a number of other wild ideas. She dressed like a hermit,[pg 202]and travelled through France, Holland, England, and Scotland. She died at Franeker, in the province of Frise, October 30, 1680.

Jews.A complete system of the religious doctrines of the Jews is contained in the five books of Moses, their great lawgiver, who was raised up to deliver them from their bondage in Egypt, and to conduct them to the possession of Canaan, the promised land.The principal sects among the Jews, in the time of our Savior, were the Pharisees, who placed religion in external ceremony; the Sadducees, who were remarkable for their incredulity; and the Essenes, who were distinguished by an austere sanctity.The Pharisees and Sadducees are frequently mentioned in the New Testament; and an acquaintance with their principles and practices serves to illustrate many passages in the sacred history. At present, the Jews have two sects—the Caraites, who admit no rule of religion but the law of Moses; and the Rabbinists, who add to the laws the tradition of the Talmud, a collection of the doctrines and morality of the Jews. The expectation of a Messiah is the distinguishing feature of their religious system. The wordMessiahsignifies one anointed, or installed into an office by an unction.Christians believe that Jesus Christ is the Messiah, in whom all the Jewish prophecies are accomplished. The Jews, infatuated with the idea of a temporal Messiah, who is to subdue the world, still wait for his appearance.The most remarkable periods in the history of the Jews are the call of Abraham, the giving of the law by Moses, their establishment in Canaan under Joshua, the building of the temple by Solomon, the division of the tribes, their captivity in Babylon, their return under Zerubbabel and the[pg 203]destruction of their city and temple by Titus, afterwards emperor, A. D. 70.Maimonides, an illustrious rabbi, drew up for the Jews, in the eleventh century, a confession of faith, which all Jews admit. It is as follows:—“1. I believe, with a true and perfect faith, that God is the Creator, whose name be blessed, Governor, and Maker, of all creatures, and that he hath wrought all things, worketh and shall work forever.“2. I believe, with a perfect faith, that the Creator, whose name be blessed, isone, and that such a unity as in him can be found in none other, and that he alone hath been our God, is, and forever shall be.“3. I believe, with a perfect faith, that the Creator, whose name be blessed, is not corporeal, nor to be comprehended with any bodily property, and that there is no bodily essence that can be likened unto him.“4. I believe, with a perfect faith, the Creator, whose name be blessed, to be the first and the last, that nothing was before him, and that he shall abide the last forever.“5. I believe, with a perfect faith, that the Creator, whose name be blessed, is to be worshipped, and none else.“6. I believe, with a perfect faith, that all the words of the prophets are true.“7. I believe, with a perfect faith, the prophecies of Moses, our master,— may he rest in peace;—that he was the father and chief of all wise men that lived before him, or ever shall live after him.“8. I believe, with a perfect faith, that all the law which at this day is found in our hands, was delivered by God himself to our master, Moses. God's peace be with him.“9. I believe, with a perfect faith, that the same law is never to be changed, nor another to be given us of God, whose name be blessed.“10. I believe, with a perfect faith, that God, whose name be blessed, understandeth all the works and thoughts of[pg 204]men, as it is written in the prophets. He fashioneth their hearts alike; he understandeth all their works.“11. I believe, with a perfect faith, that God will recompense good to them that keep his commandments, and will punish them who transgress them.“12. I believe, with a perfect faith, that the Messiah is yet to come; and, although he retard his coming, yet I will wait for him till he come.“13. I believe, with a perfect faith, that the dead shall be restored to life, when it shall seem fit unto God the Creator, whose name be blessed, and memory celebrated, world without end.Amen.”This people constitute one of the most singular and interesting portions of mankind. For about three thousand years, they have existed as a distinct nation; and, what is remarkable, by far the greatest part of this time they have been in bondage and captivity.The calling of Abraham, the father and founder of this nation; the legislation of Moses; the priesthood of Aaron: the Egyptian bondage; the conquest of Canaan, and the history of the Jews to the coming of the Messiah; their cruel and injurious treatment of this august and innocent personage,—are facts which the Scriptures disclose, and with which, it is presumed, every reader is well acquainted.For about eighteen hundred years, this wonderful people have maintained their peculiarities of religion, language, and domestic habits, among Pagans, Mahometans, and Christians, and have suffered a continued series of reproaches, privations, and miseries, which have excited the admiration and astonishment of all who have reflected on their condition.The siege and destruction of Jerusalem by Titus, the Roman general, was one of the most awful and distressing scenes that mortals ever witnessed; and the details, as given by Josephus, are enough to make humanity shudder. During the siege, which lasted nearly five months, upwards of eleven hundred thousand Jews perished. John and Simon,[pg 205]the two generals of the Hebrews, who were accounted the ringleaders of the rebellious nation, with seven hundred of the most beautiful and vigorous of the Jewish youth, were reserved to attend the victor's triumphal chariot. The number taken captive, during this fatal contest, amounted to ninety-seven thousand; many of whom were sent into Syria, and the other provinces, to be exposed in public theatres, to fight like gladiators, or to be devoured by wild beasts. The number of those destroyed in the whole war, of which the taking of the holy city was the bloody and tremendous consummation, is computed to have been one million, four hundred and sixty thousand.In addition to the terrors of the Roman sword, this devoted nation was exposed to famine, pestilence, and the implacable fury of contending parties among themselves, which all conspired together to make the siege of Jerusalem surpass, in horror, every account of any other siege in the records of the world.A small portion, indeed, of this wretched, ruined nation were permitted to remain, and establish themselves in Judea, who, by degrees, reorganized a regular system of government, which became the centre of Jewish operations, not only for those in Judea, but for such as were dispersed in other nations. But the yoke of foreign masters was so grievous and burdensome, that they were continually restless and impatient; and, in consequence of a general revolt under the emperor Adrian, in 134, they were a second time slaughtered in multitudes, and were driven to madness and despair. Bither, the place of their greatest strength, was compelled to surrender, and Barchochba, their leader, who pretended to be the Messiah, was slain, and five hundred and eighty thousand fell by the sword in battle, besides vast numbers who perished by famine, sickness, fire, and other calamities.Kings have enacted the severest laws against them, and employed the hand of executioners to ruin them. The seditious multitudes, by murders and massacres, have committed outrages against them, if possible, still more violent and[pg 206]tragical. Besides their common share in the sufferings of society, they have undergone a series of horrid and unutterable calamities, which no other description of men has ever experienced in any age, or in any country. Princes and people, Pagans, Mahometans, and Christians, disagreeing in so many things, have united in the design of exterminating this fugitive and wretched race, but have not succeeded. They have been banished, at different times, from France, Germany, Spain, Bohemia, Hungary, and England; and from some of these kingdoms they have been banished and recalled many times in succession.The Romans and Spaniards have probably done more than any other nations to oppress and destroy this people; and the inquisition has doomed multitudes of them to torture and death.At different times, they were accused of poisoning wells, rivers, and reservoirs of water, and, before any proof of these strange and malicious charges was produced, the populace in many parts of Germany, Italy, and France, have fallen upon them with merciless and murderous severity. At one time, the German emperor found it necessary to issue an edict for their banishment, to save them from the rage of his exasperated and unrestrained subjects.As the Jews have generally been thebankersandbrokersof the people among whom they have resided, and have made a show of much wealth, this has tempted their avaricious adversaries to impose upon them enormous taxes and ruinous fines.Muley Archy, a prince of one of the Barbary states, by seizing the property of a rich Jew, was enabled to dispossess his brother of the throne of Morocco.The English parliament of Northumberland, in 1188, for the support of a projected war, assessed the Jews with 60,000 pounds, while only 70,000 were assessed upon the Christians; which proves either that the Jews were immensely rich, or that the parliament was extremely tyrannical.The English king John was unmercifully severe upon this[pg 207]afflicted people. In 1210, regardless of the costly freedom he had sold them, he subjected them all, as a body, to a fine of 60,000 marks. The ransom required by this same unfeeling king, of a rich Jew of Bristol, was 10,000 marks of silver; and on his refusing to pay this ruinous fine, he ordered one of his teeth to be extracted every day; to which the unhappy man submitted seven days, and on the eighth day he agreed to satisfy the king's rapacity. Isaac of Norwich was, not long after, compelled to pay a similar fine. But the king, not satisfied with these vast sums extorted from these injured Israelites, in the end confiscated all their property, and expelled them from the kingdom.About the beginning of the 16th century, the Jews in Persia were subjected to a tax of two millions of gold. Long would be the catalogue of injuries of this kind, which this outcast and hated nation has sustained. Numerous are the cases in which those who have become deeply in debt to them for borrowed money, have procured their banishment, and the confiscation of their property, as the readiest way to cancel their demands; and, as they have ever been addicted to usurious practices, they have, by this means, furnished plausible pretexts to their foes to fleece and destroy them.The fraternal disposition of this people led them to seek the society of each other; and, notwithstanding the wideness of their dispersion, in process of time, they, by uniting under different leaders, formed two communities of considerable extent, known by the name of the eastern and western Jews. The western Jews inhabited Egypt, Judea, Italy, and other parts of the Roman empire; the eastern Jews settled in Babylon, Chaldea, Persia, &c. The head of the western division was known by the name of the patriarch, while he who presided over the eastern Jews, was called the prince of the captivity. The office of patriarch was abolished, by imperial laws, about 429, from which time the western Jews were solely under the rule of the chiefs of their synagogues, whom they called primates. But the princes of the captivity had a longer and more splendid sway. They resided at[pg 208]Babylon, or Bagdad, and exercised an extensive authority over their brethren, as far down as the 12th century. About this period, a Jewish historian asserts that he found, at Bagdad, the prince of the captivity, lineally descended from David, and permitted, by the caliph, to exercise the rights of sovereignty over the Jews from Syria to Indostan.The existence of a succession of these imaginary potentates, from the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans, the Jews have ever been strenuous in maintaining, partly to aggrandize their nation, and partly to deprive Christians of the benefit of an argument furnished by the prophecy of Jacob, concerning the termination of the Jewish polity and independence, soon after the coming of the Messiah.Notwithstanding the world, in general, has shown a spirit of hostility and contempt for the remnant of Israel, yet they have found a few, in every age, who, either from motives of policy or justice, have treated them with kindness and respect. The first Mahometan caliphs, a number of the Roman pontiffs, and some of the Asiatic and European sovereigns, have shown them friendship and protection. Don Solomon, a learned and illustrious Jew of Portugal, in the 12th century, was raised to the highest military command in that kingdom. Casimir the Great, of Poland, in the 14th century, received the Jews as refugees into his kingdom, and granted them extensive privileges; and from that time to the present, they have been more numerous in that country than in any other in Europe.For many centuries, this persecuted race found a favorite asylum in Holland, and, by their dexterity and success in commerce, became very affluent.Cromwell, seeing the benefit which the Netherlands had derived from this money-making and money-lending community, was very desirous to recall them to England, from which they had been exiled about three hundred and fifty years. The celebrated Manasses Ben Israel had many interviews with the Protector; and so high were the expectations of the Israelites, from the clemency and authority of this illustrious[pg 209]statesman, that they began to look up to him as the promised Messiah. And, although Cromwell's friendly proposals, as to their recall, were overruled by the bigoted and intolerant policy of the times, yet, from that period, they have found favor and protection in England, and have been much more numerous and prosperous there than formerly.In France and the United States, the Jews are admitted to equal rights with all other citizens, which cannot be said of any other nations in Christendom. In the United States, they have acquired this freedom, of course, with all other citizens of this free country. In France, they were admitted to it by Bonaparte; and afterwards, in 1807, by his directions, they convened a Grand Sanhedrim, consisting, according to ancient custom, of 70 members, exclusive of the president. The number and distinction of the spectators of this Sanhedrim greatly added to the solemnity of the scene. This venerable assembly passed and agreed to various articles respecting the Mosaic worship, and their civil and ecclesiastical concerns.The extreme aversion of the Jews to every thing which bears the Christian name, and their obstinate attachment to their ancient religion, have, in former years, discouraged all attempts to convert them to the Christian faith. And not only has their conversion been neglected, but for many centuries they have been persecuted, plundered, and destroyed, by those who have called themselves Christians; they have not been permitted to enter their churches as worshippers, nor their dwellings as guests, nor reside in their territories, where Pagans and Mahometans have found an unmolested abode. While we, then, blame the blindness and incredulity of the descendants of Abraham, let us lament the folly and unkindness of the professed disciples of the mild and compassionate Redeemer. But a different spirit is now prevailing in many parts of Christendom, and a new era, as to the tribes of Israel, seems about to burst upon the world. Societies are formed in Europe and America for their benefit, and a disposition is said to be increasing, among the Jews, favorable[pg 210]to that Messiah and that religion which they have so long hated and rejected.The history of this people certainly forms a striking evidence of the truth of divine revelation. They are a living and perpetual miracle, continuing to subsist as a distinct and peculiar race for upwards of three thousand years, intermixed among almost all the nations of the world, flowing forward in a full and continued stream, like the waters of the Rhone, without mixing with the waves of the expansive lake through which the passage lies to the ocean of eternity.

A complete system of the religious doctrines of the Jews is contained in the five books of Moses, their great lawgiver, who was raised up to deliver them from their bondage in Egypt, and to conduct them to the possession of Canaan, the promised land.

The principal sects among the Jews, in the time of our Savior, were the Pharisees, who placed religion in external ceremony; the Sadducees, who were remarkable for their incredulity; and the Essenes, who were distinguished by an austere sanctity.

The Pharisees and Sadducees are frequently mentioned in the New Testament; and an acquaintance with their principles and practices serves to illustrate many passages in the sacred history. At present, the Jews have two sects—the Caraites, who admit no rule of religion but the law of Moses; and the Rabbinists, who add to the laws the tradition of the Talmud, a collection of the doctrines and morality of the Jews. The expectation of a Messiah is the distinguishing feature of their religious system. The wordMessiahsignifies one anointed, or installed into an office by an unction.

Christians believe that Jesus Christ is the Messiah, in whom all the Jewish prophecies are accomplished. The Jews, infatuated with the idea of a temporal Messiah, who is to subdue the world, still wait for his appearance.

The most remarkable periods in the history of the Jews are the call of Abraham, the giving of the law by Moses, their establishment in Canaan under Joshua, the building of the temple by Solomon, the division of the tribes, their captivity in Babylon, their return under Zerubbabel and the[pg 203]destruction of their city and temple by Titus, afterwards emperor, A. D. 70.

Maimonides, an illustrious rabbi, drew up for the Jews, in the eleventh century, a confession of faith, which all Jews admit. It is as follows:—

“1. I believe, with a true and perfect faith, that God is the Creator, whose name be blessed, Governor, and Maker, of all creatures, and that he hath wrought all things, worketh and shall work forever.“2. I believe, with a perfect faith, that the Creator, whose name be blessed, isone, and that such a unity as in him can be found in none other, and that he alone hath been our God, is, and forever shall be.“3. I believe, with a perfect faith, that the Creator, whose name be blessed, is not corporeal, nor to be comprehended with any bodily property, and that there is no bodily essence that can be likened unto him.“4. I believe, with a perfect faith, the Creator, whose name be blessed, to be the first and the last, that nothing was before him, and that he shall abide the last forever.“5. I believe, with a perfect faith, that the Creator, whose name be blessed, is to be worshipped, and none else.“6. I believe, with a perfect faith, that all the words of the prophets are true.“7. I believe, with a perfect faith, the prophecies of Moses, our master,— may he rest in peace;—that he was the father and chief of all wise men that lived before him, or ever shall live after him.“8. I believe, with a perfect faith, that all the law which at this day is found in our hands, was delivered by God himself to our master, Moses. God's peace be with him.“9. I believe, with a perfect faith, that the same law is never to be changed, nor another to be given us of God, whose name be blessed.“10. I believe, with a perfect faith, that God, whose name be blessed, understandeth all the works and thoughts of[pg 204]men, as it is written in the prophets. He fashioneth their hearts alike; he understandeth all their works.“11. I believe, with a perfect faith, that God will recompense good to them that keep his commandments, and will punish them who transgress them.“12. I believe, with a perfect faith, that the Messiah is yet to come; and, although he retard his coming, yet I will wait for him till he come.“13. I believe, with a perfect faith, that the dead shall be restored to life, when it shall seem fit unto God the Creator, whose name be blessed, and memory celebrated, world without end.Amen.”

“1. I believe, with a true and perfect faith, that God is the Creator, whose name be blessed, Governor, and Maker, of all creatures, and that he hath wrought all things, worketh and shall work forever.

“2. I believe, with a perfect faith, that the Creator, whose name be blessed, isone, and that such a unity as in him can be found in none other, and that he alone hath been our God, is, and forever shall be.

“3. I believe, with a perfect faith, that the Creator, whose name be blessed, is not corporeal, nor to be comprehended with any bodily property, and that there is no bodily essence that can be likened unto him.

“4. I believe, with a perfect faith, the Creator, whose name be blessed, to be the first and the last, that nothing was before him, and that he shall abide the last forever.

“5. I believe, with a perfect faith, that the Creator, whose name be blessed, is to be worshipped, and none else.

“6. I believe, with a perfect faith, that all the words of the prophets are true.

“7. I believe, with a perfect faith, the prophecies of Moses, our master,— may he rest in peace;—that he was the father and chief of all wise men that lived before him, or ever shall live after him.

“8. I believe, with a perfect faith, that all the law which at this day is found in our hands, was delivered by God himself to our master, Moses. God's peace be with him.

“9. I believe, with a perfect faith, that the same law is never to be changed, nor another to be given us of God, whose name be blessed.

“10. I believe, with a perfect faith, that God, whose name be blessed, understandeth all the works and thoughts of[pg 204]men, as it is written in the prophets. He fashioneth their hearts alike; he understandeth all their works.

“11. I believe, with a perfect faith, that God will recompense good to them that keep his commandments, and will punish them who transgress them.

“12. I believe, with a perfect faith, that the Messiah is yet to come; and, although he retard his coming, yet I will wait for him till he come.

“13. I believe, with a perfect faith, that the dead shall be restored to life, when it shall seem fit unto God the Creator, whose name be blessed, and memory celebrated, world without end.Amen.”

This people constitute one of the most singular and interesting portions of mankind. For about three thousand years, they have existed as a distinct nation; and, what is remarkable, by far the greatest part of this time they have been in bondage and captivity.

The calling of Abraham, the father and founder of this nation; the legislation of Moses; the priesthood of Aaron: the Egyptian bondage; the conquest of Canaan, and the history of the Jews to the coming of the Messiah; their cruel and injurious treatment of this august and innocent personage,—are facts which the Scriptures disclose, and with which, it is presumed, every reader is well acquainted.

For about eighteen hundred years, this wonderful people have maintained their peculiarities of religion, language, and domestic habits, among Pagans, Mahometans, and Christians, and have suffered a continued series of reproaches, privations, and miseries, which have excited the admiration and astonishment of all who have reflected on their condition.

The siege and destruction of Jerusalem by Titus, the Roman general, was one of the most awful and distressing scenes that mortals ever witnessed; and the details, as given by Josephus, are enough to make humanity shudder. During the siege, which lasted nearly five months, upwards of eleven hundred thousand Jews perished. John and Simon,[pg 205]the two generals of the Hebrews, who were accounted the ringleaders of the rebellious nation, with seven hundred of the most beautiful and vigorous of the Jewish youth, were reserved to attend the victor's triumphal chariot. The number taken captive, during this fatal contest, amounted to ninety-seven thousand; many of whom were sent into Syria, and the other provinces, to be exposed in public theatres, to fight like gladiators, or to be devoured by wild beasts. The number of those destroyed in the whole war, of which the taking of the holy city was the bloody and tremendous consummation, is computed to have been one million, four hundred and sixty thousand.

In addition to the terrors of the Roman sword, this devoted nation was exposed to famine, pestilence, and the implacable fury of contending parties among themselves, which all conspired together to make the siege of Jerusalem surpass, in horror, every account of any other siege in the records of the world.

A small portion, indeed, of this wretched, ruined nation were permitted to remain, and establish themselves in Judea, who, by degrees, reorganized a regular system of government, which became the centre of Jewish operations, not only for those in Judea, but for such as were dispersed in other nations. But the yoke of foreign masters was so grievous and burdensome, that they were continually restless and impatient; and, in consequence of a general revolt under the emperor Adrian, in 134, they were a second time slaughtered in multitudes, and were driven to madness and despair. Bither, the place of their greatest strength, was compelled to surrender, and Barchochba, their leader, who pretended to be the Messiah, was slain, and five hundred and eighty thousand fell by the sword in battle, besides vast numbers who perished by famine, sickness, fire, and other calamities.

Kings have enacted the severest laws against them, and employed the hand of executioners to ruin them. The seditious multitudes, by murders and massacres, have committed outrages against them, if possible, still more violent and[pg 206]tragical. Besides their common share in the sufferings of society, they have undergone a series of horrid and unutterable calamities, which no other description of men has ever experienced in any age, or in any country. Princes and people, Pagans, Mahometans, and Christians, disagreeing in so many things, have united in the design of exterminating this fugitive and wretched race, but have not succeeded. They have been banished, at different times, from France, Germany, Spain, Bohemia, Hungary, and England; and from some of these kingdoms they have been banished and recalled many times in succession.

The Romans and Spaniards have probably done more than any other nations to oppress and destroy this people; and the inquisition has doomed multitudes of them to torture and death.

At different times, they were accused of poisoning wells, rivers, and reservoirs of water, and, before any proof of these strange and malicious charges was produced, the populace in many parts of Germany, Italy, and France, have fallen upon them with merciless and murderous severity. At one time, the German emperor found it necessary to issue an edict for their banishment, to save them from the rage of his exasperated and unrestrained subjects.

As the Jews have generally been thebankersandbrokersof the people among whom they have resided, and have made a show of much wealth, this has tempted their avaricious adversaries to impose upon them enormous taxes and ruinous fines.

Muley Archy, a prince of one of the Barbary states, by seizing the property of a rich Jew, was enabled to dispossess his brother of the throne of Morocco.

The English parliament of Northumberland, in 1188, for the support of a projected war, assessed the Jews with 60,000 pounds, while only 70,000 were assessed upon the Christians; which proves either that the Jews were immensely rich, or that the parliament was extremely tyrannical.

The English king John was unmercifully severe upon this[pg 207]afflicted people. In 1210, regardless of the costly freedom he had sold them, he subjected them all, as a body, to a fine of 60,000 marks. The ransom required by this same unfeeling king, of a rich Jew of Bristol, was 10,000 marks of silver; and on his refusing to pay this ruinous fine, he ordered one of his teeth to be extracted every day; to which the unhappy man submitted seven days, and on the eighth day he agreed to satisfy the king's rapacity. Isaac of Norwich was, not long after, compelled to pay a similar fine. But the king, not satisfied with these vast sums extorted from these injured Israelites, in the end confiscated all their property, and expelled them from the kingdom.

About the beginning of the 16th century, the Jews in Persia were subjected to a tax of two millions of gold. Long would be the catalogue of injuries of this kind, which this outcast and hated nation has sustained. Numerous are the cases in which those who have become deeply in debt to them for borrowed money, have procured their banishment, and the confiscation of their property, as the readiest way to cancel their demands; and, as they have ever been addicted to usurious practices, they have, by this means, furnished plausible pretexts to their foes to fleece and destroy them.

The fraternal disposition of this people led them to seek the society of each other; and, notwithstanding the wideness of their dispersion, in process of time, they, by uniting under different leaders, formed two communities of considerable extent, known by the name of the eastern and western Jews. The western Jews inhabited Egypt, Judea, Italy, and other parts of the Roman empire; the eastern Jews settled in Babylon, Chaldea, Persia, &c. The head of the western division was known by the name of the patriarch, while he who presided over the eastern Jews, was called the prince of the captivity. The office of patriarch was abolished, by imperial laws, about 429, from which time the western Jews were solely under the rule of the chiefs of their synagogues, whom they called primates. But the princes of the captivity had a longer and more splendid sway. They resided at[pg 208]Babylon, or Bagdad, and exercised an extensive authority over their brethren, as far down as the 12th century. About this period, a Jewish historian asserts that he found, at Bagdad, the prince of the captivity, lineally descended from David, and permitted, by the caliph, to exercise the rights of sovereignty over the Jews from Syria to Indostan.

The existence of a succession of these imaginary potentates, from the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans, the Jews have ever been strenuous in maintaining, partly to aggrandize their nation, and partly to deprive Christians of the benefit of an argument furnished by the prophecy of Jacob, concerning the termination of the Jewish polity and independence, soon after the coming of the Messiah.

Notwithstanding the world, in general, has shown a spirit of hostility and contempt for the remnant of Israel, yet they have found a few, in every age, who, either from motives of policy or justice, have treated them with kindness and respect. The first Mahometan caliphs, a number of the Roman pontiffs, and some of the Asiatic and European sovereigns, have shown them friendship and protection. Don Solomon, a learned and illustrious Jew of Portugal, in the 12th century, was raised to the highest military command in that kingdom. Casimir the Great, of Poland, in the 14th century, received the Jews as refugees into his kingdom, and granted them extensive privileges; and from that time to the present, they have been more numerous in that country than in any other in Europe.

For many centuries, this persecuted race found a favorite asylum in Holland, and, by their dexterity and success in commerce, became very affluent.

Cromwell, seeing the benefit which the Netherlands had derived from this money-making and money-lending community, was very desirous to recall them to England, from which they had been exiled about three hundred and fifty years. The celebrated Manasses Ben Israel had many interviews with the Protector; and so high were the expectations of the Israelites, from the clemency and authority of this illustrious[pg 209]statesman, that they began to look up to him as the promised Messiah. And, although Cromwell's friendly proposals, as to their recall, were overruled by the bigoted and intolerant policy of the times, yet, from that period, they have found favor and protection in England, and have been much more numerous and prosperous there than formerly.

In France and the United States, the Jews are admitted to equal rights with all other citizens, which cannot be said of any other nations in Christendom. In the United States, they have acquired this freedom, of course, with all other citizens of this free country. In France, they were admitted to it by Bonaparte; and afterwards, in 1807, by his directions, they convened a Grand Sanhedrim, consisting, according to ancient custom, of 70 members, exclusive of the president. The number and distinction of the spectators of this Sanhedrim greatly added to the solemnity of the scene. This venerable assembly passed and agreed to various articles respecting the Mosaic worship, and their civil and ecclesiastical concerns.

The extreme aversion of the Jews to every thing which bears the Christian name, and their obstinate attachment to their ancient religion, have, in former years, discouraged all attempts to convert them to the Christian faith. And not only has their conversion been neglected, but for many centuries they have been persecuted, plundered, and destroyed, by those who have called themselves Christians; they have not been permitted to enter their churches as worshippers, nor their dwellings as guests, nor reside in their territories, where Pagans and Mahometans have found an unmolested abode. While we, then, blame the blindness and incredulity of the descendants of Abraham, let us lament the folly and unkindness of the professed disciples of the mild and compassionate Redeemer. But a different spirit is now prevailing in many parts of Christendom, and a new era, as to the tribes of Israel, seems about to burst upon the world. Societies are formed in Europe and America for their benefit, and a disposition is said to be increasing, among the Jews, favorable[pg 210]to that Messiah and that religion which they have so long hated and rejected.

The history of this people certainly forms a striking evidence of the truth of divine revelation. They are a living and perpetual miracle, continuing to subsist as a distinct and peculiar race for upwards of three thousand years, intermixed among almost all the nations of the world, flowing forward in a full and continued stream, like the waters of the Rhone, without mixing with the waves of the expansive lake through which the passage lies to the ocean of eternity.

Indian Religions.“Lo, the poor Indian! whose untutored mindSees God in clouds, or hears him in the wind;His soul proud science never taught to strayFar as the solar walk, or milky way;Yet simple nature to his hope has given,Behind the cloud-topped hill, an humbler heaven—Some safer world in depth of woods embraced,Some happier island in the watery waste,Where slaves once more their native land behold,No fiends torment, no Christians thirst for gold.To be, contents his natural desire;He asks no angel's wing, no seraph's fire;But thinks, admitted to that equal sky,His faithful dog will bear him company.”—Pope.The natives ofCanadahave an idea of the Supreme Being; and they all, in general, agree in looking upon him as the First Spirit, and the Governor and the Creator of the world. It is said that almost all the nations of the Algonquin language give this Sovereign Being the appellation of the Great Hare. Some, again, call him Michabou, and others Atahocan. Most of them hold the opinion that he was born upon the waters, together with his whole court, entirely composed of four-footed animals, like himself; that[pg 211]he formed the earth of a grain of sand, which he took from the bottom of the ocean; and that he created man of the bodies of the dead animals. There are, likewise, some who mention a god of the waters, who opposed the designs of the Great Hare, or, at least, refused to be assisting to him. This god is, according to some, the Great Tiger. They have a third, called Matcomek, whom they invoke in the winter season.The Agreskoui of the Hurons, and the Agreskouse of the Iroquois, is, in the opinion of these nations, the Sovereign Being, and the god of war. These Indians do not give the same original to mankind with the Algonquins; they do not ascend so high as the first creation. According to them, there were, in the beginning, six men in the world; and, if you ask them who placed them there, they answer you, they do not know.The gods of the Indians have bodies, and live much in the same manner as themselves, but without any of those inconveniences to which they are subject. The wordspirit, among them, signifies only a being of a more excellent nature than others.According to the Iroquois, in the third generation there came a deluge, in which not a soul was saved; so that, in order to repeople the earth, it was necessary to change beasts into men.Beside the First Being, or the Great Spirit, they hold an infinite number of genii, or inferior spirits, both good and evil, who have each their peculiar form of worship.They ascribe to these beings a kind of immensity and omnipresence, and constantly invoke them as the guardians of mankind. But they never address themselves to the evil genii, except to beg of them to do them no hurt.They believe in the immortality of the soul, and say that the region of their everlasting abode lies so far westward, that the souls are several months in arriving at it, and have vast difficulties to surmount. The happiness which they hope to enjoy is not believed to be the recompense of virtue[pg 212]only; but to have been a good hunter, brave in war, &c., are the merits which entitle them to this paradise, which they, and the other American natives, figure as a delightful country, blessed with perpetual spring, whose forests abound with game, whose rivers swarm with fish, where famine is never felt, and uninterrupted plenty shall be enjoyed without labor or toil.The natives ofNew Englandbelieved not only a plurality of gods, who made and governed the several nations of the world, but they made deities of every thing they imagined to be great, powerful, beneficial, or hurtful to mankind. Yet they conceived an Almighty Being, who dwells in the south-west regions of the heavens, to be superior to all the rest. This Almighty Being they called Kichtan, who at first, according to their tradition, made a man and woman out of a stone, but, upon some dislike, destroyed them again; and then made another couple out of a tree, from whom descended all the nations of the earth; but how they came to be scattered and dispersed into countries so remote from one another, they cannot tell. They believed their Supreme God to be a good being, and paid a sort of acknowledgment to him for plenty, victory, and other benefits.But there is another power, which they calledHobamocko, (the devil,) of whom they stood in greater awe, and worshipped merely from a principle of fear.The immortality of the soul was universally believed among them. When good men die, they said, their souls go to Kichtan, where they meet their friends, and enjoy all manner of pleasures; when wicked men die, they go to Kichtan also, but are commanded to walk away, and wander about in restless discontent and darkness forever.After the coming of the white people, the Indians inNew Jersey, who once held a plurality of deities, supposed there were only three, because they saw people of three kinds of complexion, viz., English, negroes, and themselves.It was a notion generally prevailing among them, that the same God who made them did not make us, but[pg 213]that they were created after the white people; and it is probable they supposed their God gained some special skill by seeing the white people made, and so made them better; for it is certain they considered themselves and their methods of living, which they said their God expressly prescribed for them, vastly preferable to the white people and their methods.With regard to a future state of existence, many of them imagined that the Chichung, i. e., the shadow, or what survives the body, will, at death, go southward, to some unknown, but curious place,—will enjoy some kind of happiness, such as hunting, feasting, dancing, or the like; and what they suppose will contribute much to their happiness in the next state, is, that they shall never be weary of these entertainments.Those who have any notion about rewards and sufferings in a future state, seem to imagine that most will be happy, and that in the delightful fields, chasing the game, or reposing themselves with their families; but the poor, frozen sinners cannot stir one step towards that sunny region. Nevertheless, their misery has an end; it is longer or shorter, according to the degree of their guilt; and, after its expiation, they are permitted to become inhabitants of the Indian paradise.The Indians ofVirginiagave the names ofOkee,Quioccos, orKiwasa, to the idol which they worshipped. These names might possibly be so many epithets, which they varied according to the several functions they ascribed to this deity, or the different notions they might form to themselves of it in their religious exercises and common discourses. Moreover, they were of opinion that this idol is not one sole being, but that there were many more of the same nature, besides the tutelary gods. They gave the general name of Quioccos to all these genii, or beings, so that the name of Kiwasa might be particularly applied to the idol in question.These savages consecrated chapels and oratories to this deity, in which the idol was often represented under a variety of shapes. They even kept some of these in the most retired[pg 214]parts of their houses, to whom they communicated their affairs, and consulted them upon occasion. In this case, they made use of them in the quality of tutelary gods, from whom they supposed they received blessings on their families.The sacerdotal vestment of their priests was like a woman's petticoat plaited, which they put about their necks, and tied over the right shoulder; but they always kept one arm out, to use it as occasion required. This cloak was made round at bottom, and descended no lower than the middle of the thigh; it was made of soft, well-dressed skins, with the hair outwards.These priests shaved their heads close, the crown excepted, where they left only a little tuft, that reached from the top of the forehead to the nape of the neck, and even on the top of the forehead. They here left a border of hair, which, whether it was owing to nature, or the stiffness contracted by the fat and colors with which they daubed themselves, bristled up, and came forward like the corner of a square cap.The natives of Virginia had a great veneration for their priests; and the latter endeavored to procure it, by daubing themselves all over in a very frightful manner, dressing themselves in a very odd habit, and tricking up their hair after a very whimsical manner. Every thing they said was considered as an oracle, and made a strong impression on the minds of the people; they often withdrew from society, and lived in woods or in huts, far removed from any habitation. They were difficult of access, and did not give themselves any trouble about provisions, because care was always taken to set food for them near their habitations. They were always addressed in cases of great necessity. They also acted in the quality of physicians, because of the great knowledge they were supposed to have of nature. In fine, peace or war was determined by their voice; nor was any thing of importance undertaken without first consulting them.They had not any stated times nor fixed days, on which they celebrated their festivals, but they regulated them only by the different seasons of the year; as, for instance, they[pg 215]celebrated one day at the arrival of their wild birds, another upon the return of the hunting season, and for the maturity of their fruits; but the greatest festival of all was at harvest time. They then spent several days in diverting themselves, and enjoyed most of their amusements, such as martial dances and heroic songs.After their return from war, or escaping some danger, they lighted fires, and made merry about them, each having his gourd-bottle, or his little bell, in his hand. Men, women, and children, often danced in a confused manner about these fires. Their devotions, in general, consisted only of acclamations of joy, mixed with dances and songs, except in seasons of sorrow and affliction, when they were changed into howlings. The priests presided at this solemnity, dressed in their sacerdotal ornaments, part of which were the gourd-bottle, the petticoat above mentioned, and the serpents' or weasels' skins, the tails of which were dexterously tied upon their heads like a tiara, or triple crown. These priests began the song, and always opened the religious exercise, to which they often added incantations, part of the mysteries of which were comprehended in the songs. The noise, the gestures, the wry faces, in a word, every thing, contributed to render these incantations terrible.

“Lo, the poor Indian! whose untutored mindSees God in clouds, or hears him in the wind;His soul proud science never taught to strayFar as the solar walk, or milky way;Yet simple nature to his hope has given,Behind the cloud-topped hill, an humbler heaven—Some safer world in depth of woods embraced,Some happier island in the watery waste,Where slaves once more their native land behold,No fiends torment, no Christians thirst for gold.To be, contents his natural desire;He asks no angel's wing, no seraph's fire;But thinks, admitted to that equal sky,His faithful dog will bear him company.”—Pope.

“Lo, the poor Indian! whose untutored mindSees God in clouds, or hears him in the wind;His soul proud science never taught to strayFar as the solar walk, or milky way;Yet simple nature to his hope has given,Behind the cloud-topped hill, an humbler heaven—Some safer world in depth of woods embraced,Some happier island in the watery waste,Where slaves once more their native land behold,No fiends torment, no Christians thirst for gold.To be, contents his natural desire;He asks no angel's wing, no seraph's fire;But thinks, admitted to that equal sky,His faithful dog will bear him company.”—Pope.

“Lo, the poor Indian! whose untutored mind

Sees God in clouds, or hears him in the wind;

His soul proud science never taught to stray

Far as the solar walk, or milky way;

Yet simple nature to his hope has given,

Behind the cloud-topped hill, an humbler heaven—

Some safer world in depth of woods embraced,

Some happier island in the watery waste,

Where slaves once more their native land behold,

No fiends torment, no Christians thirst for gold.

To be, contents his natural desire;

He asks no angel's wing, no seraph's fire;

But thinks, admitted to that equal sky,

His faithful dog will bear him company.”—Pope.

The natives ofCanadahave an idea of the Supreme Being; and they all, in general, agree in looking upon him as the First Spirit, and the Governor and the Creator of the world. It is said that almost all the nations of the Algonquin language give this Sovereign Being the appellation of the Great Hare. Some, again, call him Michabou, and others Atahocan. Most of them hold the opinion that he was born upon the waters, together with his whole court, entirely composed of four-footed animals, like himself; that[pg 211]he formed the earth of a grain of sand, which he took from the bottom of the ocean; and that he created man of the bodies of the dead animals. There are, likewise, some who mention a god of the waters, who opposed the designs of the Great Hare, or, at least, refused to be assisting to him. This god is, according to some, the Great Tiger. They have a third, called Matcomek, whom they invoke in the winter season.

The Agreskoui of the Hurons, and the Agreskouse of the Iroquois, is, in the opinion of these nations, the Sovereign Being, and the god of war. These Indians do not give the same original to mankind with the Algonquins; they do not ascend so high as the first creation. According to them, there were, in the beginning, six men in the world; and, if you ask them who placed them there, they answer you, they do not know.

The gods of the Indians have bodies, and live much in the same manner as themselves, but without any of those inconveniences to which they are subject. The wordspirit, among them, signifies only a being of a more excellent nature than others.

According to the Iroquois, in the third generation there came a deluge, in which not a soul was saved; so that, in order to repeople the earth, it was necessary to change beasts into men.

Beside the First Being, or the Great Spirit, they hold an infinite number of genii, or inferior spirits, both good and evil, who have each their peculiar form of worship.

They ascribe to these beings a kind of immensity and omnipresence, and constantly invoke them as the guardians of mankind. But they never address themselves to the evil genii, except to beg of them to do them no hurt.

They believe in the immortality of the soul, and say that the region of their everlasting abode lies so far westward, that the souls are several months in arriving at it, and have vast difficulties to surmount. The happiness which they hope to enjoy is not believed to be the recompense of virtue[pg 212]only; but to have been a good hunter, brave in war, &c., are the merits which entitle them to this paradise, which they, and the other American natives, figure as a delightful country, blessed with perpetual spring, whose forests abound with game, whose rivers swarm with fish, where famine is never felt, and uninterrupted plenty shall be enjoyed without labor or toil.

The natives ofNew Englandbelieved not only a plurality of gods, who made and governed the several nations of the world, but they made deities of every thing they imagined to be great, powerful, beneficial, or hurtful to mankind. Yet they conceived an Almighty Being, who dwells in the south-west regions of the heavens, to be superior to all the rest. This Almighty Being they called Kichtan, who at first, according to their tradition, made a man and woman out of a stone, but, upon some dislike, destroyed them again; and then made another couple out of a tree, from whom descended all the nations of the earth; but how they came to be scattered and dispersed into countries so remote from one another, they cannot tell. They believed their Supreme God to be a good being, and paid a sort of acknowledgment to him for plenty, victory, and other benefits.

But there is another power, which they calledHobamocko, (the devil,) of whom they stood in greater awe, and worshipped merely from a principle of fear.

The immortality of the soul was universally believed among them. When good men die, they said, their souls go to Kichtan, where they meet their friends, and enjoy all manner of pleasures; when wicked men die, they go to Kichtan also, but are commanded to walk away, and wander about in restless discontent and darkness forever.

After the coming of the white people, the Indians inNew Jersey, who once held a plurality of deities, supposed there were only three, because they saw people of three kinds of complexion, viz., English, negroes, and themselves.

It was a notion generally prevailing among them, that the same God who made them did not make us, but[pg 213]that they were created after the white people; and it is probable they supposed their God gained some special skill by seeing the white people made, and so made them better; for it is certain they considered themselves and their methods of living, which they said their God expressly prescribed for them, vastly preferable to the white people and their methods.

With regard to a future state of existence, many of them imagined that the Chichung, i. e., the shadow, or what survives the body, will, at death, go southward, to some unknown, but curious place,—will enjoy some kind of happiness, such as hunting, feasting, dancing, or the like; and what they suppose will contribute much to their happiness in the next state, is, that they shall never be weary of these entertainments.

Those who have any notion about rewards and sufferings in a future state, seem to imagine that most will be happy, and that in the delightful fields, chasing the game, or reposing themselves with their families; but the poor, frozen sinners cannot stir one step towards that sunny region. Nevertheless, their misery has an end; it is longer or shorter, according to the degree of their guilt; and, after its expiation, they are permitted to become inhabitants of the Indian paradise.

The Indians ofVirginiagave the names ofOkee,Quioccos, orKiwasa, to the idol which they worshipped. These names might possibly be so many epithets, which they varied according to the several functions they ascribed to this deity, or the different notions they might form to themselves of it in their religious exercises and common discourses. Moreover, they were of opinion that this idol is not one sole being, but that there were many more of the same nature, besides the tutelary gods. They gave the general name of Quioccos to all these genii, or beings, so that the name of Kiwasa might be particularly applied to the idol in question.

These savages consecrated chapels and oratories to this deity, in which the idol was often represented under a variety of shapes. They even kept some of these in the most retired[pg 214]parts of their houses, to whom they communicated their affairs, and consulted them upon occasion. In this case, they made use of them in the quality of tutelary gods, from whom they supposed they received blessings on their families.

The sacerdotal vestment of their priests was like a woman's petticoat plaited, which they put about their necks, and tied over the right shoulder; but they always kept one arm out, to use it as occasion required. This cloak was made round at bottom, and descended no lower than the middle of the thigh; it was made of soft, well-dressed skins, with the hair outwards.

These priests shaved their heads close, the crown excepted, where they left only a little tuft, that reached from the top of the forehead to the nape of the neck, and even on the top of the forehead. They here left a border of hair, which, whether it was owing to nature, or the stiffness contracted by the fat and colors with which they daubed themselves, bristled up, and came forward like the corner of a square cap.

The natives of Virginia had a great veneration for their priests; and the latter endeavored to procure it, by daubing themselves all over in a very frightful manner, dressing themselves in a very odd habit, and tricking up their hair after a very whimsical manner. Every thing they said was considered as an oracle, and made a strong impression on the minds of the people; they often withdrew from society, and lived in woods or in huts, far removed from any habitation. They were difficult of access, and did not give themselves any trouble about provisions, because care was always taken to set food for them near their habitations. They were always addressed in cases of great necessity. They also acted in the quality of physicians, because of the great knowledge they were supposed to have of nature. In fine, peace or war was determined by their voice; nor was any thing of importance undertaken without first consulting them.

They had not any stated times nor fixed days, on which they celebrated their festivals, but they regulated them only by the different seasons of the year; as, for instance, they[pg 215]celebrated one day at the arrival of their wild birds, another upon the return of the hunting season, and for the maturity of their fruits; but the greatest festival of all was at harvest time. They then spent several days in diverting themselves, and enjoyed most of their amusements, such as martial dances and heroic songs.

After their return from war, or escaping some danger, they lighted fires, and made merry about them, each having his gourd-bottle, or his little bell, in his hand. Men, women, and children, often danced in a confused manner about these fires. Their devotions, in general, consisted only of acclamations of joy, mixed with dances and songs, except in seasons of sorrow and affliction, when they were changed into howlings. The priests presided at this solemnity, dressed in their sacerdotal ornaments, part of which were the gourd-bottle, the petticoat above mentioned, and the serpents' or weasels' skins, the tails of which were dexterously tied upon their heads like a tiara, or triple crown. These priests began the song, and always opened the religious exercise, to which they often added incantations, part of the mysteries of which were comprehended in the songs. The noise, the gestures, the wry faces, in a word, every thing, contributed to render these incantations terrible.

Back to IndexNext