one little bright spot, which causes no trouble, though no means will make it disappear: but increasing with time into furfuraceous scales that ultimately become a thick scab, it imperceptibly passes into a disease, which, though divested of its deadly nature in our temperate climates and by our superior cleanliness, is in the East attended with the most formidable symptoms; such as mortification and separation of whole limbs, and when arrived at a certain stage, it is altogether incurable. As the varieties and symptoms of this frightful malady are discussed at length in a subsequent part of this work, it will be sufficient to remark, for the present, that among the heathens, the leprosy was considered as inflicted by their gods, by whom alone it could be removed, and the same notion appears to have prevailed among the Israelites; for when the king of Syria sent Naaman, his commander in chief, to the king of Israel, to heal him of his leprosy, the latter exclaimed, Am I GOD, to kill and to make alive, that this man doth send unto ME, to recover a man of his leprosy? (2 Kings v. 7.) Some instances are also recorded in which this disease is represented as a punishment immediately inflicted by God for particular sins; as in the cases of Miriam, Gehazi, and king Uzziah. This circumstance, connected with the extreme foulness of the disorder, rendered it a very striking emblem of moral pollution; and the exclusion of persons infected with it from the worship and people of God was fitted not only to humble and reform the offenders, but also to impress upon the mind the most solemn and useful instructions. The person who had been healed of leprosy was minutely examined by the priest, who proceeded to perform the rites and sacrifices of purification, which are minutely described in Lev. xiv., in order that the patient might be re-admitted into society and to the privileges of the Jewish church. Among these sacrifices and ceremonies, the following is very remarkable: "The priest was required to take two small birds, and to kill one of them over an earthen vessel filled with river water, so that the blood might be mixed with the water. He was then to dip the other or living bird into the water, and sprinkle the leper with it seven times with a stick of cedar wood, upon which a bunch of hyssop was tied with a scarlet thread; after which the priest was to pronounce him purified, and let loose the living bird into the open air. (Lev. xiv. 2—7.) This ceremony seems to be typical of the purification of our sins by the sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ (Isa. lii. 15., 1 Pet. i. 2.), which flowed out of his wounded side mixed with water (John xix. 34.); while the dismissal of the living bird resembles that of the scape-goat into the wilderness, with the sins of the leper upon him. Our Lord expressly commanded the lepers, whom he healed, to conform to the law." (Matt. viii. 4. · Mark i. 44.; Luke v. 14., xvii. 14.)1 Besides the leprosy of the person, Moses mentions two other species of leprosy, viz. of clothes and of houses, which are in a great measure unknown in Europe. 2. The Leprosy of Clothes is described in Lev. xiii. 47-59. as con ' Dr. Hales's Analysis of Chronology, vol. ii. book i. p. 273. sisting of green or reddish spots, which remain in spite of washing, and continue to spread; so that the cloth becomes bald or bare, sometimes on one side, and sometimes on the other. From the information which Michaelis received from a woollen manufacturer, he supposes this disease to arise in woollen cloth, from the use of the wool of sheep that have died of disease; which when worn next the skin (as in the East) is very apt to produce vermin. With respect to leather and linen, he could obtain no information. Clothes suspected to be thus tainted were to be inspected by the priest; if they were found to be corroded by the leprosy, they were to be burnt; but if, after being washed, the plague was found to have departed from them, they were to be pronounced clean. 3. The House Leprosy is said in Lev. xiv. 33-37. to consist of greenish or reddish spots or dimples, that appear on the walls, and continually spread wider and wider. Michaelis considers it to be the same as the saltpetre, which sometimes attacks and corrodes houses that stand in damp situations. Although in Europe unattended with any injury to health, in Palestine it might be hurtful; so that the Mosaic regulations in this respect are both wise and provident. When a house was suspected to be thus tainted, the priest was to examine it, and ordered it to be shut up seven days. If he found that the plague or signs of the plague had not spread, he commanded it to be shut up seven days more. On the thirteenth day he revisited it; and if he found the infected place dim, or gone away, he took out that part of the wall, carried it out to an unclean place, mended the wall, and caused the whole house to be newly plastered. It was then shut up a third seven days: he once more inspected it on the nineteenth day; and if he found that the plague had broken out anew, he ordered the house to be pulled down. If, on the other hand, it was pronounced to be clean, an offering was made on the occasion; in order that every one might certainly know that it was not infected, and the public might be freed from all apprehensions on that account. V. Various other legal impurities are enumerated in Lev. xii. 1-8. and xv. which it is not necessary to detail. To which we may add, that all human corpses and the carcasses of beasts that died in any other way than by the knife, were regarded as unclean. Whoever touched the former, or went into the tent, or apartment (after the Israelites had houses), where a corpse lay, was unclean for seven days; and whoever touched a dead body, or even a human bone, or a grave in the fields, was unclean for the same period. The body of a clean beast that fell not by the knife, but died in any other way, defiled the person who touched it, until the evening (Lev. xi. 39.); and the carcasses of unclean beasts, by whatever means they died, did the same. (Lev. v. 2., xi. 8. 11. 24, 25. 27, 28. 31.; Deut. xiv. 8.) The consequence of this law was, that the carcasses of beasts were not suffered to remain above ground, but were put into the earth, that passengers might not be in danger of pollution from them. By these wise enactments, the spreading of contagious diseases would be effectually prevented, which in hot climates are peculiarly rapid and fatal. For the same reason, also, Michaelis is of opinion, that Moses commanded the Israelites to break earthen vessels, which were liable to be defiled by being left uncovered in a tent or apartment where a person died, or a corpse lay (Numb. xix. 15.), or by an unclean beast falling into them (Lev. xi. 33.), or by the touch of a diseased person. (Lev. xv. 12.)1 Such are the Mosaic statutes concerning purifications and impurities. Profane scoffers, who deride those things, the reason and propriety of which they will not take the trouble to investigate, have ridiculed them as too minute,-especially those respecting the different species of leprosy, and as unworthy to be made part of a divine law. But every well-regulated mind surely must discern in them both the goodness and wisdom of Jehovah towards his chosen people, in giving them precepts which were calculated not only to preserve their health and regulate their morals, but also to accustom them to obedience to his will in every respect. The leprosy has ever been considered as a lively emblem of that moral taint or "corruption of the nature of every man that naturally is engendered of the offspring of Adam; "2 as the sacrifices, which were to be offered by the healed leper, prefigured that spotless Lamb of God that taketh away the sins of the world. CHAP. VI. ON THE CORRUPTIONS OF RELIGION AMONG THE JEWS. SECT. I. ON THE IDOLATRY OF THE JEWS. I. IDOLATRY is the superstitious worship of idols or false gods. From Gen. vi. 5. compared with Romans i. 23. there is every reason to believe that it was practised before the flood; and this conjecture is confirmed by the apostle Jude (ver. 4.), who, describing the character of certain men in his days that denied the only Lord God, adds, in the eleventh verse of his epistle, Woe unto them, for they are gone into the way of Cain; whence it may be inferred that Cain and his descendants were the first who threw off the sense of a God, and worshipped the creature instead of the Creator.3 The heavenly bodies were the first objects of idolatrous worship; and Mesopotamia and Chaldæa were the countries where it chiefly prevailed after the deluge. Before Jehovah vouchsafed to reveal 1 Schulzii Archæologia, Hebraica, pp. 303-310. Michaelis's Commentaries, vol. iii. pp. 254-335. 2 Article IX. of the Confession of the Anglican Church. The history of the origin and progress of idolatry are ably traced in Dr. Graves's Lectures on the Pentateuch, vol. i. pp. 183–190. On the subject of Zabianism, or the idolatrous worship of the stars, there is an interesting dissertation in Dr. Townley's Translation of Maimonides's Reasons of the Laws of Moses, pp. 38-47. himself to them, both Terah and his son Abraham were idolaters (Josh. xxiv. 2.), as also was Laban, the father-in-law of Jacob (Gen. xxxi. 19. 30.); though he appears to have had some idea of the true God, from his mentioning the name of Jehovah on several occasions. (Gen. xxiv. 31. 50, 51.) Previously to Jacob and his sons going into Egypt, idolatry prevailed in Canaan; and while their posterity were resident in that country, it appears from Josh. xxiv. 14. and Ezek. xx. 7, 8. that they worshipped the deities of Egypt. On the departure of the Israelites from Egypt, although Moses by the command and instruction of Jehovah had given them such a religion as no other nation possessed, and notwithstanding all his laws were directed to preserve them from idolatry; yet, so wayward were the Israelites, that almost immediately after their deliverance from bondage we find them worshipping idols. (Exod. xxxii. 1.; Psal. cvi. 19, 20.; Acts vii. 41-43.) Soon after their entrance into the land of Canaan, they adopted various deities that were worshipped by the Canaanites, and other neighbouring nations (Judges ii. 13., viii. 33.); for which base ingratitude they were severely punished. Shortly after the death of Joshua, the government became so unsettled, that every man did that which seemed right in his own eyes. The prophet Azariah describes the infelicity of these times, when he says, They were without the true God, without a teaching priest, and without the law (2 Chron. xv. 3.); and as anarchy prevailed, so did idolatry, which first crept into the tribe of Ephraim in the house of Micah, and then soon spread itself among the Danites. (Judg. xvii. xviii.) Nor were the other tribes free from this infection, during this dissolution of the government; for it is said, They forsook the Lord and served Baal and Ashtaroth, and followed the other gods of the people round about them. (Judg. ii. 13, 12.) Under the government of Samuel, Saul, and David, the worship of God seems to have been purer than in former times. Solomon is the first king, who, out of complaisance to the strange women he had married, caused temples to be erected in honour of their gods; and so far impiously complied with them himself, as to offer incense to these false deities (1 Kings xi. 5-8.): so fatal an evil is lust to the best understandings, which besots every one it overcomes, and reigns over them with uncontrolled power! Solomon, it is true, did not arrive at that pitch of audacity which some of his successors afterwards did: but his giving the smallest countenance to the breach of the divine law, among a people so prone to idolatry, could not but be attended with the worst consequences; and accordingly, upon his death, the glory of his kingdom was speedily eclipsed by the revolt of the ten tribes and the division of his kingdom. This civil defection was attended with a spiritual one: for Jeroboam, the son of Nebat, who succeeded him in the government of the ten tribes which had revolted (and who himself had probably been initiated in the idolatrous worship of the neighbouring nations, when he took refuge from Solomon's jealousy at the court of Shishak), soon introduced the worship of two golden calves, the one at Dan and the other at Bethel. He made choice of Bethel, because it had long been esteemed as a place sacred for the real appearance of God in ancient times to Jacob, and might, therefore, induce the people to a more ready belief of the residence of the same Deity now; and Dan (as already observed) being at the extremity of the kingdom, was the place whither that part of the country resorted on account of Micah's teraphim. Idolatry being thus established in Israel by public authority, and countenanced by all their princes, was universally adopted by the people, notwithstanding all the remonstrances against it by the prophets whom God sent to reclaim them from time to time, and who stood as a barrier against this growing wickedness, regardless of all the persecutions of impious Jezebel, who did what she could utterly to extinguish the worship of the true God. At length this brought a flood of calamities upon that kingdom, and was the source of all the evils with which that people were afterwards afflicted; so that, after a continual scene of tragical deaths, civil wars, and judgments of various kinds, they were at length carried away captive by Shalmaneser into Assyria. The people of Judah were little better. One might justly have expected that, if there had been no other reason than state policy for preserving the true religion in its native purity, that alone would have been sufficient to prevent any other false worship from being set up, and that the same motives, which induced the ten tribes to establish a strange worship, would have induced Judah to be jealous for the true one. But the event proved otherwise; for notwithstanding the great strength added to the kingdom of Judah, by those who resorted thither out of other tribes for the sake of religion, prosperity inflated Rehoboam and soon ruined him. It is said that he continued but three years walking in the ways of David and Solomon. (2 Chron. xi. 17.) After which those idolatrous inclinations began to appear, which probably were instilled into him by his mother Naamah, who was an Ammonitess. (1 Kings xiv. 21.) In short, he forsook the law of the Lord, and all Israel with him (2 Chron. xii. 1.), and fell into the grossest idolatry above all that their fathers had done. (1 Kings xiv. 22.) But God soon corrected him and his people, having delivered them into the hands of Shishak, king of Egypt, who with a vast army entered the country, took their cities, and plundered Jerusalem and the temple of all the riches which David and Solomon had treasured up there. (2 Chron. xii. 2.) Upon their repentance and humiliation, the anger of Jehovah was soon mitigated; and we do not find that the kingdom of Judah fell into any gross acts of idolatry till the reign of Ahaz, who was the most impious prince that ever sat upon that throne. He was not content with walking in the ways of the kings of Israel, and making molten images of Baalim (2 Chron. xxviii. 2.), but he carried his wicked inclinations still farther, and imitated the old inhabitants of the land in their cruel and idolatrous practices; for it is said of him that he burnt incense in the valley of the son of Hinnom, and burnt his children in the fire (ver. 3.); or, as we read in 2 Kings xvi. 3., He made his son to pass through the fire, which doubtless was the passing through the fire to Moloch, so expressly prohibited in Lev. xviii. 21. For these im |