that Moses of his own accord alfered the discrepant signs; though he gives us no authority for such an opinion, nor any reason for the fact itself. Now, though we have no foundation for believing Moses to have had a hand in any such change, or, in reality, in any thing that relates to the zodiacal symbols, yet we know from the different figures that different zodiacs present to us, that such changes were not unfrequently made in many of the oriental constructions of this kind, as well those of India as of Egypt, and it is on this accounf chiefly that we feel a difficulty in placing any dependance upon them.

At the remaining dissertations we can merely take a glance. The second, directed to the fourteenth chapter of Genesis, the author introduces as follows: "This chapter, if taken merely as a piece of history, certainly appears to contain a very extraordinary relation of events. Eight kings, among whom one was king of Admah (that is king of the earth) and another was king of nations, had been subject during twelve years to Chedorlaomer, king of Elam. In the thirteenth year five of these princes rebelled against their chief, and in the fourteenth year were defeated by him in the vale of Siddim, where four kings strove against five. But after the splendid victory of the king of Elam, he had, it seems, the rashness to carry away the shepherd Lot among his captives, and this mighty monarch, this king of kings, who had subdued the king of the earth, and in whose train was the king of nations, is in his turn pursued, defeated, and slaughtered by the shepherd Abraham and his household servants. I presume not to deny

that this is a true mystery.—I acknowledge that I believe the chapter before us to be rather a typical illustration than an historical narrative. It seems to me that Moses intended to typify the history of the Gods of Egypt, and to show that they were astronomical symbols. For my own part I cannot help thinking that the fourteenth chapter of Genesis, and the tenth of the book of Joshua, are only different editions of the same astronomical histories of which the Greeks have again given new accounts, and which they told after their own manner." In consequence of which all the dramatis persona we believe without an exception, are transmuted into astronomical signs, and nothing more. Abram is a type of the sun, Lot of the moon, Chedorlacmer "a symbol expressive of the zodiac;" the sait-sea "a symbol of the he misphere;" and as to "Melchizedeck, or the kings of justice, who is the king of Salem, that is, the king of peace-who are these kings that are a king? Who is this priest of God most high-this king of peace, that are the kings of justice? In what calendar shall we find the answers to these questions? What mythology contains a likeness to this mysterious person, who being more than one is one? Is there no allusion here to the triune God, and to the ministry of Christ?" This last part is the most disgusting of the whole. The cant of calendars and mythologies is sufficient to unfold the author's real meaning. If he will honestly avow, in any manner he may chuse, that he is an actual believer in the doctrine of a triune God, as believed by christians in general, we will candidly contess that we have seriously injured him

in our own hearts. But if this he cannot do (and the whole tenour of the volume before us conspires to prove that he cannot) what are our readers to think of the spirit of the passage before us, or of the feeling that could indite it?

But let us proceed to the next dissertation (the third) concerning the tabernacle and the temple. "It would be difficult," says our author, "to imagine a more singular history than that which relates to the construction of the tabernacle and of the temple contained in the Old Testament. The deity is represented as giving the pattern of both, as ordering the whole furniture; and as descending to the most minute details concerning the arrangement. Nothing is left unnoticed by the divine architect, who condescends to speak with amazing precision and familiarity, both of the ornaments and of the utensils of lintels, curtains, fringes, rings, tables, dishes, bowls, spoons, and candlesticks. This, however, is not all. The tabernacle, and the temple were inhabited by the deity. The God of nature and of the universe-the creator and preserver of all things-the ineffable and primeval being who called into existence all those suns and planets which roll through the boundless regions of space-the sole God fixed his residence on a box made of shittim-wood, and overlaid and lined with gold. Upon this box too the deity was carried about by a barbarous horde of robbers, until king Solomon built a temple at Jerusalem, where the box was deposited, and where Jehovah dwelt between the cherubim. And what were these cherubim? They were whimsical and monstrous images,

each with four wings and four faces; the face of a man, the face of a lion, the face of an ox, and the face of an eagle." We need not pursue the passage further its spirit is sufficiently seen and to the whole of this spirit, and the whole of this passage, and every other passage of a like kind, there is an easy answer: and that is, that the Creator being infinite and without parallel, and all created beings finite, and moveable all are precisely alike compared with himself for all compared with himself are nothing. The box of shittim wood, and Solomon's temple, the suns and planets, the universe and universal nature, are one and the same thing: he is the author of all, and all are nothing, and equally nothing, when put in analogy or competition with himself. Sir William thinks it in his power to magnify the mighty Maker by representing him as the god of planets, and suns, and nature, and the universe; and to degrade him by representing him as giving minute directions concerning the tabernacle, as analysing or organizing the dull clods of the valley, as weighing the substance of the mountains, and measuring the range of the hills: as producing weeds and worms, and reptiles, and ravenous beasts.— But it is not worth while to pursue the subject: the principle upon which it proceeds (and it is the foundation of the whole work) is false from its commencement. Real philosophy, to say nothing of rational piety, would and must have shown the learned Baronet, had he ventured to have dipped into its pages, that, compared with infinity, there can be nothing great, nothing little: all alike is his, and all is equally vanity in comparison with

himself:

himself: when locally present he is every where, when every where, locally present. Unfortunately, however, not adverting to this general idea, our author again dreams about astronomical and astrological symbols, and his own view of the subject is contained in the following brief passage: "I conceive the tabernacle and the temple to have been types of the universe, which is the true abode of the godhead.-I understand that the sacred writers intended to say, in their usual allegorical manner, that the universe was formed after the exemplar in the divine mind.”

The fourth dissertation is to the same effect. The writer who cannot in any way bring himself to approve of the "violence, injustice, and cruelty," stated in the book of Joshua to have been committed "by the robbers of Israel; who, not satisfied with taking possession of the property of others, burned the cities, and massacred the people"-finds himself again involved in a dilemma from which nothing but allegory, and the hieroglyphics of Egypt, and the sun, and the moon, and the stars, and the zodiac, can once more extricate him. "If, says he, there be law, or right, or justice, in the world, it seems difficult to excuse, much more to justify, such atrocities; and when, for our answer, we are told that these horrors were perpetrated by the express command of God himself, we must either believe and renounce the use of our reason, or disbelieve and abandon the profession of our faith." Sir William therefore prefers the latter, and, as we have just hinted, explains, or attempts to explain, the whole by an indistinct (to us indistinct) reference to the doctrines of Sabaism, and the symbols of the heavens; in which, however, he

does not very fully develope his own meaning. We would just submit to him upon this question, whether the dispersion and universal persecution of the Jews, sometimes in a greater and sometimes in a less degree, for nearly two thousand years, depised, and hated, and plun. dered, and massacred alternately by almost every nation under the sun, yet still existing as a separate people in the midst of all the misery and wretchedness they have endured, can be ascribed to any other cause than that of the special determination of the Almighty, or, to adopt his own words, "the express command of God himself." The Christians ascribe this discipline of vengeance to the wickedness of their forefathers in crucifying the Saviour of the world; yet while the guilt was that of the forefathers, the punishment is that of the posterity. Here, then, if we mistake not, is a fact palpably historical, of the very same nature, quite as difficult to reconcile with the benevolence of the deity, and which can neither be solved ot salved by any reference to allegory or figurative allusion; to the mythology or astronomy of Egypt, India, Greece, or Scandinavia, China, Japan, Australasia, or to whatever other portion of the world our au thor may be disposed to travel.

The fifth dissertation is of the same general train as the two preceding. In it the sceptical Baronet tells as that he shall only notice some parts of the book of Judges, which seem to him to bear an immediate and distinct reference to astronomy." In the course of which he tells us, that he takes the " prophetess Deborah to have belonged to those stars in Taurus which we call the Hyades." While in the very same breath he shews the looseness of all

this kind of romancing, by adding as follows: "But Rumelin makes Deborah signify a bee, and the meaning is really so uncertain, that I shall not pretend to fix it. If however we abide by the lexicographers, I would rather translate, order, march, series: THE MARCH OF THE CELES

TIAL BODIES BEING TYPIFIED!" Most of our author's speculations are built upon just as solid a foundation:-yet he has the modesty, whenever he afterwards refers to them, to speak of them as facts demonstrated. Thus, p. 167," the tabernacle, as I have already proved, was indubitably a type of the universe:" and the same phrase is frequently occurring to us.-In the prosecution of the subject before us. Barak, we are told, means lightning. "Jael signifies a kind of goat. I know not whether the allusion be to Capricorn. It seems to me that the whole of this story relates to a reform in the Calendar, concerning the moon's revolutions.”—" The story of Samson and Delilah may remind us of Hercules and Omphale." But we have not room to extract a larger specimen, or we could add considerably more to the entertainment, if not to the edification of the public.

To let the reader into a full view of the general scope of the last of these chimerical dissertations, which is devoted to the subject of the pas chal lamb, it is only necessary to quote the following paragraph. "The word which we translate passover, (Hebr.no) properly signifies transit, and is sometimes taken for that which makes a transit. Hence the Paschal lamb was frequently called no (pesach), as making the transit. I pretend that the feast of the transit was instituted as a memorial of the transit of the equinoctial sun from

the sign of the Bull to that of the Ram or Lamb." We are too serious to treat this explanation with levity; and cannot in our hearts think it worthy of being treated in any other way.

When a man's head is once set on star-gazing, we do not expect his imagination to run on all-fours with that of other people; but we see no reason why the levity of the brain should be communicated to the heart: nor can we too severely reprobate this union of philosophical whims with a malignant ridicule of what the wisest and best of mankind have regarded as sacred and inspired truths, and what the legislature of our own country has adopted as a part of the British constitution. We could have forgiven the writer all his conceits and absurdities, if he had shown a liberal spirit in the composition of his book, but the passages we are now about to quote altogether prevent us, as we are confident it will do our readers, from the hearty desire we should otherwise feel of paying him this compliment, "It may be hoped that Reason and Liberality will soon again be progressive in their march; and that men will cease to think that Religion can be really at war with Philosophy. When we hear the timid sons of superstition calling to each other to rally round the altar, we may well blush for human weakness. The altar of which the basis is established by Reason, and which is supported by Truth and Nature, can never be overthrown. It is before that altar that I kneel, and that I adore the God whom Philosophy has taught me to consider as the infinite and eternal mind,that formed and that sustains the fair order of nature, and that created and preserves the universal system. To a small circle I think myself at

Liberty