the glosses of the rabbins, and the language of all the fathers?

"But our author, incessant in attacks, while the orthodox seemed to slumber, has delivered to the world a production which he calls, Early Opinions respecting Christ.' This work passed with many for a fair and just account of the fathers' ideas respecting the Saviour; they had no means of detecting the fallacies, the disguises, and malign designs of the author, until Dr. Horseley entered the list against him. Never was a refutation conducted with greater fairness, or superior excellence of temper. The Greek he has placed in the middle column, Dr. Priestley's false renderings on the left, with the true translations on the right. Error and heresy are here so completely covered with confusion as to render all reply a mere name. Nor has the learned Prelate forgotten the adage, fac in palestra, try him in his learning.'

"We must not, however, lose sight of this title,

EARLY OPINIONS RESPECTING CHRIST.'

We have here an equal interest in exploring all the records and monuments of antiquity. The long-lived sons of Noah were the fathers of all the nations, and priests of the ancient altar. Every promise and hope, known to Abraham by tradition, was equally known to them, and for a time preserved pure, until a depravity of manners induced an affectation of mystery, which disguised facts by fiction, and imposed a monstrous mythology on the world.

"To digress here from the light and majesty

of our scriptures; to leave the garden of God for the wilds and wastes of paganism, is a less inviting road, but the gleanings will repay our toils; gleanings which the primitive fathers have not despised. Among the moderns, our learned countrymen, Stillingfleet, Bryant, Cumberland, Stukeley, and many others, have distinguished themselves by researches for the remains of sacred truth in the poesies which have emanated from the ancient temples. In France, Huet, bishop of Avranche, the learned De Thou, Lavaur, Giraldi, Thomasin, &c., have trodden the same route. In India, men of genius and literature have brought many things to light.

"The result of their inquiries, though they add nothing to the sacred text; yet, as corollaries, they confirm every leading idea of the Hebrew prophets respecting the Messiah. The promise of redemption was to the fathers the dearest pledge of heaven, and must have been handed down to posterity, as their best hope and heritage. In war and trouble, they must more especially have thought of him who should make evils cease, and fill the earth with righteousness and joy. These facts justify Haggai in calling the Messiah the desire of all nations;' and in adding, that the diminished magnitude of the second temple should have 'greater glory than the former.' They justify St. Paul in regarding Christ as the earnest expectation of the creature,' or gentile world. They justify him in the declaration, that the first gentiles, or descendants of Noah, knew God, not only by the things that are made, but by the covenant which God re

newed with their father; but yielding to the growing depravity of their hearts, they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, but having become vain in their imagination, they likened the glory of the incorruptible God, to statues of corruptible men, to birds, beasts, and creeping things. Here is a just view of the theogony or generation of the gods, a work almost entirely of mere imagi

nation.

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Noah, and his three sons, Shem, Ham, and Japhet, knew more concerning the Messiah, as is evident from pagan fable, than is recorded in the sacred writings. Dr. William Stukeley, rector of St. George's, Queen's-square, published his Palæographia Sacra in 1763, in which he observes, 'that the Greeks disguised all antiquity by fable, and brought every thing into their own country.' ' Ovid's Metamorphoses,' he adds, ' is an everlasting fund of materials, to prove my assertions. I have printed many years ago a plain proof that JEHOVAH, the divine hero of the Jews, their leader, patron, and God, is couched under the fable of Bacchus. His mother's name was Semele, which pure Hebrew; Shem-EL: and being daughter of Cadmus, indicates Phoenicia, whence the fable came into Greece. It acquaints us with a piece of high and valuable antiquity; that Hivite was son of Canaan. Gen. x. 17. That this Hivite, (whose family name was Hevæus) was the same, or in the same line, with Cadmonite, or Cadmus, Gen. xv. 19, who rendered himself illustrious by the erection of Dracontium or serpentine temple, similar to that at Abury in Wilts, and that at Shap in Westmorland.'

is

"The temples were formed of huge unhewn stones, laid out in the form of a snake transmitted through a circle, by stones set upright in the earth. Hence mythology formed the story of Cadmus, and his wife Hermione, being turned into serpents; of Cadmus's killing a snake, sowing the teeth in the earth, from which men sprung up. Hermione, or Harmonia, gave the name to mount Hermon, often mentioned in the sacred writings.

"The Cadmonites, a nation of Canaan, were seated about Mount Lebanus: one of whom built Thebes in Boeotia, destroyed afterwards by Alexander the Great. At this new city, during the patriarchal ages, Cadmus built a serpentine temple. Afterwards in idolatrous times, the worship of Bacchus was carried to this city.

"Some later hero of Cadmus's family, whose actions are associated with a higher antiquity, consulted the oracle at Thebes to know where he should fix his residence; he was ordered not to return unless he found his sister Europa, who had been carried away from Phoenicia by a young king of Crete, called Jupiter. From whom the name of Europe is derived.

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Consulting the oracle was originally at Salem, where Melchizidec presided. There Rebekah enquired of the Lord, Gen. xxv. 22. The ox which met Cadmus, means a sacrifice, which he prepared for success in his enterprize. The snake which killed his men whom he sent to a fountain, and which he afterwards killed by throwing a huge stone, [indicates our Saviour's bruising the head of the serpent.]

"Cadmus and Semele are afterwards metamorphosed into serpents, which signifies their immortal state. Thus, Virgil makes a snake come from the tumulus of Anchises, when Eneas had sacrificed to his manes. The people erected a tumulus over Cadmus and Semele, near Dracontium, and he became the guardian of the City. Coins were struck to his memory, representing the act of throwing the stone at the serpent, and on the obverse side, the serpent twisted round the stone.

"In after ages, when the worship of the Hebrew JEHOVAH under the name of Bacchus was famous, and when brought over to Thebes, they engrafted it into the family of the founder. Semele, a daughter of Cadmus, being pregnant with Jupiter, arrayed in divine majesty, whose splendour consumed her, the young child Bacchus is snatched from the flames, sewed up in his father's thigh, to fulfil the time to his birth.

"Thus Bacchus is twice born, by divine and by human geniture. He is of two natures, God and man, as often denominated in the hymns of Orpheus. He is given to the nymphs of Mount Nysa to be brought up; that is Mount Sinai, where the Thebeans first heard of his celebrity.

"Another celebrated story in fabulous antiquity, is that of Myrrha, who became with child by her father, which child was called Adonis, whose death was the origin of another famous festival among the Greeks,-Adonia, celebrated with lamentations and rejoicings. This evidently designates the knowledge they had of a divine hero, who was to be born, and to die for the sins of