תמונות בעמוד
PDF
ePub

Minds to a State of Holiness." p. 877. "No one makes Arrows or Darts among them, or any other Inftruments of War. -They condemn the Authority of one over another as impious and unjust, and contrary to the Law of Nature- -They exercise themselves wholly in Ethics or moral Philosophy, under their own Laws derived from their Ancestors; which are fuch, as none can understand without the Affiftance of divine Inspiration.

One takes the Bible and reads out of it, and then another of a fuperior Skill expounds the difficult or obfcure Places. Their Manner of Expounding chiefly confists in Parables, in the Way that was antiently in ufe among them-They abstain from Swearing and Lying." Let us hear his own Opinion; p. 158. "Therefore, if you fee any one that hardly takes any Meat or Drink, or refufes to bathe or anoint himself, neglecting his Dress, lying on the Ground, or having very bad Covering, and afterwards pleafing himself upon account of this Temperance, pity his Error, and fhew him the true Way of real Temperance; for as yet he has only practifed useless Severities, and oppreffed his Soul, as well as Body, with Hunger and other Calamities. Alfo if any one uses

Sprinklings and other Purifications, he makes his Body clean indeed, but fullies his Mind; or if one, who abounds in Wealth, build a Temple, at a great Expence, and continually facrifices Hecatombs, and adorns the House he has dedicated with precious Gifts, fparing neither Gold nor Silver, nor Workmanship which exceeds the Materials, even this Perfon is not to be fet down in the Lift of the Pious; for he has erred from the Way of Piety, by placing his Holiness in Ceremonies, and giving Gifts to him who is not to be bribed, and flattering, where Flattery can have no place. For God is pleafed with true Worship, and the Sacrifice of the Soul alone." p. 229. "Holy Rites and Faith in Sacrifice are a very pretty Shoot, but that Evil Superftition

is

cr

apt to grow to it, which must be cut off, before the Plant can thrive-For God is delighted with Altars that burn with no Fires, which are furrounded with a Choir of Virtues, not with Flame and Blaze, &c."—p. 231.-" Some think God pleased and placated with Temples, Gifts, Sacrifices, &c.-but it is better to worship him with Praises and Hymns, not fung out with a fonorous and melodious Voice, but fung in the pure Mind, which God alone can fee." That you may not suspect he was

turned

turned Chriftian, p. 1118. " Was it not well expreffed, when he faid that an incorporeal Soul was to be the future Sacrifice; but not a double Mafs, a Mixture made up of mortal and immortal?" He is herc allegorizing Levit. ii. 2. and makes the whole Intent of every thing in the Bible Jingle of Words, out of his own Imagination, chiefly accommodated to Morality, the Scheme then on foot among the Heathens, and to his Septenarius, which, when he knew not what to say, he conftantly plagues his Reader with; or when he is fpeaking of Things, which were moft of them inftituted to reclaim the foolish Notions the Heathens had run into about the feven Spheres in their Object of Worship. After he had, by the enthusiastick Dreams of himself and his Sects, fuperfeded Mofes's typical Law, and the Righteousness of Chrift; and fet up the Righteousness of each Perfon for himself, in its ftead; he, at p. 1099, & feq. when the Temple was in danger of being defiled, and when he, as 'tis faid, was employed to follicit the Emperor to prevent it, pretends to talk of their Temple, and their facred Laws, with abundance of Concern, which fhews he was then a Hireling even in Religion. In the Edition tranflated by Gellenius, &

al.

al. Franck. 1591, in one of the Teftimonies printed before it, Photius in Biblioth. Cod. 103, 104, 105.-" He (Philo) often errs in his Accounts of Things that are foreign to Jewish Affairs-There are other little Pieces of his handed about, which contain moral Difputations and Explanations of the Old Teftament, where he generally turns the Letter into Allegory. And I am of Opinion, that he was the Parent of that Method of allegorizing the facred Scriptures, which crept into the Church. There is a Report that he was initiated into the Chriftian Rites, but apoftatized on some Disgust.-He had got fuch a Reputation among the Greeks, from a Knack of Writing, that it became a Proverb; " Either Plato Philonizes, "or Philo Platonizes."

As the Heathen Converts to Christianity, except those who had the Gift of Tongues, knew nothing of the Hebrew, fo nothing of the Design of the Old Teftament, except that little which appears in the LXX; as the Jews were not only ignorant, but vaftly referved, they took it as a Favour to be told any thing; they swallowed the first Account they had of it, and so have many, who knew nothing of the Defign of the Bible fince. And as his Descriptions of his God

are

are many of them the fame, nay in the very Words which the Heathens had given of theirs, the Air; and his Description of the Creation is worded fo neat what they meaned, that though he has affirmed it over and over, I cannot fay whether he allowed that or not: For as he attributes it to a Creature, or Creatures, 'tis impoflible it could be any more than Formation, which was perform'd by the material Word and Spirit. And as Morality was the fame both to Jew and Gentile, as I have fhewed, where the Heathens by their Religion had not broke in upon it, his Scheme only confirmed what the Heathens had before Christianity, and made it an Innovation without any Foundation in the Bible; and for that Reason, I fuppofe, as far as my Memory ferves, never mentions it. As the Jews and Heathens had the fame Philofophy, he had no Temptation to alter that; fo in that Point he may be an indifferent Evidence, and I fhall fhew what he fays of that in its Place. If the LXX and the Authors of the Targums had been near as wicked as he was, the first Christians would have had no Account of the Bible; and it is likely we fhould have had a very poor one. And though the Rabbies fince have used all the Artifices they could invent

2

« הקודםהמשך »