• circumftance of it, which muft always appear improbable, and liable to exception. For, according to this folution, we may admit, that an angel of the Lord did, indeed, come to oppole Balaam in the way, and fuffered himself to be feen by the beast, but not by the prophet; that the beast was terrified, and Balaam fmote her, and immediately fell ⚫ into a trance, or extaly; and in that state of vision, con⚫ verfed with the beaft firft, and then with the angel. The angel presented these objects to his imaginatron, as ftrongly as if they had been before his eyes; fo that this was still a miraculous, or preternatural operation. This interpretation ⚫ which I have here propofed, is a medium between the fenti⚫ments of those who take the affair to have been altogether ⚫ real, or altogether visionary; and I think it hath some advantages over both.

In order to have an accurate notion of prophetic infpiration, and prophetic actions, it would be neceffary that a man fhould be a prophet himself; it is therefore no wonder if we cannot clearly apprehend how the fpirit of the Lord • acted upon the prophets: but in the things which were seen and done by them, fome were real, and fome were vifionary. • Thus much is allowed on all hands.

Mofes ftands diftinguished from all the prophets in this, that he had neither dreams, nor trances, nor visions, but ⚫ converfed with God face to face. The other prophets received information and instruction in dreams, or trances, and ⚫ vifions. What a dream is, we all know; a vision is a kind of waking dream, when a man with his eyes open fees not the objects which furround him; but other objects, which fome fpiritual agent prefents to his imagination.

Prophetic dreams, and visions were fo very lively, and affected the imagination with fuch force, that the prophet ⚫ himself could not at the time diftinguish such visions from

realities. Something of this kind we experience in our • dreams and reveries, which, when they are lively and active, ⚫ affect us for the time like realities; and the mind is then fo occupied with the vifionary object, the imagination is fo bufy, and the reasoning and reflecting powers are fo languid, that we confider not the marvellous circumftances, and the impoffibilities, which often attend our dreams, and which fhew us, when we are awake, that they must have been dreams. It is therefore no wonder if the prophet in a vifion • conversed with his beast, and was not shocked at its speaking; as he would, if this had been real, and he in the con

• dition

⚫dition of a man who is awake, and hath all his faculties about him.

St. Peter had probably experienced prophetic trances and vifions; and we have an account of one vifion which was • presented to him, in which he beheld a fheet defcending ⚫ from heaven, and full of all kinds of creatures, clean and unclean. Afterwards he was imprifoned by Herod, and an • angel came and released him; and he followed the angel, and, as it is faid, wist not that it was true which was done by the angel, but thought he faw a vifion. Here, as he could not diftinguish reality from vifion, it is to be concluded, that • neither could he diftinguish vision from reality. St. Paul • had vifions at various times, and once he was taken up into heaven; but how this was performed, whether in prophetic • vifion, or in reality; and whether in foul alone, or in fout and body, he seems not to have known: whether in the body, fays he, I cannot tell, or whether out of the body, I cannot tell; • God knoweth.

All these things confidered, it is no wonder if the prophets • related their vifions in the fame manner as if they had been ⚫ real transactions. How then fhall we diftinguish them from ⚫ the other? And by what rule muft we direct our judgment? The best rule that I can difcern, is this; when the thing faid to be done, is impoffible in itself, or not confiftent with the divine laws, or fuch as may give needlefs fcandal, or in appearance mean and abfurd, and expofing the prophet to contempt; or contrary to the courfe of nature, and yet not anfwering any important purpofe; or extremely grievous to the prophet himself, it is reasonable to have recourfe to vifion, and to fuppofe that fuch tranfactions were imaginary : and fuch a fuppofal is fo far from being an unwarrantable liberty, that it is, on the contrary, the most respectful man< ner of treating the fubject, and an endeavour to defend a good cause against the cavils of prophane men.

For example; the prophet Hofea is ordered by the fpirit to marry a common proftitute, and accordingly he takes her 'to wife, and has children by her. This must have been a very grievous command to the prophet, and alfo a matter of fcandal to the nation. The defign of this unfuitable match was neither more nor lefs than to be a figurative and typical reprefentation to the Jews of God's judgments, which would fall upon them. There is therefore good reafon to account it a vifionary scene, prefented to the prophet's imagination. The prophet Jeremiah is ordered to buy a girdle and wear it, then to take a long journey to the river Euphrates, and

⚫ there

there to dig a hole in the ground, and hide it: then, after many days, to go again and dig it up, when it was rotten, mouldy, and quite ufelefs. This was to be an emblem of the corrupted condition of the Jews, and of their rejection; and this feems to be of the fame nature with the action of Hofea. Again, Jeremiah receives a cup at the hand of God, ⚫ and travels about with it to various and very remote lands, and makes the kings, princes, and nobles of Judæa, Egypt, Perfia, Arabia, and twenty other nations, drink out of it. He is alfo fent about in the fame manner with yokes, which he was to put upon the necks of many kings. These were defigned to be figurative representations of the divine judgments which would be executed upon those kings and their fubjects. No reasonable man can believe, that these actions ⚫ were really performed: the impoffibility of the thing stares < you in the face; and therefore these are commonly allowed to have been vifions, and should be a guide to us for the in⚫terpretation of other prophetic actions.

Many other inftances might be produced from the proC phetic writings, where the nature of the transaction induced the most reasonable and judicious interpreters of fcripture to have recourfe to the vifionary fenfe, and to prophetic scenery: whence the conclufion feems to follow which we have been ← aiming at, that the affair of Balaam might have been of the • same kind, and a mixture of reality and of vifion. If a man ⚫ will allow, and must allow, fome of these prophetic actions to have been vifionary, and yet will not allow a poffibility, that the conversation between Balaam and his beast might have been of the fame nature, fuch a perfon will hardly be able to give a reafon why he admits the one, and rejects ⚫ the other.

6 Let us confider the alteration that befel Balaam's beast in a philofophical way. If you adhere to the letter, you must fay that the afs talked, and talked to the purpose, and reafoned. She was changed for a fhort time into a rational 6 creature, and then returned back again to her first condition. Is this probable or conceiveable? The defenders of the literal fenfe have granted that it is not. The afs, fay they, did not know what the uttered, but was a paffive inftrument under the direction of a fpiritual agent. They will not fay, that it was an evil dæmon, and introduce Satan into the machinery; and it feemeth beneath the dignity of an holy angel to enter into a brute, for a purpose, which, tho' kind and good, yet might eafily have been brought about by other methods. We do not find, from one end of

• the

the fcriptures to the other, that a good angel ever acted in a • manner fo fantastical in all appearance.

Thus have we given our readers a full view of what Mr. Fortin has advanced, by way of conjecture, in regard to a very confiderable difficulty in the hiftory of Balaam; how far his folution tends to remove the difficulty, every reader muft judge for himself as for us, we cannot help faying, that the whole affair, whether confidered in a literal or a vifionary sense, is of fuch a nature, as may well perplex even a fober and religious enquirer, and throw him into a flate of doubt and befitation.

The fubject of the fixth differtation, which takes up more than a third part of the whole performance, is, the ftate of the dead, as defcribed by Homer and Virgil. It confifts of a great variety of paffages, collected from the Iliad, Odyssey, and Eneid, &c. with fhort obfervations upon them; but as the claffical reader would not be satisfied with an abstract of it, we must refer him to the differtation itself, and shall close this article with the words wherewith our worthy author concludes his work.

• Hence it appears," fays he, that the learned age of Auguftus, with all its polite advantages, was fadly corrupted in matters of religion: that the epicurean doctrine had fpread itself through the Roman empire, and that perfons of the brighteft abilities, and highest stations, being unhappily infected with it, were men of that FIRST PHILOSOPHY, " which in a Chriftian country, and in the eighteenth century, hath been publicly recommended to us, by patriots and geniufes, compared with whom Epicurus was a gentleman, a philofopher, a reafoner, and a scholar.

Such was the ftate of the world, in the days of Auguftus and of Virgil. A plain proof how much it stood in need of that divine teacher, that fun of righteousness, who, to • difpel thofe gloomy clouds, arose with falvation in his rays!'

Hail, holy light, offspring of Heav'n first-born!

Thee I revifit, and thy vital lamp,

Efcap'd the Stygian pool, and realms of night,
And taught by thee alone to re-ascend.

R

ART. XLIX. Cicero's Select Orations tranflated into English, with the original Latin, from the best editions, in the oppofite page, and notes hiftorical, critical, and explanatory. Defigned for the ufe of schools, as well as of private gentlemen. 8vo. 6s. Keith.

THE

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THE

HE public is here prefented," fays the editor, with a new tranflation of Cicero's felect orations, calculated chiefly for that scheme of education which has been lately introduced in our schools.' The tranflator however has confidered, that by the time Cicera's orations are put into the hands of youth, they are generally pretty well advanced in the Latin, fo as not to stand in need of a strictly literal translation: accordingly, he fays, he has taken fuch liberties as were neceffary to give his verfion a free and eafy air, that young gentlemen, along with the ftudy of the Latin, might likewife ac⚫quire fome notion of the purity and propriety of their own tongue; a thing that ought to be carefully attended to in education, tho' it seems to be too much neglected.'

The usefulness of a work of this kind will not be difputed; as for the tranflation, we leave it to speak for itself, and our readers to judge of it from the following fpecimen, taken from the beginning of the oration for the Manilian law.

6

Though your crowded assemblies, Romans, be always a • grateful fight to me, though this place appears the most confpicuous for counfel, and the most honourable for debate a yet not choice, but the way of life I have been engaged in from my early youth, hath hitherto excluded me from this theatre of praife, ever open to the worthy and the wife. For as till now I had not reached the age neceffary to entitle me to fo diftinguished an honour; and as I judge nothing worthy of this tribunal, in which the moft confummate genius and industry were not confpicuous; I thought it beft to dedicate my whole time to the concerns of my friends. Accordingly this place has always abounded with able plead⚫ers in the cause of the republic, and my talents employed in the defence of private citizens, have, by your fuffrages, been crowned with a glorious reward. For when by reason of the adjournment of the comitia, I found myself thrice chofen firft prætor by all the centuries, it was eafy for me thence to collect, both what your sentiments of me were, and what qualifications you required in others. Now that I am cloathed with all that authority which is annexed to the of <fices you have honoured me with, and as my talents for bu finefs are fuch, as the conftant exercife of pleading may produce in a man of industry; be affured, that whateves authority I poffefs, fhall be exerted in behalf of thofe from whom I derived it; and if my eloquence carries any weight, I will display it chiefly to thofe who have thought it worthy of reward. And here, I think, I may justly congratulate