The same Calvin solicited the death of Gentilis at Geneva. He found five advocates to subscribe that Gentilis deserved to perish in the flames. Such horrors were worthy of that abominable age. Gentilis was put in prison, and was on the point of being burned like Servetus: but he was better advised than the Spaniard; he retracted, bestowed the most ridiculous praises on Calvin, and was saved. But he had afterwards the ill fortune, through not having made terms with a bailiff of the canton of Berne, to be arrested as an Arian. There were witnesses who deposed that he had said that the words trinity, essence, hypostasis, were not to be found in the Scriptures; and, on this deposition, the judges, who were as ignorant of the meaning of hypos tasis as himself, condemned him, without at all arguing the question, to lose his head.

Faustus Socinus, nephew to Lælius Socinus, and his companions, were more fortunate in Germany; they penetrated into Silesia and Poland, founded churches there, wrote, preached, and were successful: but at length, their religion being divested of almost every mystery, and a philosophical and peaceful rather than a militant sect, they were abandoned; and the jesuits, who had more influence, persecuted and dispersed them.

The remains of this sect in Poland, Germany, and Holland, keep quiet and concealed; but in England the sect has re-appeared with greater strength and eclât. The great Newton and Locke embraced it. Samuel Clarke, the celebrated rector of St. James's, and author of an excellent book on the existence of God, openly declared himself an Arian, and his disciples are very numerous. He would never attend his parish-church on the day when the Athanasian creed was recited. In the course of this work will be seen the subtleties which all these obstinate persons, who were not so much Christians as philosophers, opposed to the purity of the Catholic faith.

Although among the theologians of London there was a large flock of Arians, the public mind there has been more occupied by the great mathematical truths

discovered by Newton, and the metaphysical wisdom of Locke. Disputes on consubstantiality appear very dull to philosophers. The same thing happened to Newton in England as to Corneille in France, whose Pertharite, Théodore, and Récueil de Vers, were forgotten, while Cinna was alone thought of. Newton was looked upon as God's interpreter, in the calculation of fluxions, the laws of gravitation, and the nature of light. On his death, his pall was borne by the peers and the chancellor of the realm, and his remains were laid near the tombs of the kings-than whom he is more revered. Servetus, who is said to have discovered the circulation of the blood, was roasted by a slow fire, in a little town of the Allobroges, ruled by a theologian of Picardy.

ARISTEAS.

SHALL men for ever be deceived in the most indifferent as well as the most serious things? A pretended Aristeas would make us believe that he had the Old Testament translated into Greek for the use of Ptolemy Philadelphus-just as the Duke de Montausier had commentaries written on the best Latin authors for the use of the Dauphin, who made no use of them.

According to this Aristeas, Ptolemy, burning with desire to be acquainted with the Jewish books, and to know those laws which the meanest Jew in Alexandria could have translated for fifty crowns, determined to send a solemn embassy to the high-priest of the Jews of Jerusalem; to deliver a hundred and twenty thousand Jewish slaves, whom his father Ptolemy Soter had made prisoners in Judea; and, in order to assist them in performing the journey agreeably, to give them about forty crowns each of our money-amounting in the whole to fourteen millions, four hundred thousand of our livres.*

Ptolemy did not content himself with this unheardof liberality he sent to the temple a large table of

* About 576,000/.-T.

massive gold, enriched all over with precious stones, and had engraved upon it a chart of the Meander, a river of Phrygia,* the course of which river was marked with rubies and emeralds. It is obvious how charming such a chart of the Meander must have been to the Jews. This table was loaded with two immense golden vases, still more richly worked. He also gave thirty other golden and an infinite number of silver vases. Never was a book so dearly paid for; the whole Vatican library might be had for a less amount.

Eleazar, the pretended high-priest of Jerusalem, sent ambassadors in his turn, who presented only a letter written upon fine vellum in characters of gold. It was an act worthy of the Jews, to give a bit of parchment for about thirty millions of livres.+

Ptolemy was so much delighted with Eleazar's style, that he shed tears of joy.

The ambassador dined with the king and the chief priests of Egypt. When grace was to be said, the Egyptians yielded the honour to the Jews.

With these ambassadors came seventy-two interpreters, six from each of the twelve tribes, who had all learned Greek perfectly at Jerusalem. It is really a pity that of these twelve tribes ten were entirely lost and had disappeared from the face of the earth so many ages before; but Eleazar the high-priest found them again, on purpose to send translators to Ptolemy.

The seventy-two interpreters were shut up in the island of Pharos; each of them completed his translation in seventy-two days, and all the translations were found to be word for word alike. This is called the Septuagint or translation of the Seventy, though it should have been called the translation of the Seventy

two.

As soon as the king had received these books, he worshipped them-he was so good a Jew. Each in

* It is, however, not at all unlikely that instead of a plan of the course of the Meander, it was that which in Greek was called a meander-a knot of precious stones. Still, it was a very fine present.

+ 1,200,0001. sterling.-T.

terpreter received three talents of gold; and there were sent to the high-sacrificer, in return for his parchment, ten couches of silver, a crown of gold, censers and cups of gold, a vase of thirty talents of silver-that is, of the weight of about sixty thousand crowns, with ten purple robes, and a hundred pieces of the finest linen,

Nearly all this fine story is faithfully repeated by the historian Josephus, who never exaggerates anything. St. Justin improves upon Josephus; he says that Ptolemy applied to King Herod, and not to the high-priest Eleazar. He makes Ptolemy send two ambassadors to Herod,-which adds much to the marvellousness of the tale; for we know that Herod was not born until long after the reign of Ptolemy Philadelphus.

It is needless to point out the profusion of anachronisms in these and all such romances, or the swarm of contradictions and enormous blunders into which the Jewish author falls in every sentence: yet this fable was regarded for ages as an incontestable truth; and, the better to exercise the credulity of the human mind, every writer who repeated it added or retrenched in his own way-so that, to believe it all, it was necessary to believe it in a hundred different ways. Some smile at these absurdities which whole nations have swallowed, while others sigh over the imposture. The infinite diversity of these falsehoods multiplies the followers of Democritus and Heraclitus.

ARISTOTLE.

It is not to be believed that Alexander's preceptor, chosen by Philip, was wrong-headed and pedantic. Philip was assuredly a judge, being himself well-informed, and the rival of Demosthenes in eloquence.

Aristotle's Logic.

Aristotle's logic-his art of reasoning, is so much the more to be esteemed, as he had to deal with the Greeks, who were continually holding captious arguments; from which fault his master Plato was even less exempt than others.

Take, for example, the article by which, in the Phædon, Plato proves the immortality of the soul: "Do you not say that death is the opposite of life? Yes. And that they spring from one another? Yes. What then is it that springs from the living? The dead. And what from the dead? The living. It is, then, from the dead that all living things arise. Consequently, souls exist after death in the infernal regions."

Sure and unerring rules were wanted to unravel this extraordinary nonsense, which, through Plato's reputation, fascinated the minds of men.

It was necessary to show that Plato gave a loose meaning to all his words.

Death does not spring from life; but the living man ceases to live.

The living springs not from the dead, but from a living man who subsequently dies.

Consequently, the conclusion that all living things spring from dead ones, is ridiculous. From this conclusion you draw another, which is no way included in the premises,-that souls are in the infernal regions after death.

It should first have been proved that dead bodies are in the infernal regions, and that the souls accompany them.

There is not a correct word in your argument. You should have said-That which thinks has no parts; that which has no parts is indestructible: therefore the thinking faculty in us, having no parts, is indestructible.

Or the body dies because it is divisible; the soul is indivisible: therefore it does not die. Then you would at least have been understood.

It is the same with all the captious reasonings of the Greeks. A master taught rhetoric to his disciple, on condition that he should pay him the first cause that he gained.

The disciple intended never to pay him. He commenced an action against his master, saying-I will never pay you anything; for, if I lose my cause, I was