an ancient Arabic manuscript, found in a cave near Grenada, together with sixteen sheets of lead, on which some tales in Arabic characters were engraved. Don Pedro y Quinones, archbishop of Grenada, has certified this fact. These famous

Grenadian sheets have been since carried to Rome, where, after an examination of several years, they were at last condemned as apocryphal, under the pontificate of Alexander VII. Their contents are only some fabulous tales concerning Mary and her son.

The name of Messiah, joined to the epithet false, is likewise given to those impostors who, at several times, have made it their business to deceive the Jewish nation. Some of these false Messiahs set up even before the coming of the true anointed of God. The wise Gamaliel, Acts, v. 34, &c. mentions one, named Theudas, whose history is to be found in Josephus's Antiquities, book xx. chap. ii. He boasted that he could pass the Jordan dry-footed, and was joined by considerable numbers; but the Romans coming to an action with his raw men, soon dispersed them; and taking the chief prisoner, set up his head in Jerusalem.

Gamaliel farther speaks of Judas, the Galilean, doubtless the same whom Josephus mentions in the twelfth chapter of the second book of his Jewish wars. He says, that this false prophet had got together nearly 30,000 men; but the Jewish historian is noted for hyperbole.

So early as the apostolic times, Simon, surnamed the Magician, made his appearance; and to such a degree had he seduced the people of Samaria, that they accounted to him the power of God. Acts, viii. 9.

In the years 178 and 179 of the Christian era, Adrian being then emperor, the false Messiah Barchochebas asserted his pretensions at the head of an army. Julius Severus being sent against him, hemmed in the insurgents at the city of Bither, which, after an obstinate siege, he carried; and Barchochebas being taken, was put to death. On this Adrian, as the best expedient for preventing the continual revolts of the Jews, issued an edict against their going to Jerusalem; and even guards were posted at the city gates, to keep them out.

Socrates, an ecclesiastical historian, relates in book ii. chap. xxxviii. that, in the year 434, a false Messiah started up in the island of Candia, under the name of Moses, and as the ancient deliverer of the Hebrews, raised from the dead, to effect a second deliverance for them.

The next century, in 530, saw in Palestine a false Messiah, named Julian. He recommended himself to the people, as a

great conqueror, who, at the head of his nation, should destroy all Christians whatever, and the Jews were so far seduced by his promises, that they ran to arms, and massacred great numbers of Christians. The emperor Justinian's forces engaging him, the false Christ was taken and executed.

In the beginning of the eighth century, Serenus, a Spanish Jew, aiming at the Messiahship, preached and gained followers; but the upshot was, that both followers and leader came to a miserable end.

The twelfth century produced several false Messiahs, particularly one in France, under Lewis the Younger; but both he and his adherents were hanged, without so much as the names of master or disciples being known.

The thirteenth century was still more fertile in false Messiahs of these the more remarkable were seven or eight, who appeared in Arabia, in Persia, in Spain, and Moravia. One of them, who styled himself David el Re, is reckoned to have been a very great magician: his artifices so far succeeded with the Jews, that he saw himself at the head of a considerable party: but this fair prospect terminated in his being murdered.

James Zieglerne, a Moravian who lived in the middle of the sixteenth century, promulgated the approach of the Messiah's manifestation, assuring the people that this Messiah had been born fourteen years before, and that he himself had seen him at Strasburg; and also that hecarefully kept a sword and a sceptre, to put into his hands when he should be of age

to teach.

In the year 1624, another Zieglerne confirmed the former prediction.

It

In the year 1666, Zabathei-Sevi, a native of Aleppo, gave himself out to be the Messiah, foretold by the Zieglernes. He began by preaching in the highways and fields, and, while his disciples admired him, the Turks laughed at his folly. appears that at first his preaching had no very extraordinary success, for the chiefs of the Smyrna synagogue went so far as to pronounce sentence of death against him; but his punishment was mitigated to exile.

He contracted three marriages, without consummating any, saying it was beneath him. He took a partner, named Nathan Levi, who was to act the part of Elias, as the Messiah's harbinger. They repaired to Jerusalem, and Nathan there preached up Zabathei-Sevi, as the deliverer of the nations. The Jewish populace declared for him, whilst they who had any thing to lose, anathematised him.

Sevi, to shun the storm, withdrew to Constantinople, and from thence to Smyrna. Nathan Levi deputed to him four ambassadors, who, besides acknowledging his dignity, did him homage publicly as the Messiah. This embassy dazzled the commonalty, and even some doctors, who declared Zabathei-Sevi, as the Messiah, and king of the Hebrews; but the Smyrna synagogue condemned their king to be impaled.

Zabathei put himself under the protection of the cadi of Smyrna, and soon had on his side the whole Jewish people. He even had two thrones set up, one for himself and the other for his favourite spouse, assuming the title of King of Kings. His brother Sevi he created king of Judah; and to the Jews themselves he gave the most positive assurances, that the Ottoman empire should soon be their own. In the height of his insolence he had the emperor's name struck out of the Jewish liturgy, and his own substituted in its stead.

He was confined in the castle of the Dardanelles, and the Jews gave out that his life was spared only because the Turks very well knew him to be immortal. The governor of the Dardanelles made a great fortune by the presents which the Jews poured on him for leave to visit their king, their Messiah, who in his fetters maintained his dignity, and even the ceremony of kissing his feet.

The Sultan, however, who then kept his court at Adrianople, was for putting an end to this farce; and, sending for Sevi, told him that if he was the Messiah, he must be invulnerable. This Sevi allowed; but on the grand seignior's ordering him to be placed as a mark for his icoglans, or pages, to discharge their arrows at, the Messiah owned that he was not invulnerable, and protested that God sent him only to bear testimony to the holy Mahometan religion. After undergoing a severe flagellation by the ministers of the law, he turned Mahometan, and lived and died despised both by Jews and Mussulmans. This adventure has brought the profession of a false Messiah into such disrepute, that since Sevi nobody has taken it up.

METAMORPHOSIS-METEMPSYCHOSIS.

Is it not very natural, that all the various metamorphoses with which the earth may be said to be covered, should have led the orientals, whose imagination is so luxuriant, to imagine that our souls passed from one body to another?

An almost

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imperceptible point grows to be a worm, and this worm becomes a butterfly; an acorn changes to an oak; an egg to a bird; water becomes clouds and thunder; wood is turned into fire and asbes; in a word, all nature is more or less a metamorphosis. Souls, being accounted tenuous forms, were soon concluded to partake of that property, which was sensibly seen in more dense and heavy bodies. The metempsychosis, is, perhaps, the most ancient doctrine in the known world, and still prevails in a great part of India and China.

It is likewise very natural, that those ancient fables, collected and embellished by Ovid in his admirable work, took rise from the several metamorphoses with which our eyes are conversant. The very Jews have not been without their metamorphoses. If Niobe was changed into marble, Hedith, Lot's wife, was turned into salt. As Euridice was detained in hell for looking back, a like indiscretion cost Lot's wife her human nature. The country town in Phrygia, where lived the hospitable Baucis and Philemon, is changed into a lake; the same submersion has befallen Sodom. The daughters of Anus turned water into oil; the Scripture mentions a change something similar, but more sacred and real. Cadmus was turned into a serpent, and the like was seen in Aaron's rod.

The pagan deities very often assumed a human disguise; and, when angels appeared to the Jews, it was always as men ; with Abraham they partook of a repast. St. Paul, in his epistle to the Corinthians, says Aggelos Satan me kolaphizei: "the messenger of Satan cuffed him.

MIRACLE.

A MIRACLE, in the energetic sense of the word, means something wonderful; and thus every thing is a miracle. The surprising order of nature, the rotation of a hundred millions of globes round a million of suns, the activity of light, the life of animals, are perpetual miracles. According to the received notion, however, a miracle is a violation of the divine and eternal laws. An eclipse of the sun and moon, a dead man walking two leagues with his head in his hands, are what we call a miracle.

Several naturalists affirm, that in this sense, there are no miracles; and their arguments are these:

A miracle is a breach of the mathematical, divine, immutable, eternal laws; now this definition alone makes a miracle a contradiction in terms. A law cannot be both immutable and

broken; but it is answered, Cannot a law of God's making be suspended by its author? They boldly answer, No; and it cannot be, that the infinitely wise Being should have made laws, and afterwards break them. If, say they, he made any alteration in this machine, it would be to make it go the better: now, it is clear, that God has framed this immense machine as good as it possibly could be; if he saw that any imperfection would hereafter be occasioned, by the nature of the materials, he at first provided against any such future defect, so that there would be no cause for any after-change.

Besides, God can do nothing without reason; now what reason should induce him to disfigure his own work for any time?

It is for man's sake, say their opponents. It is to be hoped, then, answer they, that it is for the sake of all men, it being impossible to conceive that the divine nature should work for some particular men, and not for all mankind; and even all mankind is but a very small thing; less than an ant's nest, in comparison of all the beings which fill the immensity of space. Now, what can be more low and absurd, than to imagine, that the infinite Being will, for the sake of three or four hundred ants, on that little clod of mud, suspend or alter the eternal play of those immense springs, on which depends the motion of the universe.

But supposing that God had been pleased to distinguish a small number of men.by particular favours, must he, therefore, alter what he has settled for all times and all places? He certainly can favour his creatures without any such inconstancy and change? his favours are comprised in his very laws; every thing has been wisely contrived and arranged for their good; and they all irrevocably obey the force which he has originally implanted in nature.

Wherefore is God to work a miracle? to accomplish a design he has for some living beings? that is making God to say, I have not been able, by the fabric of the universe, by my divine decrees, by my eternal laws, to compass such a design: I see I must make an alteration in my eternal ideas, my immutable laws, as what I intended cannot be executed by those means. This would be an acknowledgment of weakness, not a declaration of power; it would be the most inconceivable contradiction. So that, to suppose God works miracles, is, (if men can insult God,) a downright insult to him: it is no less than saying to him, You are a weak and inconsistent Being. Therefore, to believe miracles is an absurdity; it is, in some measure, scandalizing the deity.