of them shined out when God was present at their sacrifices: bright rays darting out thence, and being seen even by those who were most remote; which splendour yet was not before na

selves, which were used in this method of illumination, in revealing the will of God, after a perfeet and true manner, to his people Israel; I say, these answers were not made by the shining of the precious stones, after an awkward manner, in the high priest's breast-plate, as the modern Rabbins vainly suppose, and as the learned interpret Philo and Josephus, but without any sufficient foundation, so far as I see; for certainly the shining of the stones might precede or accompany the oracle, without itself delivering that oracle; see Antiq. VI. 6; but rather by an audible voice from the mercy-seat, between the cherubim. See Prid. Connect. at the year 534, at large. This oracle had been silent, as Josephus here informs us, 200 years before he wrote his Antiquities, or ever since the days of John Hyrcanus, the last good high-priest of the family of the Maccabees. Now it is worth our observation, that the oracle before us, was that by which God appeared to be present with, and gave directions to his people Israel as their king, all the while they submitted to him in that capacity, and did not set over them such independent kings as governed according to their own wills and political maxims, instead of divine directions; accordingly we met with this oracle besides angelic, and prophetic admonitions all along, from the days of Moses and Joshua to the anointing of Saul, the first of the succession of kings. Numb. xxvii. 21, Judg. i. 1, xviii. 5, 6,

xx. 18, 23, 26, 27, 1 Sam. i. 14, iii. per tot. iv. per tot. Nay, till Saul's rejection of the divine commands in the war with Amalek, when he took upon him to act as he thought fit himself, 1 Sam. xiv. 18, 19, 36, 37. Then this oracle left Saul entirely, (which indeed he had seldom consulted before; see 1 Sam. xvi. 35, 1 Chron. xiii. 3, Joseph. Antiq. VII. 4,) and accompanied David, who was annointed to succeed him, and who consulted God by it frequently, and complied with its directions constantly. See 1 Sam. xxii 13, 15, xxiii. 9, 10. xxx. 7, 8, 2 Sam. ii. 1, v. 19, 23, xxi. 1, 1 Chron. xiv 10, 14, Joseph. Antiq VI 12, VII. 4. Saul, indeed, long after his rejection by God, and when God had given him up to destruction for his disobedience, did once afterwards endeavour to consult God when it was too late; but God would not then answer him, neither by dreams, nor by Urim, nor by prophets; 1 Sam. xxvii. 6. Nor did any of David's successors, the kings of Judah, that we know of, consult God by this oracle till the Babylonish captivity, when those kings were at an end, they taking upon them, I suppose, too much of despotic power and royalty, and too little owning the God of Israel for the supreme King of Israel, though a few of them consulted the prophets sometimes, and were answered by them. At the return of the two tribes, without the return of the kingly government, the restoration of this oracle was expected: Neh vii. 65, 1 Esd. v. 40, 1 Mac. iv. 46, and indeed it may seem to have been restored for some time after the Babylonish captivity, at least in the days of that excellent highpriest, John Hyrcanus, whom Josephus esteemed as a king, a priest, and a proph et, and who, he says, foretold several things that came to pass accordingly; but about the time of his death, he here implies, that this oracle quite ceased, and not before, the following high priests, now putting diadems on their heads, and ruling according to their own will, and by their own authority, like the other kings of the Pagan countries about them, so that while the God of Israel was allowed to be the supreme King of Israel, and his directions to be their authentic guides. God

tural to the stone. This has appeared a wonderful thing to such as have not so far indulged themselves in philosophy, as despise divine revelation. Yet will I mention what it still more wonderful; for God declared beforehand by those twelve stones which the high-priest bare on his breast, and which were inserted into his breast-plate, when they should be victorious in battle; for so great a splendour shone forth from them before the army began to march, that all the people were sensible of God's being present for their assistance. Whence it came to pass, that those Greeks who had a veneration for our laws, because they could not possibly contradict this, called the breastplate the Oracle. Now this breast-plate and this sardonyx left off shining two hundred years before I composed this book; God having been displeased at the transgression of his laws.

gave them such directions as their supreme king and governor, and they were properly under a theocracy, this oracle of Urim, but no longer; see Dr. Bernard's notes here; though I confess I cannot but esteem the high-priest Jaddus's divine dream, Antiq. XI. 8, and the high-priest Caiaphas's most remarkable prophecy, John xi. 47-52, as two small remains, or specimens, of this ancient oracle, which properly belonged to the Jewish priests; nor, perhaps, ought we entirely to forget that eminent prophetic dream of our Josephus himself. (one next to the highpriest, as of the family of the Asmoneans or Maccabees, by his mother's side, and by his father of the first of the twenty-four classes of the priests,) as to the succession of Vespasian and Titus to the Roman empire, and that in the days of Ne. ro, and before either Galba, Otho, or Vitellus, were thought of to succeed him.Of the War, III. 8, IV. 10, and this confirmed by Suetonius in Vespas, § 5, and Dio in Xiphiline, page 317. This, I think may be considered as the very last instance of any thing like the prophetic Urim among the Jewish nation, and just preceded the fatal desolation. But how it could possibly come to pass that such great men as Sir John Marsham and Dr. Spencer should imagine that this oracle of Urim and Thummim, with other practices as old, or older than the law of Moses, should have been ordained in imitation of somewhat like them among the Egyptians, which we never heard of till the time of Diodorus Siculus, Elian, and Maimonides, or little earlier than the Christian era at the highest, is almost unaccountable.While the main business of the law of Moses was evidently to preserve the Israelites from the idolatrous and superstitious practices of the neighbouring pagan na. tions, and while it is so undeniable that the evidence for the great antiquity of Moses's law is incomparably beyond that for the like of greater antiquity of such customs in Egypt or other nations, which, indeed, is generally none at all, it is absurd to derive any of Moses's laws from the imitation of those heathen practices. Such hypotheses demonstrate to us how far inclination can prevail over evidence in even some of the most learned parts of mankind. See Dr Bernard's very valuable notes upon this chapter, in opposition to Dr. Spencer, as they stand at large in Havercamp's edition.

• About an. 107, two hundred years before A. D. 93, the thirteenth of Domitian, when Josephus published his Antiquities.

Of which things we shall further discourse on a fitter opportunity but I will now go on with my proposed narration.

*

The tabernacle being consecrated, and a regular order settled for the priests, the multitude judged that God now dwelt among them; and betook themselves to sacrifices, and praises to God, as being now delivered from all expectation of evils; and entertaining a hopeful prospect of better times hereafter. They offered also gifts to God: some as common to the whole nation, and others as peculiar to themselves, and these tribe by tribe. For the heads of the tribes combined together, two by two, and brought a wagon, and a yoke of oxen; these amounted to six, and these carried the tabernacle, when they journeyed; besides which, every head of a tribe brought a bowl, a charger, and a spoon of ten daricks,† full of incense. Now the charger and the bowl were of silver, and together they weighed two hundred shekels, but the bowl cost no more than seventy shekels: and these were full of fine flour mingled with oil, such as they used on the altar, about the sacrifices. They brought also a young bullock, and a ram, with a lamb of a year old, for a whole burnt offering; as also a goat, for the forgiveness of sins. Every one of the heads of the tribes brought also other sacrifices called peace offerings; for every day two bulls, and five rams, with lambs of a year old, and kids of the goats. These heads of tribes were twelve days in sacrificing, one sacrificing every day. Now Moses went no longer up to mount Sinai; but went into the tabernacle, and learned of God what they were to do, and what laws should be made: which laws were preferable to what have been devised by human understanding, and proved to be firmly observed, for all time to come, as being believed to be the gift of God: insomuch that the Hebrews did not trasgress any of those laws, either as tempted in times of peace by luxury, or in times of war by distress of affairs,

*Of the Jewish sacrifices, the learned reader may consult the notes in Havercamp's edition, and Dr. Outram's excellent treatise De Sacrificiis.

These old coins called Daricks, are, I think, first mentioned by Xenophon in his Kúpy Пad page 339, edit. Hutch. a few years after the beginning of Cyaxares II. or Darius the Mede, (of whose Median name Darius this seems the only original remains in heathen antiquity,) and those by him mentioned as vastly large, seem to have been a kind of coronation medals of the same king's.

CHAP. IX.

OF THE MANNER OF OFFERING SACRIFICES.

I WILL now make mention of a few of our laws, which belong to purifications, and the like sacred offices, since I am accidentally come to this matter of sacrifices: these sacrifices are of two sorts, one being offered for private persons, and the other for the people in geueral: and they are done in two different ways. In one case, what is slain is burnt, as a whole burnt-offering: whence that name is given to it: but the other is a thank-offering, and as designed for feasting those that sacrifice. I will speak of the former: Suppose a private man offer a burnt-offering, he must slay either a bull, a lamb, or a kid of the goats, and the two latter of the first year; though of bulls he is permitted to sacrifice those of a greater age; but all burnt-offerings are to be of males. When they are slain, the priests sprinkle the blood* round about the altar: they then cleanse the bodies, divide them into parts, salt them, and lay

It is, says Bp. Patrick, no improbable conjecture of Fortunatus Scacchus, that from hence the heathens learned their Taurobolia, and Criobolia, which in process of time they disguised with infernal rites and ceremonies. "The Taurobolium of the ancients was a ceremony in which the high-priest of Cybele was consecrated, and might be called a baptism of blood, which they conceived imparted a spiritual new birth to the liberated spirit. In this dreadful and sanguinary ceremony, according to the poet Prudentius, cited at length by Banier on the ancient sacrifices, the high-priest about to be inaugurated was introduced into a dark excavated apartment, adorned with a long silken robe, and a crown of gold. Above this apartment was a floor perforated in a thousand places with holes like a sieve, through which the blood of a sacred bull, slaughtered for the purpose, descended in a copious torrent upon the inclosed priest, who received the purifying stream on every part of his dress, rejoicing to bathe with the bloody shower his hands, his cheeks, and even to bedew his lips and his tongue with it: when all the blood had run from the throat of the immolated bull, the carcass of the victim was removed, and the priest issued forth from the cavity, a spectacle ghastly and horrible, his head and vestments being covered with blood, and clotted drops of it adhering to his venerable beard. As soon as the pontifex appeared before the assembled multitude, the air was rent with congratulatory shouts; so pure and so sanctified however was he now esteemed, that they dared not approach his person, but beheld him at a distance with awe and veneration." Maurice's Ind. Ant. vol. v. p. 196. B.

them upon the altar; while the pieces of wood are piled one upon another, and the fire is burning. They then cleanse the feet of the sacrifices, and the inwards, in an accurate manner: and so they lay them to the rest, to be purified by the fire, while the priests receive the hides: this is the way of offering a burnt-offering.

Those who offer thank-offerings do indeed sacrifice the same creatures; but such as are unblemished, and above a year old: however they may take either males or females. They also sprinkle the altar with their blood; but they lay upon the altar the kidneys, the caul, and all the fat, and the lobe of the liver; with these they bring also the rump of the lamb; they give also the breast and the right shoulder to the priests; so they feast upon the remainder of the flesh for two days; and what remains they burn.

The sacrifices for sins are offered in the same manner, as is the thank-offering: but those who are unable to purchase complete sacrifices offer two pigeons, or turtle-doves; one of which is made a burnt-offering to God, and the other is given as food for the priests. But we shall treat more accurately about the oblation of these creatures, in our discourse concerning sacrifices; but if a person fall into sin by ignorance, he offers an ewe lamb or female kid of the goats of the same age; and the priest sprinkles the blood at the altar; not after the former manner, but at the corners of it. They also bring the kidneys, and the rest of the fat, together with the lobe of the liver, to the altar: while the priests bear away the hides, and flesh, and spend it in the holy place,* on the same day; for the law does not permit them to leave of it until the morning. But if any one sin, and is conscious of it himself, but hath nobody that can prove it upon him, he offers a ram; the flesh of which the priests eat, as before, in the holy place, on the same day.

* What Reland observes here, out of Josephus, as compared with the law of Moses, Levit. vii. 15, (that the eating of the sacrifice the same day it was offered, seems to mean only before the morning of the next, although the latter part, i. e. the night, be in strictness part of the next day, according to the Jewish reckoning,) is greatly to be observed upon other occasions also. The Jewish maxim, in such cases, it seems, is this: that the day goes before the night, and this appears to me to be the language both of the Old and New Testament. See also the note on IV. 4, and Reland's note on IV. 8.