LET this part of the mufick be fuppofed to have lafted till they reached the gates of the city. THEN the king began again, in that most sublime and heavenly strain-- KING. Lift up your heads, ye gates; and be ye lift up, ye everlasting doors; and the King of glory fhall come in. Lift up your heads, ye gates, &c. PERSONS appointed to keep the gates *. Ift CHORUS. It is the Lord ftrong and mighty, even the 2d CHORUS. It is the Lord ftrong and mighty, &c. ALL. He is the King of glory; he is the King of glory. *Or perhaps the matrons of Jerufalem meeting him there, as they did Saul upon his return from the Philiftine conqueft, 1 Sam. xviii. AND AND now let us fuppofe the inftruments to take up the fame airs, (the king, the princes, and the matrons, moving to the meafure) and continue them to the gates of the court of the tabernacle. THEN let the king again begin: KING. Lift up your heads, ye gates, &c. AND be followed and answered as before. ALL clofing inftruments founding, chorus finging, people shouting, He is the King of glory. How others may think upon the point, I cannot say (nor pretend to prescribe); but for my own part, I have no notion of hearing, or of any man's ever having feen or heard, any thing fo great, fo folemn, fo celeftial, on this fide the gates of heaven *. *Need I caution the reader, that I fay this neither of the Jewib ritual, nor any ceremonial of the law, but merely of this particular proceffion and form of devotion, celebrated in the circumstances now related? CHAP. XI. The Conclufion of the Proceffion of the Ark. Mr. Bayle's Cenfure of DaVID's Dancing and Drefs, confidered. EING now come to the clofe of this proceffion, give me leave to add, before I proceed further, that this proceffion was not (as fome commentators have strangely mistaken it) in any-wife military, but entirely and fecurely pacifick; and is indeed a fine comment upon David's intire reliance and implicit confidence in the protection of almighty God, grounded upon that repeated command to his people, that all their males should appear thrice every year before the LORD, in the place that he should chuse, and that amazing promife annexed, that no man should invade their land, or affault their cities, when they were fo deferted of their defenders: Neither shall any man defire thy land, when thou shalt go up to appear before the Lord thy God thrice in the year (Exod. xxxiv. 24.) IF If it be objected, that David had just fubdued his enemies, and therefore might now be secure of not being affaulted by them : I ANSWER, that the refolution of making this proceffion was taken in a general affembly of his people, before he had fubdued, or even warred with them, (1 Chron. xiii.) and very foon after he had provoked them, by taking the strong fort of Sion; so that if they had waited but a few weeks, they might have invaded him in the very time of this proceffion, when it was easy for them, with their multitudes, to have stormed an hundred of his cities in one day, or rather poffeffed themselves of them without refiflance: but God's unconquerable promise stood in the way; nor is there one inftance of any attempt made upon the people of God, by any one of their enemies, in this annual defertion of their cities, from the earlieft æra of their history. And doubtlefs this was one reason why the facred hiftorians are fo very express and ticular in relating all the circumstances of this proceffion, which demonstrated it to be wholly pacifick, and which for that reason, fills up more space in the facred page, than K 3 par the the descriptions of many battles, and the defeats of mighty enemies. I REMEMBER but two religious proceffions of note, in the accounts of the Heathen world; neither of which, however, in my humble opinion, deferves to be once mentioned with this. The firft is, that of Alcibiades*, in which he conducted and protected the priests, in the celebration of the great mysteries in honour of Minerva; but by no means in the manner that David conducted his proceffion, but quite otherwise, in a most magnificent military apparatus; which gained him as much reputation, and more efteem, than any of his military atchievements. And the next is, a proceffion of Antiochus Epiphanes, in honour of Bacchus, particularly defcribed by Athenæus, (1. 5.) in which Satyrs and Sileni, that is, lewdness and drunkenness, and other abominable emblems, richly and pompously arrayed, and crowned in all the fplendor and magnificence of monarchs, made up the principal and most distinguished part of the pomp. In one word, it were hard to determine, which was most predominant in that proceffion, the folly, the extravagance, *See Plutarch's Life of Alcibiades. the |