minds and Je, and are the unjust discourses, , and were ich would or offen them in pproached bring him of any di attention, a case to diate con ble. his cha ages and of the either in Greece or Italy; but the fact was in Palestine, and is alluded to in the Song mon, ch. ii. ver. 15. The stories which ar Æsop, that he was a slave, that his mistre cuted him, that he had a golden cup, a other particulars, bespeak a very strong rese to the history of Joseph, so famed for his in Egypt, the land of fables and hieroglyphi names are plainly the same; and therefo rather inclined to think, that the history was either borrowed from that of Joseph, he was a slave or a captive of that name East, who brought much of the traditional of his own country with him into the We when all circumstances are considered, I t former is the more probable opinion. XIII. ON THE USE OF HEATHEN LEARNIN In the middle ages of the church many C were very shy of the heathen writers; t afraid lest the heathen principles of relig rality, and policy, should be imbibed toget their poetry and oratory, and corrupt the their children and scholars. Much was what had happened to St. Jerome; that in he dreamed he was severely scourged for reading Cicero: but St. Austin, who was a man of great devotion, and one of the first scholars of the church, assures us, that one of Cicero's pieces, inscribed to Hortensius, first gave him an appetite to a more divine sort of wisdom, and that he embraced Christianity in consequence of the sentiments which that treatise had raised in his mind. Basil, another great scholar of the church, and a man of unquestioned piety, recommended the prudent reading of profane authors to some young people under his tuition. After his example, therefore, I must advise you to read with prudence, and with a proper mixture of caution; not trusting yourself to the reasonings of profane writers, till you are well grounded in principles of truth; and then, as the bee can settle upon a poisonous flower without being hurt, and can even extract honey from it; so may you improve your talents for the highest purposes, and arm yourself more effectually for the defence of sacred truth, by studying profane orators, poets, and historians. Writers are frequently rising up, with ill designs against your religion, who polish their style, and take the utmost pains to adorn it after the pattern of the best writers of antiquity. Some scholars will always be wanted on the other side, to turn the powers of composition against them; and truth will never fail to add such a force and weight to their embellishments, that the enemy will not be able to stand against them. He that reads the speech of St. Paul to king Agrippa, and considers it as a composition, will never be persuaded that cold and beggarly diction is requisite in a Christian apologist. The apostle, though a rigid Jew by his education, discovered on occasion a familiar acquaintance with the heathen poets. XIV. ON THE CONSENT BETWEEN THE SCRIPTURES AND THE HEATHEN POETS. SOME ingenious men, of more wit than experience, have objected to the Christian revelation, because they find no traces of it in their favourite classical writers. The testimony of an adversary is always valuable; but upon this occasion we have no reason to expect it from those who had their reasons for vilifying the Jews, and all that belonged to them. If we find any thing to our purpose, we must have it as it were by accident; and of this sort much may be collected. You have begun to read Horace. If you examine his third ode, you will see him confirming the sacred history of the Scripture in some particulars not unworthy of your notice, which could be derived to the heathens only from the fountains of Divine Revelation, or from tradition proceeding from the same original. What can we understand by the audax Iapeti genus, but the posterity of Japhet, that son of Noah, from whom the European nations are descended? Japhet was the first father of the Greeks and Romans after the flood, as surely as Adam was the father of all mankind. Then, what is Promethens's fraud against Heaven, but that offence, whatever it was, which brought death into the world? Here we have a theft acknowledged against Heaven, and all manner of evils and diseases are sent upon earth in consequence of it: Post ignem æthereâ domo Subductum, macies et nova febrium And what is more remarkable, he tells us of the change which was made in the period of human life, with the reason of it; Semotique prius tarda necessitas Here it is affirmed by implication, that death was originally at a greater distance, and that the divine justice shortened human life slowly and unwillingly, not till the increasing corruption of the world had made it necessary to lessen the opportunities of sin. The lives of men, before the flood, were of many hundred years; but when "all flesh had corrupted his way," then the curse took place at the flood, and man's life was contracted nearly to the present span. How should Horace know this? Or how should Hesiod know it, from whom he borrowed it? for it is precisely the doctrine of the Mosaic history and as it carries us back to the times before the flood, of which no human history was ever written, it must have been taken either from the Scripture itself, or from some tradition, which, if : it could be traced, would carry us back to the same original. These things then, though they are in Horace, are not of Horace; nor are they of the Greeks or the Romans; but of Divine Revelation: and it is remarkable, that we should meet with so many sacred doctrines in so small a compass. I take the opportunity to speak of this while the ode is under our consideration: but when you are farther acquainted with heathen learning, you will find abundant evidence of the same sort, which they who are disaffected to the Christian system, and would set up the classics against the Bible, will never like to hear of; but will endeavour to discountenance all such things, and dismiss them in the lump, as if they had no relation to the sacred history, but such as fancy or partiality hath given them. XV. ON THE SAME SUBJECT. As you seemed to be entertained with those påssages of Horace which are parallel to the sacred history, I shall lead you on to some more passages of the same sort in other authors; and if you should not understand all of them critically at present, I hope the time will come when you will find little or no difficulty in any of them. Herod, you know, who was king in Judæa at the birth of Christ, slew all the children in Bethlehem. By birth and education he was a Jew, and as such would eat no swine's flesh. Macrobius, a learned |