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and was coming out of his house, leaning on two slaves, to pray to God in the temple of Mecca. As soon as he heard his friend's voice, he said to him, I possess nothing but my two slaves; I beg that you will take and sell them; I will go to the temple, as well as I can, with my stick.'

"The three disputants, having returned to the assembly, faithfully related what had happened. Many praises were bestowed on Abdallah, son of Giafar-on Kaïs, son of Saad—and on Arabad, of the tribe of As: but the preference was given to Arabad."

The Arabs have several tales of this kind; but our western nations have none. Our romances are not in this taste. We have indeed, several which turn upon trick alone, as those of Boccacio, Guzman d'Alfarache, Gil Blas, &c.

On Job, the Arab.

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teuch; it was a Chaldean word ;—a fresh proof that the Arabian author was in the neighbourhood of Chaldea.

It has been thought that he might be a Jew, because the Hebrew translator has put Jehovah instead of El, or Bel, or Sadaï. But what man of the least information does not know that the word Jehovah was common to the Phœnicians, the Syrians, the Egyptians, and every people of the neighbouring countries?

A yet stronger proof-one to which {there is no reply is the knowledge of astronomy which appears in the book of Job. Mention is here made of the constellations which we call Arcturus, Orion, the Pleiades, and even of those of "the chambers of the south." Now, the Hebrews had no knowledge of the sphere; they had not even a term to express astronomy; but the Arabs, like the Chaldeans, have always been famed for their skill in this science.

It does, then, seem to be thoroughly proved, that the book of Job cannot have been written by a Jew, and that it was anterior to all the Jewish books. Philo and Josephus were too prudent to count it among those of the Hebrew canon. is incontestibly an Arabian parable or allegory.

It

It is clear that the Arabs at least possessed noble and exalted ideas. Those who are most conversant with the oriental anguages, think that the book of Job, which is of the highest antiquity, was composed by an Arab of Idumæa. The most clear and indubitable proof is, that the Hebrew translator has left in his translation more than a hundred Arabic words, This is not all: we derive from it which, apparently, he did not understand. some knowledge of the customs of the Job, the hero of the piece, could not be ancient world, and especially of Arabia. a Hebrew; for he says, in the forty-Here we read of trading with the Indies; second chapter, that having been restored a commerce which the Arabs have in all to his former circumstances, he divided ages carried on, but which the Jews never his possessions equally among his sons even heard of. and daughters, which is directly contrary to the Hebrew law.

It is most likely that, if this book had been composed after the period at which we place Moses, the author-who speaks of so many things, and is not sparing of examples would have mentioned some one of the astonishing prodigies worked by Moses, which were, doubtless, known to all the nations of Asia.

In the very first chapter, Satan appears before God, and asks permission to tempt Job. Satan was unknown in the Pente

Here, too, we see that the art of writing was in great cultivation, and that they already made great books.

It cannot be denied that the commentator Calmet, profound as he is, violates all the rules of logic in pretending that Job announces the immortality of the soul and the resurrection of the body, when he says:

"For I know that my Redeemer liveth. And though after my skin-worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God. But ye should say, Why per

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secute we him?-seeing the root of the bius, and repeated word for word by matter is found in me. Be ye afraid of George Syncellus. From these fragthe sword for wrath bringeth the punishments we find, that the Orientals of the ment of the sword, that ye may know borders of the Euxine, in ancient times, there is a judgment."

made Armenia the abode of their Gods.

in those mists, sometimes vouchsafing to appear to mortals in fine weather.

A God of that country, believed to have been Saturn, appeared one day to Xixuter, tenth king of Chaldea,-according to the computation of Africanus, Abydenus, and Apollodorus, and said to

Can anything be understood by those In this they were imitated by the Greeks, words, other than his hope of being cured? who placed their deities on Mount OlymThe immortality of the soul, and the re- pus. Men have always confounded surrection of the body at the last day, are human with divine things. Princes built truths so indubitably announced in the their citadels upon mountains; therefore New Testament, and so clearly proved by they were also made the dwelling place the Fathers and the Councils, that there of the Gods, and became sacred. The is no need to attribute the first knowledge summit of Mount Ararat is concealed by of them to at. Arab. These great myste-mists; therefore the Gods hid themselves ries are not explained in any passage of the Hebrew Pentateuch; how then can they be explained in a single verse of Job, and that in so obscure a manner? Calmet has no better reason for seeing in the words of Job the immortality of the soul, and the general resurrection, than he would have for discovering a disgraceful disease in the malady with which he was afflicted. Neither physics nor logic take the part of this commentator. As for this allegorical book of Job:-in Sipara, the city of the sun, that the it being manifestly Arabian, we are at memory of things may not be lost. Build liberty to say that it has neither justness, a vessel; enter it with your relatives and friends; method, nor precision. Yet it is perhaps take with you birds and beasts; the most ancient book that has been stock it with provisions: and, when you written, and the most valuable monument are asked, 'Whither are you going in that has been found on this side the Eu- that vessel?' answer, To the Gods, to phrates. beg their favour for mankind.'”

ARARAT.

him

"On the fifteenth day of the month Oesi, mankind shall be destroyed by a deluge. Shut up close all your writings

Xixuter built his vessel, which was two stadii wide, and five long; that is, A MOUNTAIN of Armenia, on which the its width was two hundred and fifty geoArk rested. The question has long been metrical paces, and its length six hundred agitated, whether the Deluge was univer- and twenty-five. This ship, which was sal—whether it inundated the whole earth to go upon the Black Sea, was a slow without exception, or only the portion of sailer. The flood came. When it had the earth which was then known. Those ceased, Xixuter let some of his birds fly who have thought that it extended only { out; but, finding nothing to eat, they reto the tribes then existing, have founded turned to the vessel. A few days aftertheir opinion on the inutility of flooding wards, he again set some of his birds at unpeopled lands, which reason seems liberty, and they returned with mud in very plausible. As for us, we abide by their claws. At last they went, and rethe Scripture text, without pretending to turned no more. Xixuter did likewise: explain it. But we shall take greater he quitted his ship, which had perched liberty with Berosus, an ancient Chaldean upon a mountain of Armenia, and he was writer, of whom there are fragments pre-seen no more: the Gods took him away. served by Abydenus, quoted by Euse

There is probably something historic in

this fable. The Euxine overflowed its thenes, Archimedes, have said, had they banks, and inundated some portions of {witnessed the subtle cavillings which have territory; and the King of Chaldea hast-cost so much blood?

tened to repair the damage. We have in Rabelais tales no less ridiculous, founded on some small portion of truth. The ancient historians are, for the most part, serious Rabelais.

As for Mount Ararat, it has been asserted, that it was one of the mountains of Phrygia, and that it was called by a name answering that of ark, because it was enclosed by three rivers

There are thirty opinions respecting this mountain. How shall we distinguish the true one? That which the monks now call Ararat, was, they say, one of the limits of the terrestrial paradise,—a paradise of which we find but few traces. It is a collection of rocks and precipices, covered with eternal snows. Tournefort went thither by order of Louis XIV. to seek for plants. He says that the whole neighbourhood is horrible, and the mountain itself still more so, that he found snow four feet thick, and quite chrystallised; and that there are perpendicular precipices on every side.

Arius has, even at this day, the honour of being regarded as the inventor of his opinion, as Calvin is considered to have been the founder of Calvinism. The pride in being the head of a sect, is the second of this world's vanities; for that of conquest is said to be the first. However, it is certain that neither Arius nor Calvin is entitled to the melancholy glory of invention. The quarrel about the Trinity existed long before Arius took part in it, in the disputatious town of Alexandria, where it had been beyond the power of Euclid to make men think calmly and justly. There never was a people more frivolous than the Alexandrians; in this respect, they far exceeded even the Parisians.

There must already have been warm disputes about the Trinity; since the patriarch, who composed the Alexandrian Chronicle, preserved at Oxford, assures us, that the party embraced by Arius was supported by two thousand priests.

We will here for the reader's conve

Here is an incomprehensible question, which, for more than sixteen hundred years, has furnished exercise for curiosity

The Dutch traveller, John Struys, pre-nience, give what is said of Arius in a tends that he went thither also. He tells small book which every one may not have us that he ascended to the very top, to at handcure a hermit afflicted with a rupture. "His hermitage," says he, "was so distant from the earth, that we did not reach it until the close of the seventh day, though each day we went five leagues." If, in this journey, he was constantly ascending, this Mount Ararat must be thirty-five leagues high. In the time of the Giants' war, a few Ararats piled one upon another would have made the ascent to the moon quite easy. John Struys, moreover, assures us, that the hermit whom he cured, presented him with a cross, made of the wood of Noah's ark. Tournefort had not this advantage.

ARIANISM.

THE great theological disputes, for twelve hundred years, were all Greek. What would Homer, Sophocles, Demos

for sophistic subtlety-for animosityfor the spirit of cabal-for the fury of dominion-for the rage of persecutionfor blind and sanguinary fanaticism-for barbarous credulity-and which has produced more horrors than the ambition of princes, which ambition has occasioned not a few. Is Jesus the Word? If he be the Word, did he emanate from God in Time or before Time? If he emanated from God, is he co-eternal and consubstantial with him, or is he of a similar substance? Is he distinct from him, or is he not? Is he made or begotten? Can he beget in his turn? Has he paternity? or productive virtue without paternity? Is the Holy Ghost made?

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When he saw the flames of civil war lighted among the scholastic brains, he sent the celebrated Bishop Osius with dissuasive letters to the two belligerent parties. "You are great fools," he expressly tells them in this letter, "to quarrel about things which you do not understand. It is unworthy the gravity of your ministry to make so much noise about so trifling a matter."

By "so trifling a matter," Constantine meant not what regards the Divinity, but the incomprehensible manner in which they were striving to explain the nature of the Divinity. The Arabian patriarch, who wrote the history of the Church of Alexandria, makes Osius, on presenting the Emperor's letter, speak in nearly the following words—

The Christians sophisticated, cavilled, hated, and excommunicated one another, for some of these dogmas inaccessible to human intellect, before the time of Arius and Athanasius. The Egyptian Greeks were remarkably clever; they would split a hair into four; but on this occa- My brethren, Christianity is but just sion they split it only into three. Alex-beginning to enjoy the blessings of peace, andros, Bishop of Alexandria, thought and you would plunge it into eternal disproper to preach that God, being neces-cord. The Emperor has but too much sarily individual-single-a monade in the strictest sense of the word, this monade is trine.

The priest Arius, whom we call Arius, was quite scandalised by Alexandros's monade, and explained the thing in quite a different way. He cavilled in part like the priest Sabellius, who had cavilled like the Phrygian Praxeas, who was a great caviller.

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reason to tell you, that you quarrel about a very trifling matter. Certainly, had the object of the dispute been essential, Jesus Christ, whom we all acknowledge as our legislator, would have mentioned it. God would not have sent his son on earth, to return without teaching us our catechism. Whatever he has not expressly told us, is the work of men, and error is their portion. Jesus has commanded you to Alexandros quickly assembled a small love one another; and you begin by hating council of those of his own opinion, and one another, and stirring up discord in excommunicated his priest. Eusebius, { the empire. Pride alone has given birth bishop of Nicomedia, took the part of to these disputes; and Jesus your master Arius. Thus the whole church was in a { has commanded you to be humble. Not flame. one among you can know whether Jesus The Emperor Constantine was a vil-is made or begotten. And in what does lain; I confess it :-a parricide, who had smothered his wife in a bath, cut his son's throat, assassinated his father-in-law, his brother-in-law, and his nephew; I cannot deny it :-a man puffed up with pride, and immersed in pleasure; granted: a detestable tyrant, like his children; { transeat:-but he was a man of sense. He would not have obtained the empire, and subdued all his rivals, had he not reasoned justly.

his nature concern you, provided your own is to be just and reasonable? What has the vain science of words to do with the morality which should guide your actions? You cloud our doctrines with mysteries-you, who were designed to strengthen religion by your virtues. Would you leave the Christian religion a mass of sophistry? Did Christ come for this? Cease to dispute, humble yourselves, edify one another, clothe the naked, feed

the hungry, and pacify the quarrels of families instead of giving scandal to the whole empire by your dissensions."

Constantine, prodigal as he was of human blood, did not carry his cruelty to so mad and absurd an access, as to order his executioners to assassinate the man who should keep an heretical book, while he suffered the heresiarch to live.

At court every thing soon changes. Several non-consubstantial bishops, with some of the eunuchs and the women, spoke in favour of Arius, and obtained the reversal of the lettre-de cachet. The same thing has repeatedly happened in our modern courts, on similar occasions.

But Osius addressed an obstinate auditory. The council of Nice was assembled, and the Roman empire was torn by a spiritual civil war. This war brought on others, and mutual persecution has continued from age to age, unto this day. The melancholy part of the affair was, that as soon as the council was ended, the persecution began; but Constantine, when he opened it, did not yet know how he should act, nor upon whom the persecution should fall. He was not a Christian, though he was at the head of the Christians. Baptism alone then constituted Christianity, and he had not been baptized; he had even re-built the Temple of Concord at Rome. It was, doubtless, perfectly indifferent to him whether Alex-gained his cause; Eustatius was disander of Alexandria, or Eusebius of Nicomedia, and the priest Arius, were right or wrong; it is quite evident, from the letter given above, that he had a profound contempt for the dispute.

The celebrated Eusebius, bishop of Cæsarea, known by his writings, which evince no great discernment, strongly accused Eustatius, bishop of Antioch, of being a Sabellian; and Eustatius accused Eusebius of being an Arian. A council was assembled at Antioch; Eusebius

placed; and the See of Antioch was offered to Eusebius, who would not ae{cept it; the two parties armed against each other; and this was the prelude to controversial warfare. Constantine, who had banished Arius for not believing in the consubstantial son, now banished Eustatius for believing in him;-nor are such revolutions uncommon.

St. Athanasius was then bishop of Alexandria: he would not admit Arius, whom the Emperor had sent thither, into the town, saying that "Arius was excom

But there happened that which always happens and always will happen in every court. The enemies of those who were afterwards named Ariaus, accused Eusebius of Nicomedia of having formerly taken part with Licinius against the Emperor. "I have proofs of it," said Constantine in his letter to the church of Nicomedia, "from the priests and dea-{municated; that an excommunicated cons in his train whom I have taken, &c."{ Thus, from the time of the first great council, intrigue, cabal, and persecution were established, together with the tenets of the church, without the power to derogate from their sanctity. Constantine gave the chapels of those who did not believe in the consubstantiality, to those who did believe in it; confiscated the pro-and Athanasius his greatest enemy, were perty of the dissenters to his own profit, condemned in turn by a man who was and used his despotic power to exile Arius not yet a Christian. and his partisans, who were not then the The two factions alike employed arti strongest. It has even been said, that office, fraud, and calumny, according to the his own private authority, he condemned old and eternal usage. Constantine left to death whosoever should not burn the them to dispute and cabal, for he had writings of Arius; but this is not true. other occupations. It was at that time

man ought no longer to have either home
or country; that he could neither eat nor
sleep anywhere; and that it was better to
obey God than man." A new council
was forthwith held at Tyre, and new
lettres-de-cachet were issued. Athana-
sius was removed by the Tyrian fathers,
and banished to Treves.
Thus Arius,

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