on one of his sisters; or if he have none, on one of his daughters, or relations. To this dignity are attached the revenues arising from several villages and other rights. (Baron du TOTT, vol. ii. p. 64.) -Gusho had confiscated, in the name of the king, all the (Great) Queen's villages, which made her believe that this offer of the king to bring her to Gondar, was an insidious one. In order to make the breach the wider, he had also prevailed on the king's mother to come to Gondar, and insist with her son to be crowned, and take the title and state of Iteghe (Grand Queen). The king was prevailed on to gratify his mother, under pretence that the Iteghe had refused to come on his invitation; but this, as it was a pretence only, so it was expressly a violation of the law of the land, which permits of but ONE Iteghe, and never allows the nomination of a new one, while the former is in life, however distant a relation she may be to the then reigning king. In consequence of this new coronation, two large villages, Tshemmera and Tocussa, which belonged to the Iteghe as appendages of her royalty, of course devolved on the king's own mother, newly crowned, who sending her people to take possession, the inhabitants not only refused to admit her officers, but forcibly drove them away, declaring they would acknowledge no other mistress, but their old one, to whom they were bound by the laws of the land.

BRUCE'S Trav. vol. iv. p. 244.

JONAH.

1063. [Jonah i. 17. —ii, 1,—6.] And Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights. Then Jonah prayed to the LORD his GOD out of the fish's belly, and said, I am cast out of thy sight; yet I will look again toward thy holy temple. —The depth closed me round about, the WEEDS were wrapped about my head.

The Pistia stratiotes is a very singular aquatic plant. It associates in large communities, or floating islands, some of them a quarter of a mile in extent, which are impelled to and fro, as the wind and current may direct. In great storms, large masses of these floating plains are broken loose, and driven from the shores, into the wide water, where they present a very entertaining prospect. We see on them not only flowery plants, clumps of shrubs, old weather-beaten trees, hoary and barbed, with the long moss waving from their snags; but we also see them completely inhabited and alive, with crocodiles, serpents, frogs, otters, crows, herons, curlews, jackdaws, &c.

See BARTRAM's Travels in America, p. 86.

1064. [Jonah i. 17.] Barrow, in one of his voyages, rationally observes that the sea-plant, generally denominated Gulfweed (from a supposition of its proceeding originally from the Gulf of Mexico), has neither roots nor fibrils of any kind to indicate that it ever was attached to rocks or shores; but its central stem, buried in the midst of its leafy branches, makes it sufficiently evident that it vegetates while floating on the surface of the fathomless deep: some of these plants are many feet in diameter, others only a few inches; all appear in a growing state, covered with fish, worms, insects, and testaceous animals of various descriptions.

FORBES' Oriental Memoirs, vol. iv. p. 264.

1065. [Jonah ii. 5.] Governor Pownal has given us an elegant map of this Gulf-stream, tracing it from the Gulf of Florida northward as far as cape Sable in Nova Scotia, between the Canary islands and Senegal, increasing in breadth as it runs, till it occupies five or six degrees of latitude. The governor ascribes this current to the force of the trade-winds protruding the waters westward, till they are opposed by the continent, and accumulated in the Gulf of Mexico. He ingeniously observes, that a great eddy must be produced in the Atlantic ocean (which communicates with the Mediterranean) between this Gulf-stream and the westerly current produced by the tropical winds; and that in this eddy are found the immense fields of floating vegetables, called Seragosaweeds, and Gulf-u eeds, and some light woods, which circulate in these vast eddies, or are occasionally driven out of them by the winds. REES.

1066. [Matt. xii. 40.] There is no whale in the Mediterranean, where Jonah was sailing. See Dr. A. CLARKE.

THE CHRISTIAN COVENANT.

[Gal. iii. 20.] GOD is ONE.

1067. [James ii. 19.] The conception of the most REAL BEING is formed in the following manner: We cannot place Him in time and space, the restrictive conditions of bounded existence. He is therefore to be considered as Omnipresent and Eternal, as Simple and Individual; and this is the Transcendental conception of GOD.

KANT.

1068. [Gal. iii. 20.] "If men were led into the apprehension of invisible intelligent power by a contemplation of the works of nature, they could never possibly entertain any conception but of one single Being, who bestowed existence and order on this vast machine, and adjusted all its parts, according to one regular plan and connected system. For though, to persons of a certain turn of mind, it may not appear altogether absurd, that several independent beings, endowed with superior wisdom, might conspire in the contrivance and execution of one regular plan; yet is this à merely arbitrary supposition, which, even if allowed possible, must be confessed neither to be supported by probability nor necessity. All things in the universe are evidently of a piece. Every thing is adjusted to every thing. One design prevails throughout the whole. And this uniformity leads the mind to acknowledge one Author; because the conception of different authors, without any distinction of attributes or operations, serves only to give perplexity to the imagination, without bestowing any satisfaction on the understanding."

HUME.

1069. [John i. 18.] The proper Essence and nature of GOD, precisely taken, is not divisible into parts and measures, as being a most pure, simple Being, void of all composition or division, and therefore can neither be resisted, hurt, wounded, crucified, or slain, by all the efforts and strength of men. BARCLAY'S Apology for the Quakers, sect. xiii. p. 137.

SON OF GOD.

1070. [John i. 1.] In the beginning was the WORD, and the WORD was with GOD and the WORD was GOD.

What is continuous from God, is God. Wisdom vii. 24-27. SWEDENBORG, on Divine Love, n. 55.

1071. The WORD.] "The Logos, in Plato, signifies the Wisdom, the Reason of the Supreme Being." (VOLTAIRE.)-Accordingly, says the Apostle, "we preach Christ the power of GOD, and the wisdom of GOD." 1 Cor. i. 24.

1072. [John i. 9.] There is an innate light, a right reason, given to all, constant and eternal, calling unto duty by commanding, and deterring from deceit by forbidding. cannot be abrogated, neither can any be freed from it, either by senate or people. It is one, eternal and the same to all nations; so that there is not one at Rome, and another at Athens. Whoso obeys it not, must flee from himself, and in this is greatly tormented, although he should escape all other punishments.

CICERO.

1073. [Rom. i. 20.] What the sun and light are to this visible world, that, are the supreme Good, and Truth, to the intellectual and invisible universe; and, as our corporeal eyes have a distinct perception of objects enlightened by the sun, thus our souls acquire certain knowledge, by meditating on the light of truth, which emanates from the Being of beings that is the light by which alone our minds can be directed in the path to beatitude.

Sir W. JONES' Works, vol. vi. p. 417.

1074. [John i. 9.] Truth is the light of the soul, as physical light is the truth of bodies. The two united convey the knowledge of that which is: the one illuminates objects, the other points out to us their adaptations; and as in the principle, all light traces its origin up to the sun, all truth has its source in GOD, of whom that luminary is the most sensible image. St. PIERRE's Studies of Nature, vol. iv. p. 503.

1075. [Ps. lxxxiv. 11.] From the Sun of heaven, or from the LORD, there is not only light, but also heat, spiritual. This light, in the eyes of angels, appears like light, but has in it the intelligence and a wisdom thence derived, and this heat, to their senses, is perceived as heat, but in it there is love, as what is thence derived. Wherefore also love is called spiritual heat; and intelligence is called spiritual light, constituting the light of man's life.

1076.

See SWEDENBORG's Arcana, n. 3636.

Let us adore the supremacy of that divine Sun, the Godhead-who illuminates all, who recreates all, from whom all proceed, to whom all must return, whom we invoke to direct our understandings aright in our progress towards his holy seat.

Sir. W. JONES' Works, vol. vi. p. 417,

1077. [John viii. 29.] Light is coeval with the sun, though as truly derived from it as a child from his father who begat him they are truly and really distinct from each other, and yet so much one and the same as to be still inseparable.

Bp. BROWNE'S Divine Analogy, p. 21.

1078. [John xiv. 28.] Dr. HERSCHEL has shewn by experiment that the focus of heat falls at the distance of half an inch from that of light. This will explain how,in appearance, the Father is superior to, and distinct from, the Son, in Deity ; and yet united like Heat and Light.

[1 John v. 7.] There are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost: and these three are one.

1079. [1 John v. 7, 8.] We observe in our mind three faculties, powers, or principles of action; will, reason, and effective power, —in themselves distinct, yet so united as to subsist in one and the same individual. In like manner, it is reasonable to conceive three principles of action in the divine or eternal Mind, analogous to those we experience in ourselves; the volitive, the imaginative, and the executive, distinctly, but inseparably united in the most perfect or real manner possible. The volitive faculty, or the divine Will, being a perfect, independent, elective and self-determining principle endowed with perfect intelligence, cannot but be always the first principle of action in the divine Being; as a perfect imaginative principle (which, superadded to intelligence or understanding, may be termed Wisdom and Reason) cannot but be the second, and a perfect executive principle the third. If the divine principle of Willing be what is meant by the Father, then it may very well be conceived, how all the divine actions should be thus primarily ascribed to Him, as being the first moving principle.

It may then be very well conceived, how the Father should be said to have created the worlds by his Word and Spirit; to have sent the Son; and also to have sent and poured out the Spirit. And thus the seeming subordination of the Three Co-equals and Co-essentials in the Divine Economy, will, on this supposition, be sufficiently accounted for which cannot but reflect great light on this venerable doctrine.

See COLLIBER's Christian Religion founded on Reason, pp. 102 to 109.

The Father is the essential divine Spirit, "in whom we live, move, and have our being"; the Son is the infinite human Spirit, produced before all worlds, “ the First-born of every creature," co-extensive with the Father, out of whom all angels and souls of meu have originally come, and by whom they must, to be happy, be all vitally filled; and the Holy Spirit which came upon the Virgin at the incarnation, is what may be properly called the emanated Spirit of Heaven in and around angels, and ever filled with the Father and the Son in a threefold unity; whilst the Holy Spirit which was not on earth till Jesus was glorified (John vii. 39), is what may be properly called the redeemed Spirit of our Earth in and around Christians, which was assumed and purified first by the descent and labors of the Son, and then glorified by a further coming of the Father into a perfect union with both, till there is now the same threefold Kingdom of God on earth as in heaven.

1080. [1 John ii. 23.] He who adores an impersonal GOD, has none, and is without guide or rudder, on an immense abyss, that first absorbs his powers, and next himself. What nature will he honour who honours not the HUMAN? (LAVATER's Aphorisms, p. 189.) - The MAN UNCREATE is GOD. SWEDENBORG, on Divine Love, n. 18.

1081. [ Gen. i. 26.] Though the distinction of Soul, and Body, and Spirit in man, be no direct proof of a Trinity; yet it is, at least, a distant illustration of an incomprehensible Distinction in that Divine Nature, after whose likeness and in whose own image we are so expressly said to be formed.

Bp. BROWNE'S Divine Analogy, p. 305.

1082. [Matt. i. 20.] Throughout the New Testament, Jesus Christ and his Apostles, in speaking to God, or of him, or quoting his Name from the Old Testament, never once use the term JEHOVAH. It is translated, however, in the Apocalypse i. 8, into Greek, which denotes is, was, and to come; intimating that the Appearance of GOD (like the inage of the natural sun) is to-day, aras yesterday, and will be to-morrow, nearly vertical in the spiritual spheres of our earth, as it regularly turns round every twenty-four hours. This APPEARANCE, or IMAGE OF GOD, is that JESUS CHRIST, whom we shall ، meet in the air' : 1 Thess. iv. 17.

1084. [Luke x. 22.] The Infinite cannot behold in finites any thing but what is Infinite from Himself. Yet what is Infinite can appear at finites as in them. Thus there is given a ratio between what is finite and Infinite, not from what is finite, but from the Infinite in finite. Thus also a finite being is capable of what is Infinite, yet not a finite being that is really finite in himself, but one apparently so from what is Infinite in himself by a continuous influx from the Infinite. See SWEDENBORG, on Div. Prov. n. 54.

1085. [Luke ii. 52. And JESUS increased in wisdom and stature] This increase of knowledge implies that Christ, though the logos (Grk.) were his soul, had subordinately from the mother a human spirit, as well as a human vody; and that this spirit, notwithstanding its union with his soul, was as capable of improvement in wisdom, as the body was

of increase in strength and stature: which is undoubtedly the antient doctrine of the Christian church.

See Univer. Hist. vol. x. p. 286.

1086. [Luke xxii. 42.] Christ had his whole human nature, body and soul (or spirit), from his mother. (See KNATCHBULL, on Heb. ix. 1.) —“ Now is my soul exceeding sorrowful, even to death." What was (by Christ) not assumed, was by him never healed (as to the union established) between the Infinite and Finite human spirit.

NAZIANZEN.

1087. [James i. 13. GOD cannot be tempted] It was the human spirit then, not the Divine, which was tempted in Christ by the evil influences he bore in the temple of his body. How differently do those men argue, who attempt to persuade us, that the satisfying of Divine Justice, in atoning for the breach of a Divine Law, required, what is impossible, the sufferings and even the death of a DIVINE VICTIM

1088. [Heb. ii. 18.] The Redeemer had in himself the whole Humanity, both as it was before and after the Fall, viz. in his inward man the perfection of the first Adam, and in his outward the weakness and mortality of the fallen nature.

LAW's Appeal, p. 188.

THE END FOR WHICH OUR SAVIOUR APPEARED ON EARTH.

[2 Cor. v. 19.] GOD was in Christ reconciling the World unto himself.

1089. [John x. 10.] Those who think they pay a just deference to the Wisdom and Omnipotence of God, when they suppose there was no absolute necessity for the Incarnation of the Son of God; but that God, if he had so pleased, could as well have saved man some other way, shew as great ignorance both of God and nature, as if they should have said, || that when God makes a blind man to see by opening or giving him eyes, there was no necessity in the thing itself, that sight should be given in that particular way, but that God, if he had so pleased, could have made him become a seeing man in this world without the eyes or light of this world.

For if the Son of God is the Light of Heaven, and man only wants to be redeemed, because he has lost the light of heaven; is it not absolutely impossible for him to be redeemed any other way, or by any other thing, than by a birth of this Son of God in him. Is not this particularity the one only thing that can raise fallen man, as seeing eyes are the only thing that can take away blindness from the man? Ibid. p. 176.

1091. [John iii. 16.] Nothing can be more repugnant, both to reason and Scripture, than to imagine that the end of our SAVIOUR'S coming into the world, and particularly of his death, was to satisfy GOD, or to render Him favourable and propitious to men: HE is always friendly, benevolent, and propitious to men; that is, he always desires their happiness. But, in order to their attaining to all that happiness which he designs for them, sin must be removed, their moral disposi tions must be corrected; these are such a bar to their happiness, that wicked men would be miserable in heaven itself, in the company of saints and angels, and amidst the splendors that encompass the throne of God.

1092.

JAMESON, Preface to his Pentateuch, pp. iv, v.

The doctrine of sacrifice, or vicarious punishment, is the most universal, and yet, the most absurd of all religious tenets that ever entered into the mind of man ; so absurd is it, that how it came to be so universal is not easy to be accounted for. That there should be any manner of connection between the miseries of one being and the guilt of another; or that the punishing the innocent, and excusing the guilty, should be a mark of God's detestation of sin; or, that two acts of the highest injustice should make one of justice, is so fundamentally wrong, so diametrically opposite to common sense, and all our ideas of justice, that it is equally astonishing that so many should believe it themselves or impose it upon others. JENYNS' Works, vol. iii. p. 111.

man.

First, the inward frame, or temper, or disposition of the soul of man to virtue and holiness, in every particular instance. This is styled virtue or moral goodness in the true propriety of the word; and in Scripture it is called the heart, the hidden man of the heart, and the inward man; out of which proceeds all moral goodness, as well as moral evil : and one of the bright revelations of the gospel is, that all degrees of virtue and goodness are to be computed in proportion only to the inward disposition of our souls. This is the fountain of all morality; and as it is more or less clear or muddy, all the external actions and performances which flow from it have a greater or less degree of unmingled purity, and of genuine virtue and holiness. Secondly, the external exertions and operations proceeding from that virtuous disposition of the soul; which are not absolutely necessary to the very nature and essence of goodness, but so accidental to it, that if no proper occasions or opportunities should offer of exerting the inward virtuous dispositions externally, our goodness and virtue may thereby receive neither increase nor diminution in the account of God, the searcher of hearts. The habitual external exercise indeed of our virtuous dispositions of mind, when proper occasions and objects offer, are then the indispensable result of those dispositions, and serve to strengthen and confirm them; and we may, by that means, become more virtuous and holy every day: Butstill the virtue remains where it was at first; and all the external exertions and performances proceeding from it, are so many proper instances and necessary indications of the inward virtuous dispositions of the soul from whence they derive all their morality and worth, and even borrow the name of virtue and goodness. Bp. BROWNE'S Divine Analogy, p. 261.

1097. [Matt. xi. 30.] Let those whom a wrong bias has warped into a prejudice against christian duties, but view them with an impartial eye, and they will be readily convinced, that there is not one positive injunction in the Bible, but what is as necessary for the support of the soul's spiritual life, as food is for the body; nor a negative precept, that is not as expedient as abstinence from gross food is to a man in a high fever, or from drink to one in a dropsy.

See Univer. Hist. vol. x. p. 322.

1098. [Matt. v. 2.] We learn from the main scope and tendency of Jesus Christ's sermon on the mount, that the

true and real excellency and perfection of all moral religion is within us, and seated in the heart; and accordingly the whole substance of it is made to consist not only in the outward deportinent and external discharge of all duties; but chiefly in the inward rectitude and sanctification of the mind

and conscience.

Bp. BROWNE'S Procedure of the Understanding, p. 338.

1099. [Matt. v. 2.] Blessed are the poor in spirit : for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

By the poor in spirit, are meant those who, by their natural dispositions, are meek, quiet, teachable, and submissive; or those who, by reflection and cultivation, have rendered their dispositions such; and have eradicated from their hearts pride, envy, and ambition, those high spi rited passions, so destructive of the happiness of society, as well as of their own.

1100.

JENYNS' Works, vol. iv. p. 125.

Every one, who is in the least acquainted with himself, may judge of the reasonableness of the hope that is in him, and of his situation in a future state by that of his present. If he feels in himself a temper proud, turbu lent, vindictive, and malevolent, and a violent attachment to the pleasures or business of the world; he may be assured, that he must be excluded from the kingdom of heaven: not only because his conduct can merit no such reward, but beif admitted, he would find there no objects satisfactory to his passions, inclinations, and pursuits, and therefore could only disturb the happiness of others without enjoying any share of it himself. Ibid. p. 51.

cause,

See No. 1014.

1101. [Matt. v. 5.] Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth.

By the meek inheriting the earth, nothing more is meant, than that persons of meek, quiet, and peaceable dispositions, enjoy more happiness on earth, and suffer less disquietude in the present life, than those of opposite characters and this is verified by the experience of every day; they acquire more friends, and fewer enemies; they meet with fewer injuries and disappointments, and bear those which they cannot avoid with less uneasiness: in short they pass through the world, as through a crowd ; less obstructed, less bruised and jostled, than those who force their way by violence and impetuosity.