ch. iii v. 8.); and that to him was intrusted, under the pro phets Haggai and Zechariah, the consecration of an enter prise, of which the civil conduct was allotted to Zerubbabel. Zerubbabel survived Cyrus, and continued (Ezra, iv. 3—5.) under Darius to govern the Jews, whose temple he finished (1 Esdras, vii. 5.) in the sixth year of that king. Xerxes or Artaxerxes (1 Esdras, viii. 1-7.) soon transferred the superintendance of Jerusalem to Ezra; who, in the seventh year of this prince, conducted to Jerusalem the third and last colony of returning Jews; and thus terminated, long after the death of Josedek, a captivity which, if it endured seventy years, must have begun twenty-seven years before the accession of the first Darius. By the first year of Cyrus, the scriptures often appear to mean the first year of the subjection of Jerusalem to his authority. We apprehend that Mr. Butler will find it impossible to reconcile these particulars with the dates which he has adopted.

At a period when even some of the arbitrary† sovereigns of Europe are waging with each other a contest of liberality, and are said to be hastening to add Jewish emancipation to that which they have already vouchsafed to all the Christian sects, it is with interest and with approbation that we meet with any account of this people, which tends to conciliate in their be half that good-will which has too long been withholden:

VII. 2. With respect to the present state of the Jews, their history, from the death of Christ to the present century, has been ably written by Monsieur Basnage. It presents a scene of suffering and persecution unparalleled in the annals of the world. Wherever the Jews have been established, they necessarily have borne their share of the evils of the age, in which they lived, and the country, in which they resided. But, besides their common share in the sufferings of society, they have undergone a series of horrid and unutterable calamities, which no other description of men have experienced in any other age or any other country. Brotier computes the number of those, who perished by the sword between the year 66 and the year 70, at two millions. When we reflect on them, we may address the Jews, as the Rabbi Jochanan is said to have addressed the temple, at the time of the siege of Jerusalem, when he felt it shaking, and observed the gates opening of their own accord,

*If the vith and viith chapters of Zechariah be both of one date, it should seem that Joshua was still a minor branch of the holy family in the 4th year of Darius.

+ On the petition of a Jew, who has gone through his examination before the academy of surgery with distinction, his Danish majesty has recently declared that the religion of the petitioner shall be no obstacle to his employment in the public service. The Prussians have long since given similar examples.

"O temple,

"O temple, temple, why dost thou shake! and art thus moved! We know thou art to be destroyed." But while we reverence, in their suf ferings and calamities, the prophecies which foretold them, so long before they happened; while, in humble silence and submission, we adore the inscrutable and unsearchable decrees of God, who thus terribly visits the sins of fathers on their children, we shall find, that, in judging between them and their persecutors, it is a justice due to them from us, to acknowledge, that, if on some occasions, they may be thought to have deserved their misfortunes by their private vices or public crimes, it has oftener happened, that they have been the innocent victims of avarice, rage or mistaken zeal. Res est sacra, miser. Their sufferings alone intitled them to some compassion; and our compassion for them rises to an higher feeling, when, to use the language of St. Paul, (ix. Rom. 4, 5, and 6,) we consider " that, their's was the adoption, the glory, the covenants, the law, the worship, the promise, and the fathers, and that from them descended the Christ according to the flesh, who is God over all, blessed for ever ;" and (xi. Rom. 26,28) "that the hour approaches, when all Israel shall be saved, when the deliverer shall come out of Zion, and shall turn away ungodliness from Jacob;" and that, even in their present state of rejection," they are beloved of God, for their father's sake." To the honour of the See of Rome, it must be said, that, the Roman pontiffs, with some few exceptions, have treated them with lenity, defended them against their persecutors, and often checked the mistaken zeal of those, who sought to convert them by force. Thus, St. Gregory the Great always exhorted his clergy, and the other parts of his flock, to behave to them with candour and tenderness. He repeatedly declared, that, they should be brought into the unity of faith, by gentle means, by fair persuasions, by charitable advice, not by force: and, that, as the law of the state did not allow their building new synagogues, they ought to be allowed the free use of their own places of worship. His successors, in general, pursued the same line of conduct. The persecutions excited by the Emperor Heraclius against the Jews, were blamed at the fourth council of Toledo, which declared "that, it was unlawful and unchristianlike to force people to believe, seeing it is God alone who hardens and shews mercy to whom he will." St. Isidore of Seville was an advocate for the mild treatment of them. There is extant a letter from St. Bernard, to the Archbishop of Mentz, in which he strongly condemns the violence shewn them by the crusaders. At a latter period, Pope Gregory the IXth, a zealous promoter of the crusade itself, observing, that, the crusaders, in many places began their expedition, with massacres of the Jews, not only loudly reprehended it, but took all proper methods of preventing such barbarity. Pope Nicholas the IId protected them, in his own dominions, even against the inquisition; and sent letters into Spain, to prevent force being used to compel them to abjure their religion. Pope Alexander the VIth received, with kindness, and recommended to the protection of the other Italian states, the Jews who came to Rome or other parts of Italy, on their banishment from Spain and Portugal. Paul the IIId shewed them so much kindness, that Cardinal Sadolet

thought

thought him blameable for carrying it to an excess. By the bulls of Pius V. and Clement the VIIIth, they are banished from the papal dominions, except Rome, Ancona, and Avignon. Pope Innocent the XIth, gave them several marks of his favour. The general kindness of the Roman Pontiffs to them is admitted by the Jews themselves. The Jewish writers divide the west into two sovereignties, or rather into the two principal religions that reign in it, namely the Roman Catholic and the Protestant; extolling the kind protec tion and favour they receive from the former, and complaining of the unkind treatment they meet with from the latter." Popish Rome," says Barrios, "hath always protected them, ever since its general Titus destroyed Jerusalem.'

Of the state of the Jews during the Middle Ages we have curious and interesting accounts by Benjamin of Tudela in Navarre, and Rabbi Pitachah; two learned Jews, who, in the twelfth century, visited the principal cities of the east, where the Jews had synagogues, and returned through Hungary, Germany, Italy, and France. A wish to magnify the importance of their brethren, is discernible in the writings of both; and, for their extreme credulity, both are justly censured. But, after every reasonable deduction is made on these accounts, from the credibility of their narratives, much will remain to interest even an intelligent and cautious reader. At different times, the Jews have been banished from France, from Germany, from Spain, from Bohemia, and from Hungary. We have particular accounts of the miseries of those, who were banished from the last of these kingdoms. They were banished from England in the reign of Edward the Ist, but were permitted to return by Oliver Cromwell. Numbers of them are settled in Persia, in the Turkish empire, in Fez, Morocco, Barbary, in many parts of the East Indies, in some part of Germany, in some of the Italian States, in Poland, in Prussia, and the Hanse towns. Their condition is most flourishing in England and Holland; but Poland is the principal seat of their literature. They have no accurate deduction of their descent or genealogy. They suppose, that, in general, they are of the tribes of Benjamin and Judah, with some among them, of the tribe of Levi; but the Spanish and Portuguese Jews claim this descent, exclusively for themselves, and, in consequence of it, will not by marriage, or otherwise, incorporate with the Jews of other nations. They have separate synagogues; and if a Portuguese Jew should, even in England or Holland, marry a German Jewess, he would immediately be expelled the synagogue, deprived of every civil and ecclesiastical right, and ejected from the body of the nation. They found their pretensions on a supposition, which prevails among them, that, many of the principal families removed, or were sent into Spain, at the time of the captivity of Babylon. See the Reflections Critiques, added to the second letter, in the incomparable collection, intitled, Lettres de quelques Juifs Portugais Allemands et Polonais, à M. de Voltaire. It is certain, that, a large body of Jews is established in China; the best account of them is in Brotier's Tacitus, 3 vol. 567. All Jews feel the dignity of their origin, recollect their former pre-eminence, with conscious elevation of character, and bear, with indignation,

indignation, their present state of degradation and political subserviency. But, they comfort themselves with the hope, that their hour of triumph is at hand, when the long expected Messiah will come, will gather them from the corners of the earth, will settle them in the land of their fathers, and subject all the nations of the earth to his throne.'

The relation, extracted from a work entitled the Phenix, printed in 1707, of a convention of Jews at Ageda, has all the air of a pious romance: some German journalist might inquire into the fact.

The author's account of the chief printed editions of the scriptures has appeared to us better composed than that of the chief manuscripts. To Mill's assiduous collection of various readings, to Bengel's graduated estimate of contending phrases, to Wetstein's conscious force and deep search through all the ramifications of evangelical literature, and to Griesbach's tasteful selection of interesting commentary, appropriate justice is rendered. The Anglo-Saxon Heptateuch published by Thwaites, at Oxford, in 1698, is not enumerated among our native translations of the Bible. The severe abbreviation of its style must no doubt be ascribed to the translator, and the castrations to the editor; who supposes his manuscript to have been of the thirteenth century. The modern partial translations are also passed over by Mr. Butler; not, we hope, because he imputes either lack of learning or lack of courage to the interpreters. The subsisting distribution into chapters and verses is justly censured. It would be instructive to accompany the New Testament with an Apocrypha, containing the gospel of James, the epistle of Clemens, the shepherd of Hermas, and similar early writings.

A pleasant anecdote interwoven in this portion of the discussion deserves to be recollected. Cardinal Albert of Mentz sent to Erasmus, in return for a copy of his Greek Testament, a golden cup, with this commendation: "Ait vocari poculum amoris, ex quo, qui biberint, protinus benevolentiâ mutuâ conglutinari."-" Utinam, says Erasmus, theologi Lovanienses ex eo mecum potassent." To us also be it allowed to wish, that Christians of every persuasion might from such a cup drink the wine of their communion ;-that, ceasing to insist on points which are dwindling into insignificance, they would begin an emulation of benevolence, and a rivalship of utility ;-and that, laying aside the provoking nicknames of dissension, they would contentedly glide into one Catholic church, and unite to purify their common faith from an alloying amalgam of Judaism and Platonism.

MONTHLY CATALOGUE,

For OCTOBER, 1798.

EDUCATION,

&c.

Art. 15. Geographie Antique Principia, or The Elements of Ancient Geography. By Richard Perkins, jun. 8vo. Is. 6d. at Glocester. Sold by Johnson, London.

Printed

WE either do not accede to or do not understand the position of this author, in the preface, that our knowlege of the elementary parts of science is purely historical;' and that therefore the benefits resulting from the acquisition, being of an individual nature, have no influence directly favourable to the interests of general literature.' However, we think that the author's plan is a good one, and that his pamphlet will be useful to those who are reading history, and who may not be provided with a set of maps, that exhibit both the antient and modern names of countries, rivers, &c.—It will also be useful even to those who are in possession of D'Anville's maps (common edition, 11. Es.).

Art. 16. An English Key to Xenophon's Memorabilia of Socrates; literally translating the Passages which appear difficult to young Beginners, and explaining their Grammatical Construction. Intended as an Introduction to construing the Greek Classics into English without the Use of Latin. For the Use of Schools. 8vo. pp. 280. 5s. bound. Matthews.

The design of this work is (according to its author) to facilitate the acquisition of the Greek language, by freeing it from the indeterminate signification given to many Greek words by a Latin translation, and (as far as the idiom will permit) to give the Greek verbą. a fixed sense.' In prosecution of this purpose, the words are rendered immediately from the Greek into the English. The author farther adds that some pains have been taken to shew that when a word has once been used, the signification then given was a general one.' We cannot praise this method. In strict language, a word cannot be said to have a general signification. The proper plan appears to be that which the author has in some instances adopted: viz. in the first chapter, yatapos Σwxpurn' (the accusers of Socrates) the original meaning of the word yap is to write: but, by alluding to the custom of the accuser's writing down the charge, the accused person's name, and the violated law, &c. it is made to mean, metaphorically, to accuse. If the several significations of words were given according to the above method in our lexicons and dictionaries, young students would sooner acquire more precise notions concerning the nature of language. At present, notwithstanding all that some of our lexicons say to the contrary, to "accuse" is as much a translation of as to write; to “marry," as much a translation of duco as to “lead,”

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