the earth, and even individual men, have their ministering angels. Two archangels were the leaders of a rebellion against God; and the rebels were cast out of heaven. The fallen angels, procreating with the daughters of men, produced giants and devils. The cause of natural death, and of all the calamities of mankind, is the fall of our first parents. No human being can attain to perfection; but good works are entitled to reward; and the pardon of sin may be obtained by fastings, prayers, confessions, and bodily sufferings. All the laws of Moses are eternal and immutable. The soul of man is a thinking substance, having three faculties; the vegetative, the sensitive, and the rational: it is possessed of liberty, and is immortal. After death it is not immediately admitted to celestial joys, but wanders in this world, chiefly about its body, during which time it is tormented by evil demons: in this purgatory it is cleansed from its stains; after which it passes into other bodies of men, or inferior animals. There will be a resurrection of the bodies of dead men, and an universal judgment, which will be succeeded by a state of retribution. The good will enjoy eternal life in Paradise, and the wicked will be consigned to the infernal regions; the Jew for a time, but the infidel for ever. The world will be destroyed; but the materials of which it is composed will remain.5 Many of the most valuable parts of these tenets, the Jews unquestionably derived from their sacred Scriptures; the rest they borrowed from their Gentile neighbours. They first suffered their doctrine to be corrupted by the Egyptian philosophy; and afterwards, learned from the Saracens to reason after the Peripatetic manner upon metaphysical subjects: examples of which may be seen in the writings of Maimonides, and in the book Cosri. The superstitious notions and practices of the Jews, in the Middle Age, concerning the names of God, were singular. Of these they reckoned seventy-two; from which, by different arrangements in sevens, they produced seven 5 Maimond. Moreh Nebhochim, et Jesode Thora. R. Jos. Albo Fund. Fid. Basnage, l. iv. c. 6. Lightfoot. Hor. Heb. hundred and twenty. The principal of these was Agla, which they disposed in the following figure : This they called The Shield of David, and pretended that it was a security against wounds, and would extinguish fires, and was able to perform other wonders." The Esoteric or concealed doctrine of the Jews was called the Cabbala, from the word 5, which signifies, to receive, because it had been received by tradition. Concerning the miraculous origin and preservation of the Cabbala, the Jews relate many marvellous tales. They derive these mysteries from Adam; and assert, that whilst the first man was in Paradise, the angel Rasiel brought him a book from heaven, which contained the doctrines of heavenly wisdom; and that when Adam received this book, angels came down to him to learn its contents, but that he refused to admit them to the knowledge of sacred things, entrusted to him alone; that after the fall, this book was taken back into heaven; that, after many prayers and tears, God restored it to Adam; and thou art strong in the ; אתה גבר לעולם אדני Contracted from eternal God. 7 Fabric. Cod. Apoc. V. T. t. ii. p. 1006. t. iii. p. 143. that it passed from Adam to Seth, The Jewish fables go on to relate, that the book being lost, and the mysteries it contained almost forgotten, in the degenerate age before the flood, they were restored, by special revelation, to Abraham, who committed them to writing in the book Jezirah; that the revelation was renewed to Moses, who received a traditionary and mystical, as well as a written and preceptive, law from God; that being again lost amidst the calamities of the Babylonish captivity, it was once more revealed to Esdras; that it was preserved in Egypt, and has been transmitted to posterity through the hands of Simeon ben Setach, Elkanah, Akibha, Simeon ben Jochai, and others.9 ཏི All that can be inferred from these accounts, which bear the evident marks of fiction, is, that the Cabbalistic doctrine obtained early credit among the Jews as part of their sacred tradition, and was transmitted, under this notion, by the Jews in Egypt to their brethren in Palestine. That this system was not of Hebrew origin may be concluded, with a great degree of probability, from the total dissimilarity of its abstruse and mysterious doctrines to the simple principles of religion taught in the Mosaic law; and that it was borrowed from the Egyptian schools will presently appear, from a comparison of its tenets with those of the Oriental and Alexandrian philosophy. Many writers have indeed imagined, that they have found, in the Cabbalistic dogmas, a near resemblance of the doctrines of Christianity, and have been of opinion, that the fundamental principles of this mystical system were derived from Divine Revelation. But this opinion is to be traced up to a prejudice, which began with the Jews, and passed from them to the Christian Fathers, by which they were led to ascribe all Pagan wisdom to a Hebrew origin; a notion which, there can be little room to doubt, took its rise in Egypt, where Pagan tenets first crept in among the Jews. When they first embraced the doctrines of Heathen philo Eisenmenger. Jud. Detect. p. Wachter. Elucid. Cabbal. c. 1. § Buxtorf. Bib. Rabb. p. 184. 8. i. c. Renchlin, de arte Cabb. I. i. p. 622. Wolf. Bib. H. p. i. p. 112. Reimann. Hist. Th. Jud. 1. i. c. 15. Budd. } Intr. p. 424. Cosri, p. iii. § 65.. 1 sophy, neither their national vanity, nor their reverence for the law of Moses, would suffer them to acknowledge themselves indebted to Pagans for their wisdom: they had, therefore, nothing left but to profess to derive these new opinions from their sacred writings, and, by the help of the allegorical method of interpretation taught them by the Egyptians, to reconcile them, as well as they were able, with the ancient doctrines of their religion. In support of this pretence, they supposed that the stream of wisdom, which they professed to derive from their own sacred fountain, had formerly flowed out of their inclosure into the neighbouring countries; and that the Oriental, Egyptian, and Grecian schools had been at first indebted to the land of Israel for their knowledge. Philo, Josephus, and other learned Jews, to flatter their own vanity, and that of their countrymen, industriously propagated this opinion; and the more learned fathers of the Christian church, who thought highly of the Grecian, particularly of the Platonic philosophy, hastily adopted it, imagining that if they could trace back the most valuable doctrines of Paganism to an Hebrew origin, this could not fail to recommend the Jewish and Christian religions to the attention of Gentile philosophers. Many learned moderns, relying implicitly upon these authorities, have maintained the same opinion, and have hence been inclined to credit the report of the Divine original of the Jewish Cabbala: but both these opinions are equally without foundation. In tracing the ancient Barbaric and Grecian philosophy to their sources, it has sufficiently appeared, that they were not of Hebrew extraction:10 and we shall soon see that the Cabbalistic 19 In further confirmation of what has been already advanced upon this point, it may be remarked, that those who have supposed the Chaldean and Egyptian philosophy to have originated with the Hebrews, have not considered that Thoth, Hermes Trismegistus, the Chaldean Zoroaster, and other founders of the ancient Barbaric philosophy, were prior in time to Moses, and even to Abraham. Besides, if it were granted that there were, among the Hebrews, patriarchs coeval with the first Chaldean or Egyptian sages, it still remains, to shew by what means the former could have prevailed upon the latter to become their disciples, and to adduce some plausible evidence that this was in fact the case. It is wonderful, that any learned men should have maintained, that the Egyptians were indebted to the Israelites for their wisdom, when it appears from the sa system is fundamentally inconsistent with the pure doctrine of Divine Revelation. The truth, as far as we have been able to develop it, after a careful comparison of the various opinions which have been advanced with the ancient records which remain upon this subject, may be thus briefly stated. The Jews, as their own writers attest, like other Oriental nations, from the most remote period, had secret doctrines or mysteries. During the prophetic ages, these, probably, consisted in a simple explanation of those Divine truths which the prophets delivered under the veil of emblems. After this period, when the sects of the Essenes and Therapeutæ were formed, as we have seen, in Egypt, foreign tenets and institutions were borrowed from the Egyptians and Greeks, and, in the form of allegorical interpretations of the law, were admitted into the Jewish mysteries. These innovations chiefly consisted in certain dogmas concerning God and Divine things, at this time received in the Egyptian schools, particularly at Alexandria, where the Platonic and Pythagorean doctrines on these subjects had undergone a material alteration, by being mixed with the Oriental philosophy. For the Alexandrian Platonists, having rejected the Dualistic System, had now, from the Orientalists, adopted the Emanative, and admitted the doctrine of various orders of Divine emanation. This doctrine, which by the help of allegory was easily accommodated to the sa cred writings, was embraced, under the notion of tradition cred history, that the Egyptians treated the Israelites with contempt, as a race of foreign slaves; and that the descendants of Jacob inhabited a separate region, where they had little intercourse with the natives of Egypt. Is there a shadow of probability, that the Egyptians would borrow from such a people any part of their sacred mysteries! But, if even this were allowed to be probable, still, the difference between the ancient Hebrew religion, and that of the Egyptians and other nations, is too great, to leave any room for admitting the fact. If then it be wholly inconceivable that the ancient Egyptians should have received their dogmas from the Hebrews, it must be admitted as highly probable that when, in later times, a wonderful agreement appears between the Jewish and Egyptían tenets, the Jews borrowed their Cabbalistic dogmas from the Alexandrians, among whom they resided.* * Conf. Reuchlin. de Art. Cabb. 1. ii. p. 642. Wachter. Spinoz. Jud. p. ii. p. 221. Burnet Arch. I. i. c. 7. |