other favours which he had bestowed on them, ' Ba'lak fent and called Balaam, the fon of Beor, to curfe thee, but I would not hearken to Balaam,' Jofh. xxiv. 2, 9. It represents him also as well acquainted with this name of the God of Ifrael, by which he was distinguished from all the Gentile gods. For when the elders of Moab and Midian first asked him to curse the Ifraelites, he answered, he would bring account what Jehovah fhould fay to him, in relation to their errand and affair, Numb. xxii. 8. and when he learned his determination, he reported it unto them with this preamble, Muft I not take heed to ' speak that which Jehovah hath put in my mouth?' xxiii. 10. Perhaps indeed they were more ready to afk his affiftance, because he was looked on as a prophet of the fame Deity whom the Ifraelites worshipped; for they might thence hope, they would by his interceffion more easily draw him off from his care and protection of them, and incline him to favour and profper themselves. Accordingly, I do not remember to have read of any divines who denied him to be a true prophet but Gifb. Voetius, who built his opinion on this principle, that no true prophets refided at any time among the Gentiles, that is, any other nation than Ifrael.

A little after, he attributes the bad treatment of Ifaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel, to the difficulty of diftinguishing true and falfe pretenders to the prophetic character*, ' It was difficult to distinguish the false prophet from the true one. Wherefore Manaffeh, king of Judea, had Isaiah fawn asunder. The king Se⚫ decias could not decide between Jeremiah and Hana* Page 204.

niah, who foretold contrary things; and he imprison'ed Jeremiah. Ezekiel was flain by Jews his fellow• captives.'

That Ifaiah was fawn afunder by Manaffeh, our author without any hesitation here afferts; and indeed it hath been eagerly believed by the Jewish doctors, and most fathers of the Chriftian church. Nevertheless there are many circumftances, which render it very doubtful; for it feems probable Isaiah was dead before Manaffeh fucceeded to the throne, fince he is not mentioned among the kings in whofe reign he prophefied, Ifaiah, i. 1.-It appears unaccountable fuch murder should have been omitted by the facred writers of* later times, who yet have recorded the destruction of the lives of prophets, lefs famous, by royal mandate, as of Zechariah, by the order of king Joafh, 2 Chron. xxiv. 21. and of Urijah, by the command of Jehoiakim, Jerem. xxvi. 20-23. -Though Jofephus fay Manaffeh killed all righteous men among the Hebrews, and spared not the prophets, he is filent about Ifaiah's perishing by violence under him, as natural an occafion as he had to finish his account of him, by commemorating his martyrdom, and as particular as he is, in his mention of Zechariah's being stoned to death in the temple under Joafh. The traditionary story related in the Gema

* Justin Martyr indeed, in his Dialogue with Trypho, hath charged the Jews with erafing Isaiah's cruel death by Manaffeh out of the Old Testament, p. 349. Edit. Paris. But I fuppofe this meets with no credit now, more than his accufation of them for taking away from the tree,' after The Lord reigned,' Pf. xcv. ibid. 298.

Antiq. 10 chap. 2. 3. and 9. 8. 3.

See this cited in Vitringa's preface to his Commentary on Isaiah.

ra about his death, hath many things in it evidently fabulous and incredible; for inftance, that a cedar tree opened and inclosed the prophet to shelter him from the wrath of this prince, that the king caufed faw it, that the faw was of* wood, (a strange inftrument for the service!) and that Isaiah expired as foon as the faw reached his lips: which things create a prefumption that the whole is an idle legendary tale. And as to the words of the writer of the epiftle to the Hebrews, in his recital of mens great atchievements through faith, Some were fawn afunder,' which have been often urged, in confirmation and fupport of this tradition about Ifaiah's fate; it may be obferved, that they afford no fure evidence of its truth, fince he speaks of feveral who with courage refigned their lives in that form, and does not authorize us to conclude, that he alludes to the fufferings of holy men under Manaffeh, more than under other wicked

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Some however explain this wooden faw, with which Isaiah is faid by several antient fathers to have been fawed in two from the head downward, to fignify by an Hebraism, not a faw made of wood, but a faw with which wood used to be fawn, a faw prepared for cutting timber. So Authors of Ant. Univ. Hift. 8vo. p. 133. I fuppofe they mean that πρίων Exx, a faw of wood, might by the idiom of the Hebrew tongue, receive such sense, because the genitive after a noun, is fometimes employed to exprefs the final caufe, that is, the defign or purpose to be served by the thing or perfon which that noun denotes; of which Glaffius mentions fheep of flaughter, Pf. xliv. 23. fons of death, Pf. cii. 21.' as inftances, these phrases standing for, sheep and men destined to lose their lives. But befides that the fathers, if I am not mistaken, use the adjectives Žvairos or ligneus, according as they write in Greek or Latin, such examples of the sense of the genitive will fcarcely be admitted to be altogether parallel.

rulers,and particularly under Antiochus Epiphanes,by whom the Jews that were tenacious of their law, were treated in a most barbarous manner, and subjected to the most unexampled miseries and pains in dying. Compare Heb. xi. 37. and the books of the Maccabees.

But admitting that Isaiah had an end put to his life by Manaffeh, in the way our author relates, (as indeed it cannot be queftioned, whether he was capable of committing fuch a crime, when the heinous wickedneffes are confidered, which the writers of the books of Kings and Chronicles inform us he practised, 2 Chron. xxxiii. 3-10. and 2 Kings, xxi. 2, 9.) and likewife that Ezekiel was flain by his fellow captives, though about this, Scripture is filent, while it acquaints us with Jeremiah's imprisonment, must the account Voltaire gives of the ground of their cruel ufage be the just one? certainly it does not follow, that it was hard to discern between the meffengers of God and impoftors, because those who bore that honourable character and office, were fometimes incarcerated and killed; for men often act in oppofition to the clearest evidence, nay to the general fense and perfuafion of their own minds about duty and intereft, through the impetuofity of wicked paffions, whence the poet makes Medea fay,

Video meliora, proboque,

• Deteriora fequor,'

Might not the Jews then deprive one prophet of his liberty, and two others of their life, amidst the most fatisfactory and convincing proofs of a commiffion from heaven, provoked by their free cenfure of their + Vid. Rocque's Discours, &c.

vices, and their plain denunciations of divine judgments for obftinacy in them? to deny they might, is in effect to maintain, that no divine teacher who brought fufficient credentials of his being fent from God, hath ever been abused, and put to death as a deceiver, which is as unreasonable, as it would be to affirm, that no excellent man hath ever been condemned by unjuft decrees, and executed as a malefactor unworthy to live, when there have been good arguments for the truth of the principles he held, and the obligation of the duties he inculcated; a pofition which is contradicted by the history of the world in different ages and countries, as might be fhewed by many examples.

Not to repeat what hath been already observed, about his mifreprefentation of Zedekiah's reply to Micaiah here, he adds in fupport of his affertion, that it was difficult to diftinguifh the falfe prophet from the true one, Ofeus, *chap. ix. declares that the prophets are fools, "ftultum prophetam, infanum virum fpiritualem." But how abfurd this quotation to prove the point? It rather establishes the contrary; for the fenfe is, that the nation of Ifrael would be constrained by the arrival and prevalence of their enemies to confefs, that these perfons who boafted authority from God, and endowment with his fpirit, while they promised them fafety in their idolatry and other crimes, were themfelves under the influ ence of a deluded imagination; wherefore, they had finned in hearkening to fuch affurances from them, in oppofition to that scheme of religion and fyftem of laws, which had been introduced among them

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