The burnung ulceration with which the great adversary of man afflicted the venerable patriarch Job (ii. 7.), is generally understood to be the elephantiasis or leprosy of the Arabians; and derives its name from its rendering the skin of the patient, like that of an elephant, scabrous and dark coloured, and furrowed all over with tubercles, loathsome alike to the individual and to the spectators. The Mosaic statutes respecting leprosy are recorded in Lev. xiii. and xiv. Numb. v. 1-4. and Deut. xxiv. 8, 9. They are in substance as follows:

1. The suspected person was to be inspected by a priest, both as acting in a judicial capacity, and as being skilled in medicine. The signs of the disease, which are circumstantially pointed out in the statute itself, accord with those which have been noticed by modern physicians. If, on the first inspection, there remained any doubt as to the spot being really a symptom of leprosy, the suspected person was shut up for seven days, in order that it might be ascertained, whether it spread, disappeared, or remained as it was; and this confinement might be repeated. During this time, it is probable that means were used to remove the spot. If in the mean time it spread, or continued as it was, without becoming paler, it excited a strong suspicion of real leprosy, and the person inspected was declared unclean. If it disappeared, and after his liberation became again manifest, a fresh inspection took place.

2. The unclean were separated from the rest of the people. So early as the second year of the Exodus, lepers were obliged to reside without the camp (Numb. v. 1-4.): and so strictly was this law enforced, that the sister of Moses himself becoming leprous, was expelled from it. (Numb. xii. 14-16.) When the Israelites came into their own land, and lived in cities, the spirit of the law thus far operated, that lepers were obliged to reside in a separate place, which was called (on) BETH CHOPHSCHITH, or the house of uncleanness; and from this seclusion, not even kings, when they became leprous, were exempted. (2 Kings xv. 5.) As, however, a leper cannot always be within doors,' and may, consequently, sometimes meet clean persons, he was obliged, in the first place, to make himself known by his dress, and to go about with torn clothes, a bare head, and his chin covered; and, in the next place, when any one came too near him, to cry out that he was Unclean. (Numb. xiii. 45, 46.)

3. Although a leper, merely meeting and touching a person, could not have immediately infected him; yet, as such a rencontre and touch would have rendered him Levitically unclean, in order to prevent leprosy from spreading, in consequence of close communication, it was an established rule to consider a leprous person as likewise unclean in a Levitical or civil sense; and, consequently,

1 In the East, lepers are not at this day absolutely interdicted from going abroad; for they are not considered as pestilential.-Niebuhr says (p. 136.), "I might have seen numbers of them; but whenever I observed any of them meeting me in the streets. I deemed it prudent to avoid them."

whoever touched him, became also unclean; not indeed medically or physically so, that is, infected by one single touch,-but still unclean in a civil sense.

4. On the other hand, however, for the benefit of those found clean, the law itself specified those who were to be pronounced free from the disorder: and such persons were then clear of all reproach, until they again fell under accusation from manifest symptoms of infection.

The man who, on the first inspection, was found clean, or in whom the supposed symptoms of leprosy disappeared during confinement, was declared clean only in the latter case, he was obliged to have his clothes washed. If, again, he had actually had the disorder, and got rid of it, the law required him to make certain offerings, in the course of which he was pronounced clean.

5. The leprous person was to use every effort in his power to be healed; and therefore was strictly to follow the directions of the priests. This, Michaelis is of opinion, may fairly be inferred from Deut. xxiv.

6. When healed of his leprosy, the person was to go and show himself to the priests, that he might be declared clean, and offer the sacrifice enjoined in that case; and when purified, that he might be again admitted into civil society. (Matt. viii. 4. Levit. xiv. 11-32.)

7. Lastly, As this disease was so offensive to the Israelites, God commanded them to use frequent ablutions, and prohibited them from eating swine's flesh and other articles of animal food that had a tendency to produce this disease.

The peculiar lustrations, which a person who had been healed of a leprosy was to undergo, are detailed in Levit. xiv.

Besides the leprosy of the person, Moses mentions two other species of leprosy viz. of clothes and of houses, which are in a great measure unknown in Europe.

2. The Leprosy of Clothes is described in Levit. xiii. 47-59. as consisting of green or reddish spots, which remain in spite of washing and still spread; so that the cloth becomes bald or bare, sometimes on one side, and sometimes on the other. From the information which Michaelis received from a woollen manufacturer, he supposes this disease to arise in woollen cloth, from the use of the wool of sheep that have died of disease; which, when worn next the skin (as in the East), is very apt to produce vermin. With respect to leather and linen, he could obtain no information.

Clothes suspected to be thus tainted, were to be inspected by the priest; if they were found to be corroded by the leprosy, they were to be burnt; but if, after being washed, the plague was found to have departed from them, they were to be pronounced clean.

3. The House-Leprosy is said in Levit. xiv. 33-37. to consist of greenish or reddish spots or dimples, that appear on the walls, and continually spread wider and wider. Michaelis considers it to be the same as the saltpetre, which sometimes attacks and corrodes houses that stand in damp situations. Although in Europe unat

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tended with any injury to health, in Palestine it might be hurtful : so that the Mosaic regulations in this respect are both wise and provident.

When a house was suspected to be thus tainted, the priest was to examine it, and ordered it to be shut up seven days. If he found that the plague or signs of the plague had not spread, he commanded it to be shut up seven days more. On the thirteenth day he revisited it; and if he found the infected place dim, or gone away, he took out that part of the wall, carried it out to an unclean place, mended the wall, and caused the whole house to be newly plastered. It was then shut up a third seven days; he once more inspected it on the nineteenth day; and if he found that the plague had broken out anew, he ordered the house to be pulled down. If on the other hand it was pronounced to be clean, and offering was made on the occasion; in order that every one might certainly know that it was not infected, and the public might be freed from all apprehensions on

that account.

V. Various other legal impurities are enumerated in Levit. xii. 1—8. and xv., which it is not necessary to detail. To which we may add, that all human corpses and the carcasses of beasts that died in any other way than by the knife, were regarded as unclean. Whoever touched the former, or went into the tent or apartment (after the Israelites had houses), where a corpse lay, was unclean for seven days; and whoever touched a dead body, or even a human bone, or a grave in the fields, was unclean for the same period. The body of a clean beast that fell not by the knife, but died in any other way, defiled the person who touched it, until the evening (Levit. xi. 39.); and the carcasses of unclean beasts, by whatever means they died, did the same. (Levit. v. 2. xi. 8. 11. 24, 25. 27, 28. 31. Deut. xiv. 8.) The consequence of this law was, that the carcasses of beasts were not suffered to remain above ground, but were put into the earth, that passengers might not be in danger of pollution from them.

By these wise enactments, the spreading of contagious diseases would be effectually prevented, which in hot climates are peculiarly rapid and fatal. For the same reason also, Michaelis is of opinion, that Moses commanded the Israelites to break earthen vessels, which were liable to be defiled by being left uncovered in a tent or apartment where a person died, or a corpse lay (Numb. xix. 15.), or by an unclean beast falling into them (Levit. xi. 33.), or by the touch of a diseased person. (Levit. xv. 12.)1

Such are the Mosaic statutes concerning purifications and impurities. Profane scoffers, who deride those things, the reason and propriety of which they will not take the trouble to investigate, have ridiculed them as too minute, especially those respecting the different species of leprosy, and as unworthy to be made part of

1 Schulzii Archæologia Hebraica, pp. 303–310. Michaelis's Commentaries, vol. iii. pp. 254-335.

a divine law. But every well regulated mind surely must discern in them both the goodness and wisdom of Jehovah towards his chosen people, in giving them precepts which were calculated not only to preserve their health and regulate their morals, but also to accustom them to obedience to his will in every respect. The leprosy has ever been considered as a lively emblem of that moral taint or "corruption of the nature of every man that naturally is engendered of the offspring of Adam;" as the sacrifices, which were to be offered by the healed leper, prefigured that spotless Lamb of God that taketh away the sin of the world.

1 Article IX, of the Confession of the Anglican Church.

CHAPTER VI.

ON THE CORRUPTIONS OF RELIGION BY THE JEWS.

SECTION I.

ON THE IDOLATRY OF THE JEWS.

I. Origin and Progress of Idolatry.-II. Sketch of its History among the Israelites and Jews.-III. Idols worshipped by the Israelites alone. -IV. Idols of the Ammonites, worshipped by the Israelites.-V. Idols of the Canaanites or Syrians.-VI. Phænician Idols.-VII. Idols worshipped in Samaria during the captivity.-Hieroglyphic Stones, why prohibited to the Jews.-VIII. Idols of the Greeks and Romans mentioned in the New Testament.-IX. Allusions in the Scriptures to the idolatrous worship of the heathen nations.-Different kinds of divination.

I. IDOLATRY is the superstitious worship of idols or false gods. From Gen. vi. 5. compared with Rom. i. 23. there is every reason to believe that it was practised before the flood; and this conjecture is confirmed by the apostle Jude (ver. 4.), who describing the character of certain men in his days that denied the only Lord God, adds, in the eleventh verse of his epistle, Woe unto them, for they are gone into the way of Cain; whence it may be inferred that Cain and his descendants were the first who threw off the sense of a God, and worshipped the creature instead of the Creator. "That the worship of the one true God was the religion of Noah and his posterity before the dispersion of mankind, admits not a doubt. In this primitive and patriarchal religion, as incidentally disclosed by Moses, we discover the leading characters of that worship which was afterwards restored and guarded by the Jewish institutions; and which was calculated to preserve the knowledge of God, as the Creator of the world, by the observance of the sabbath; as well as to inculcate the heinousness of sin, and typify the death of Christ, by the use of sacrifice. These simple ceremonies, together with the observance of the great rules of morality, and the prohibition of blood, in order to excite a stronger abhorrence against shedding the blood of one another, formed the entire exterior of the religion of Noah. The higher we are able to trace the history of every antient nation, and the nearer we approach the sources of eastern tradition, the more plain traces do we discover of this pure and simple worship; in which every father of a family acted as its priest, and assembled his progeny round the rustic altar of earth, to join in the sacrifice and the prayers he offered to the Creator and Governor of the world; to deprecate his wrath, and implore his blessing. But the corrupt imaginations of men's hearts would not permit them to rest satisfied with a religion so pure and a