the Providence of God hath mercifully ordained, as well by the present condition of the natural Creation itself, as by the appointment of Revelation, that his bodily life should be sustained in a like manner: thereby to remind us every day (though few are wise us`every enough to accept and apply the admonition) that the life of man is in a state of forfeiture; and that there can be neither the preservation of life, nor the remission of Sin, without the shedding of innocent blood. Thus doth the whole world conspire in offering up a daily sacrifice, and attesting the truth of the Christian doctrine, with the same insensibility that Caiaphas uttered a similar prophecy in its favour-It is necessary that one man should die, that the whole people perish not.

XV. Fish and Fowls are distinguished upon the same moral principles of good and evil as the quadrupedes; though not with the same. physical marks of distinction. Concerning the Fish, this rule was given in the Lawwhatsoever hath fins and scales in the waters, in the Seas, and in the Rivers, them shall ye eat. The progressive motion of fish is owing to the tail: for so may a boat be driven forward by the agitation of a single oar from the The fins serve to keep the fish up

stern.

right, and support it while it is stationary in any part of the water. The centre of gravity being above the middle region of the body, (the reverse of which is the case with birds) a fish floats unnaturally with its back downwards, when the fins are taken off. Their scales, which are very hard, bright, and radiated, compose a sort of armour, which serves for their defence, and adds at the same time an appearance of light and purity.

The fish thus distinguished differ as much in their way of life from the smooth and slimy inhabitants of the waters, as in their colour and lineaments: for such fish are generally disposed to raise themselves from the bottom, and swim about with agility in the superior regions of the water; while the Eel buries itself in the mire, and all the crustaceous tribes lie scrabbling upon the ground. As for the testaceous, an eminent Naturalist hath formed a new System, wherein they are distinguished from all other fish under the denomination of Worms: which, though somewhat bold, is not altogether unnatural, as their bodies are inarticulate, and without the common organs of sense.

See Borrelli, P. i. ccxiii. ccxiv. b Linnæus.

The

The moral of all this is as plain as before; the whole being a figurative monition, that a sordid and groveling way of life was to be abhorred by the Servants of God; whose minds being under the direction of divine truth and wisdom, their affections were to be raised from vice to virtue, from pollution to purity, from things temporal to things eternal.

XVI. Among the Fowls, those were accounted clean, which are gentle in their nature, lofty in their flight, and musical in their voices; which last, I think, is not the qualification of any one bird of prey. The birds being distinguished, not by an approbation of the good and innocent, but by an exception of the bad, the observations I have to make on this part of the animal Creation must be reserved till we come to consider the other part of the subject.

XVII. I can see no moral reason for the admission of the locust, and some other insects into the society of clean animals: yet the Septuagint seem to have apprehended such a thing, by their putting the word opioμaxnr for what we translate a beetle; and Pliny also speaks of it as the property of some locusts to destroy serpents. However, I cannot but

think it strange, that there should have been so much unnecessary criticism (and some of it even ridiculous) amongst Divines, concerning the food of John the Baptist; when the locust is so particularly specified as a kind of food allowed to those who were under the Law and there is not the least reason to suspect that the word is improperly rendered by the Greek Translators. Diodorus Siculus speaks of a people who were called angıdopayos from their feeding upon locusts; and Pliny tells us of certain Ethiopians, who lived only upon locusts, dried and salted, so that they were reserved for food throughout the whole course of the year. And in his Chapter of Locusts,, he adds, that the Parthians accounted them delicate meat. Another ancient Writer, who composed a treatise on the Red Sea, speaking of the Acridophagi, or locust-eaters of that region, observes, that their habit of body was thin and meagre.

Whence we have an unexceptionable reason, why this diet was preferred by the Baptist, as being most agreeable to that abstracted

• Pars quædam Ethiopum locustis tantum vivit, fumo & sale duratis in annua alimenta. Lib. vi. 30.

Parthis et hæ in cibo.

grate.

Lib. ii. 29.

and

and austere condition of life, which he had taken upon him in the wilderness. Hasselquist, a Swedish disciple of Linnæus, who travelled about twenty years ago into Egypt and Palæstine, solely with a view to natural History, puts this matter out of doubt. Speaking of the locusts of John the Baptist—“ They

(says he) who deny insects to have been "the food of this holy man, urge, that this "insect is an unnatural sort of food-but "roasted locusts are at this time eaten by "the Arabians I was once speaking to a judicious Greek Priest about this affair

"he answered, their Church had never taken "this food to be any other than what is expressed in the Testament, nor did he know any thing to contradict it"."

XVIII. We are now to review that other class of animals, from all which the Hebrews were commanded to abstain: and under this prohibition, as hath been already observed, they were admonished, in a figurative way, to avoid the company and the manners of the idolatrous Gentiles.

Accordingly we find amongst these creatures all the ill qualities of ignorance, uncleanness,

2

Hasselquist's Voy. and Trav. in the Levant, p. 230.

subtilty,