people with greater security. And, like other thieves, they are all fond of darkness. When the Sun goes down, the Lion stalks forth from his den: at which time the sheep, under the direction of the shepherd, are retiring to their fold. And when the cattle are climbing up the mountains to their pasture, to meet the rising of the sun, the tyrants of the night are warned back to their hiding-places. XX. All those were unclean among the inhabitants of the waters, which were without fins and scales. This exception does not only exclude shell-fish, and the monsters of the deep, but particularly those of the cel or snake kind, which lie grovelling at the bottom, and discover the same impure inclination with the swine. These fish are disturbed by thunder and storms, and swim about when the waters are thick and turbulent: but as soon as the elements are at rest again, they presently slide down to their native mud. Thus the mind, when polluted with impiety and unbelief, cannot be raised to the contemplation of truth, unless it is alarmed by the expectation of divine judgment; on which occasion the greatest reprobates are most violently moved, hurrying themselves as fast as they can into a state of repentance. But the effect abides no longer than the cause; and so their terrors and their penitence vanish together. When there was thunder and hail in the land of Egypt, and fire ran along upon the ground, even Pharaoh could recollect himself, and say—I have sinned this time; the Lord is righteous, and I and my people are wicked-But when he saw that the rain, and the hail, and the thunders were ceased, he sinned yet more and hardened his heart, he and his servants. Such is the issue of that involuntary repentance, which has no principle to support it. The body, which rises of itself toward the face of the stream, may continue aloft: but that which is raised only by violence, will sink the deeper for its fall. XXI. The prohibited Fowls are Eagles, Vultures, Hawks, Cormorants, Ravens, and such like, which persecute and devour those of a more gentle nature; or feed uncleanly upon filth and dead carcases; whose young ones also suck up blood, and where the slain are, there are they. Such were the heathens, whom St. Paul hath described to us* as cruel and unmerciful, full of envy, murder, and debate, given up to the vilest passions, and all the uncleanness of dead works. For the nature of man, unrefined by an infused sense of the true God, and the true Religion, is no more of fended with evil than a crow with carrion; but can feed upon it, and delight in it. Yea and Reason itself (if the depravation of Reason deserves that name) will plead for it as the greater good: and such Rea son can never be expected to approve of the Christian Purity. The Apostle hath likewise observed, that the heathens were without natural affection. Fathers have murdered their children; the nearest relations and the dearest friends have destroyed one another, on the ground of some enthusiastic notions of honour and liberty. Besides the superstitious practice of offering their sons and their daughters to Moloch and other diabolical deities, some of them had a custom of exposing such new-born infants as they did not approve of, or thought they should not be able to support, to perish in the woods with hunger, or be devoured by wild beasts: and the same practice is now tolerated among the Idolaters of China. This Rom. i. 28, &c. ↑ Jesuits Travels, vol. i. p. 85. Edit. ii. of Lockman's Translation. is like the Ostrich; a foolish bird, which has wings without being able to raise itself from the Earth, and is void of that sogyn, that instinctive tenderness, which other creatures feel for their offspring,-which leaveth her eggs in the earth, and warmeth them in the dust, and forgetteth that the foot may crush them, or that the wild beast may break them. She is hardened against her young ones as though they were not hers: her labour is in vain without fear; because God hath deprived her of wisdom, neither hath he imparted to her understanding* XXII. That infidelity and ignorance, into which the heathens had been betrayed by a vain aspiring after wisdom, was the principal source of all the foregoing enormities. They did not like to retain God in their knowledge-but became vain in their ima ginations, and their foolish heart was darkened. In this respect they were allied to the tribe of Owls and Bats, and other birds of night, all of which the law pronounced to be unclean. In the owl we have a grand image of the Sceptic, who loves darkness rather than light, and is more proud of his artificial ignorance than any man ought to be of the most useful knowledge: who could never find truth, because he never loved it; as the owl is offended with that glory which the Sun diffuses over the natural Creation. As the day has no charms for the owl, Revelation hath nothing wise or wonderful with the unbelieving Philosopher; who brings with him to the word of God. all that prejudice with which the owl flies out into the Sun-shine. Yet he has his admirers; as the hooting of one owl is music in the ears of another. This emblematical bird, when exposed to the Sun against his will, lets down before his sight an inner eyelid or * Job xxxix. 14, &c. membrane, which in the owl is very conspicuous; as the infidel puts a veil over his heart to intercept and weaken the rays of truth. Some birds respect the light to a degree of Adoration. The cock proclaims the approach of it every morning; on which account his voice was the most proper to remind St. Peter of that true light from which he had apostatized. But the owl has a natural aversion to the Light: and if he breaks through his ordinary rules so far as to make his appearance in the day-time, he is pursued and reprimanded by other birds as a monster who is a disgrace to their kind; at least as one who has no business with the Sun. When Sceptics meddle with the Scripture, they are just as much out of their element: and to follow their objections, with the hope of recovering them to a confession of the Truth, is like arguing the case seriously with an owl, with the hope of persuading him to admire the day-light. But here it may be proper to observe, that our zeal on such occasions ought never to exceed the bounds of mercy and decency. The birds which express their indignation against the owl never kill him, being of those kinds which are unarmed and inoffensive in their nature. So is it not required that we should pelt and stone an infidel to death for the wickedness of his fally; but should all agree in giving public notice of him, and shewing the world what he is*. For internal realities * A little piece is just now brought to my hands entitled Voltaire in the Shades, or Dialogues on the Deistical Controversy. Here the wild opinions of Voltaire, Rousseau, and some other superior wits, who make a figure in modern Pyrrhonism, are compared and ridiculed with some touches of original humour, by an Author who has taken some pains in pursuing their absurdities and contradictions: and appears to be as well acquainted with ancient as modern Infidelity. do not always agree with external appearances. The outward form of the owl seems to promise a great degree of gravity and wisdom, while its principles and manners are opposite to the common sense of other birds, and its office in the creation reduces it to the rank of a common mouse-trap. So the Philosophers it represented made a pompous display of Reason and Learning, all of which, so far as they applied it to Divinity, was no better than solemn ignorance and folly: professing themselves to be wise they became fools; and by an unaccountable fatality chose this very bird as the Emblem of their wisdom; which was accordingly held in great veneration at Athens, the principal seat of heathen Learning, as the Symbol of Minerva, the tutelar Goddess of that City. The voice of the owl is, so far from being agreeable to the Ear, that Superstition hath regarded it as an omen of death or some other dismal calamity*: and surely it is no improper counterpart to those howlings and lamentations for the dead, which were uttered by heathens who had no hope of a resurrection. XXIII. Fowls that creep, going upon all four, were to be held in abomination. Such is the Bat: and though this prohibition may seem superfluous, at least in the Letter of it, the Bat being an odious creature; yet we are assured, they are eaten by the people of Java †, and likewise in the Island of St. Johnt. A modern systematical Naturalist describes the bat to us, by observing that it has six fore-teeth in the Hine exaudiri voces, & verba vocantis Virg. Æn. iv. 460. + Piso. Hist. Nat. 290, up |