a subtilty, rapine, violence, and cruelty; which were almost as general amongst heathens, as amongst wolves, dogs, leopards and other beasts of prey; who live by the death of their fellow-animals, and whose feet, instead of being harmless, as those of the Sheep or Ox, are by nature swift to shed blood. One of the earliest heathen Characters we find in the Scripture was Nimrod, the beginning of whose kingdom was Babel; and Babel, being called the mother of Harlots and abominations, was therefore the primitive Seat of Idolatry; whence the name is mystically applied to all the subsequent idolatry of the World. From these considerations, I think, it is clear enough that Nimrod, however truly he might be the founder of a new State and a new Policy, was at the same time the father of a new religion. And indeed, diversity of government, and diversity of religion, have in all ages been reciprocally productive of one another. The religion of this man and his fellows, being a false one, would bring with it a spirit of persecution toward all those who still adhered to the true worship. He is called a mighty hunter before the Lord; an expres a Rev. xvii. 5. sion worth attending to. For though men of warlike dispositions have always made it their practice to live rather by the chasing of men. and beasts, than by the more innocent and salutary labours of tillage; yet the hunting here spoken of must be supposed to include an act of irreligion, and imply that he was also a persecuting adversary to the religion of the true God. His name is taken from a word which signifies a leopard, the chief hunter of the desart, the most high-spirited, ferocious, and blood-thirsty of all wild beasts. There being such a natural affinity between a wild beast and the founder of an idolatrous kingdom, all the four heathen Empires are so represented in a Vision of the Prophet Dániel; in which the Babylonian being the first and most noble is signified by the Lion, and the Grecian by the Leopard: whence it is well observed as a rule by the learned Bishop Newton, in his Dissertations on the Prophecies, that "a beast," (meaning a wild beast) " in the "prophetic style, is a tyrannical idolatrous a And blood began its first and loudest Cry Dryden. empire," The skin of the Leopard is expressive of its evil disposition. The coat of a Lamb or Sheep, which is generally pure and white, corresponds with the meekness and innocence of its temper; and a soul purged of its Sin is compared to the whiteness of wool; on which account Christ, who was without sin, was signified in the Passover by a Lamb without spot: but the skin of this furious animal is all over spotted with stains like those of iniquity: whence it is asked, with an allusion to the incorrigible state of a sinner, Can the Leopard change his spots? But the ferocity of wild beasts doth certainly correspond to that spirit of hatred, whereby the zealots for Idolatry were always stirred up to acts of violence against the servants of the true God, and the preachers of righteousness. The Hebrews experienced the malignity of this zeal in Egypt, Babylon, and among the neighbouring nations of Idolaters. But it broke out with greater fury than ever, when the empire of Satan was shaken from its foundations, and the deformity of Polytheism was exposed to the world by the light that was held up by the inspired Apostles. By the 2 Vol. iii. p. 220. b Jer. xiii. 23. per permission of God, it was then "given to the "beast to make war with the saints and to "overcome them." Then did St. Paul fight with beasts at Ephesus; with the noisy and senseless votaries of the Ephesian Diana, who contended for their lying superstition with all the violence and fury of wild beasts: and indeed all, who undertook to publish the truth, had the barbarity of irrational unbelievers to encounter; such as are called by Ignatius θηρια ανθρωπομορφα, beasts in the shape of men. For however some of the heathens might be refined by a knowledge of the belles lettres, and the practice of the polite arts; they were altogether savage in their zeal against the preachers and professors of the Christian Faith. Ten dreadful persecutions under the Roman Emperors were scarcely sufficient to satisfy this heathen thirst of blood. It was as natural for them to torture a Christian, as for a Lion to tear a lamb in pieces. The error of their principles confirmed them in these practices: for, though the cruelty of persecution was executed by Magistrates and Soldiers, it was dictated and encouraged by Philosophers; who seldom failed to cast oil into a Rev. xiii. 1—7. the the flames of Persecution. To see themselves out-argued, out-lived, and exploded, by a sect sprung from those Jews, whose religion and manners they had ever affected to treat. with consummate disdain: this was a provocation never to be endured by men of unmortified Spirits, who had placed all their pride and pleasure in a pompous shew of superior Reason and Eloquence. XIX. Let us now compare these different animals with respect to their several ways of life for these, in the clean and unclean, are as opposite as their dispositions. Sheep, oxen, goats, deer, &c. are formed into societies; they herd peaceably together, and are subjectto the laws of government; as well for their own advantage, as for the service of man: for the sheep escapes the merciless wolf by living in subjection to the shepherd. But beasts of prey go about by themselves in forests and desarts, incapable of entering into any friendly communion. They are so many single tyrants, genuine independents, who acknowledge no superior, but fight their way through the world, and live in a state of hostility with the whole creation. If they ever unite into gangs it is with the spirit of thieves and murderers, who are banded together only VOL. III. E that |