points, if even these representations of them, different and distorted in some respects, as they may appear, were to have a foundation on which to rest. The state of the text of the oracles at present, renders it almost impossible to produce a passage from them, which does not labour under more or less of corruption. The circumstance too, that possibly the whole of the eight books now extant, might not be the composition of the same author; that they might not all have been published exactly at the same time; that interpolations may have been made in them, from time to time, afterwards; in particular, that the order of the books may have been transposed, and the component parts of the different books, have got much broken and confused; ought to render it nothing surprising that the transitions from one of their subjects to another, are often sudden and abrupt; that many hiatuses in the sense occur in some places, and many repetitions in others; and that taken as a whole, these oracles of the present day, like the leaves of the Sibyll in ancient times, once discomposed and disarranged, have all the appearance of a very ill-connected and ill-assorted composition. Yet notwithstanding these disadvantages, they are found to contain a variety of allusions, which even in their most corrupt and mutilated state, are sufficiently intelligible; and even in that state, are competent to bear witness to the fact of the existence and reception of the millenary doctrines, or of others intimately connected with the millenary, in the time of their authors. Some of these passages, it may be worth our while to produce, in proof and illustration of this assertion. First, lib. iii. p. 473. line 1, sqqe. Ὁππότε καὶ τοῦτο προλάβῃ τέλος f, αἴσιμον ἦμαρ οὐ πόλεμός τ', οὐδ ̓ αὖ γε κατὰ χθονὸς αὐχμὸς ἔτ ̓ ἔσται· καὶ βασιλεὺς βασιλῆϊ φίλος μέχρι τέρματος ἔσται e The passages about to be cited, are all taken from the text of Gallæus' edition of the Oracles; excepting only the typographical errors which there occur, and some differences in the pointing. As to conjectural emendations of such and such parts, more corrupt than others in the original, they will be specified in the margin in each instance; and though none of these emendations will be proposed without reasons of a critical nature, whereby to support them, if necessary, the reader will remember that they are conjectural, after all. f Lege Οππότε κεν καὶ τοῦτο λάβῃ τέλος. Cf. lib. iii. 346. 1. 9 : 358. 1. 3 : 447. 1. 2 : also Lactantius, vii. 20. 8 Lege ἀγαθοῦ. h Lege Μεγάλοιο κατ' αρχήν, and Cf. i. 185. 1. 10 : iii. 470. 1. 2 : where Μεγάλοιο is similarly used for τοῦ Μεγάλου, without the article. Or read the whole line, ἥξει ἐπ' ἀνθρώπους, ἀγαθοῦ μεγάλοιο καταρχή, or, ἄξει ἐπ ̓ ἀνθρώπους ἀγαθοῦ μεγάλοιο καταρχήν. For the use of this word καταρχή, Cf. iii. 350. 7. i Leg. σίτου τ'. k Lege ἐκ δ' ἀρνῶν ἄρνας τ'. Lege οὐ πόλεμος δ ̓, οὐδ ̓ αὖτε. m Lege κακοῤῥέκτειρα. n The parts between the brackets are manifestly corrupt, and as they stand almost unintelligible. As far as I can divine the meaning of the writer, I apprehend he was going to say, that καὶ τότε δ ̓ ἐξεγερεῖ βασιλήϊον εἰς αἰῶνας πάντας ἐπ ̓ ἀνθρώπους, ἅγιον νόμον ὁππότ ̓ ἔδωκεν (εὔβατα δὴ καὶ εύπλοα ") ἔσσεται ἤμασι κείνοις. X πᾶσα γὰρ εἰρήνη * ἀγαθῶν ἐπὶ γαῖαν ἱκνεῖται. "God would appoint a common law both for men, in all the “ earth, and for the inhabitants of heaven ;” which would be but another way of representing earth and heaven as in the most perfect communion with each other. Thus, perhaps, the passage stood originally, in part, κοινόν τε νόμον κατὰ γαῖαν ἅπασαν ἀνθρώποις τελέσει, καὶ ἐν οὐρανῷ ἀστερόεντι though as to the remainder, how it might have stood it is not easy to conjecture. A line or more is probably wanting. Legendum forsan ; τοῖς πᾶσαν ὑπέσχετο γαῖαν ἀνοίσειν καὶ κόσμον δὲ πέλας μακάρων. P Corrige, ἀθάνατον δ' οι ἀθανάτων. Mallem, καὶ βίον ἀθανάτων αἰώνιον, εὐφροσύνην τε. 4 Lege, οίκον. r Lege, ἀλλ ̓ ὃν ἔδωκε θεὸς πιστοῖς ἀνδράσσι γε ραίρειν. s Corrige, καλέσουσι. dum forsan, εὔβατα κεὔπλοα δὴ πάντ'. t Supple καί. • Probably corrupt : though ἱκνεῖται occurs again, in the sense of the future, iii. 388. 3. VOL. V. PART II. z Forsan, αὐτοὶ γὰρ κριταί εἰσι βροτῶν. N (αὕτη γὰρ μεγάλοιο θεοῦ κρίσις ἔσσεται ἀρχή.) εὐφράνθητι κόρη, καὶ ἀγάλλεο· σοὶ γὰρ ἔδωκεν εὐφροσύνην αἰῶνος, ὃς οὐρανὸν ἔκτισε καὶ γῆν· ἐν σοὶ δ ̓ οἰκήσει, σοὶ δ ̓ ἔσσεται ἀθάνατον φῶς. ἐν δὲ λύκοι τε καὶ ἄρνες ἐν οὔρεσιν ἄμμις ὁ ἔδονται χόρτον, παρδάλιές τ' ἐρίφοις ἅμα βοσκήσονται, ἄρκτοι σὺν μόσχοις νομάδες ° αὐλισθήσονται, σαρκοβόρος τε λέων ἄχυρον φάγεται ὁ ἐπὶ φάτνης ὡς βοῦς· καὶ παῖδες μάλα νήπιοι ἐν δεσμοῖσιν ε ἄξουσιν· (πηρὸν γὰρ ἐπὶ χθονὶ θῆρα πτοήσει ξ,)— (καὶ βρεφέεσσι δράκοντες ἅμα σφίσι κοιμήσονται 5,) κοὐκ ἀδικήσουσιν χεὶρ γὰρ θεοῦ ἔσσετ ̓ ἐπ ̓ αὐτούς. The two most significant passages in the above description are first, where it is said, "there should “ be no other house, or temple of God, unto men, " even for posterity to hear of, only that which God “ had given, for faithful men to honour, 66 a Leg. αὕτη γὰρ μεγάλοιο θεοῦ κρίσεως ἔσετ ̓ ἀρχή. The Regius Codex of Gallæus here has κρίσεως, instead of κρίσις: and it is very easy to correct ἔσσεται by ἔσετ ̓. b Leg. ἄμμιγ'. Cf. iii. 349. 1. 2. and vide the various readings, Lact. vii. 24. ο νομάδες τ'. Perhaps, σὺν μόσχοις δ ̓ ἄρκτοι νομάδες γ ̓ αὐλισθήσονται. ὰ φά d γεταί γ'. ε ἐν δεσμοῖς μιν. 1 πρηὺν γὰρ ἐπὶ χθονὶ θῆρα ποιήσει. Sc. ὁ θεός: Cf. iv. 529. 7 : though at this point a line is probably wanting in the text. 8 Lege, καν βρεφέεσσι δράκοντες ἀμήτροσι κοιμήσονται—a correc tion obtained from Lactantius, lib. vii. 24. 670. though it might stand κἂν βρεφέεσσι δράκοντες, ἅμα σφίσι κοιμήσονται. h In the original this verse stands, ἀλλ ̓ ὃν ἔδωκε θεὸς πιστὸν ἄνδρα γεραίρειν : but Lactantius has the same or a similar verse, Div. Institut. lib. iv. cap. 6. 325. αὐτὸν ἔδωκε θεὸς πιστοῖς ἀνδράσσι γεραίρειν, whence it is easy to correct the above, ἀλλ ̓ ὃν ἔδωκε θεὸς πιστοῖς ἀνδράσσι γεραίρειν. Vide the note of Opsopæus, in loc. υἱὸν γὰρ καλέουσι βροτοὶ μεγάλοιο θεοίο, in which line, if we read Kaλéσovo, the sense will be, "for men shall call it (that is the house in question) "the Son of the great God." Secondly, where it is said that "the prophets of the great God, "should take away the sword, for that they them"selves were both judges of men, and righteous "kings." The first of these is a description of the Son of God, in his incarnate capacity, residing among meni; and the second, of the saints as such, reigning along with him. The whole passage is consequently to be understood of the millenary times; and not in a figurative, but in a literal sense: and even as so understood, it contains nothing to which an orthodox millenarian of primitive antiquity, would in all probability have objected. The above description, in fact, might have been fetched further back, from page 461, of the same book, line 8: ἀλλὰ πάλιν βασιλῆες ἐθνῶν ἐπὶ τῆνδέ τε γαῖαν down to page 465, line 1: πίεται δέ τε γαῖα καὶ αὐτὴ αἵματος ὀλλυμένων, κορέσονται θηρία σαρκών : the purport of all this being to predict and to represent the great antichristian contest, which the millenarian expects to precede the establishment of the millenary kingdom; the scene of the contest, as it is i The same kind of allusion to the residence of the Son of God among mankind, in the capacity of the true incarnate temple of the Divinity, the vaòs evσapkos, occurs in other parts of these Oracles. See lib. v. 627. lines 2, 3. |