_Tempulum_, or contractedly _templum_, is a lesser grove, or temple properly speaking, built with pillars, as it were in imitation of a great grove. The patriarchal _temeni_ were call’d במיה _excelsa_, because generally made on high places. Hence the _greek_ word βωμος. By the _hebrew_ writers they were call’d _sacella montana_, mountain oratories. _Sacellum_, says _Festus_, is an open chapel, or without a roof. At length the word temple was apply’d to sacred structures built with a roof, in imitation of _Solomon_’s. And that was a durable and fixed one, an edifice of extraordinary grandeur and beauty, made in imitation of the _Mosaic_ tabernacle, which was a temple itinerant, the first idea of a cover’d one, properly. There were two reasons, among others, why it was cover’d and square in form. 1. By way of opposition to the heathen ones, practised in all the countries round about, which were imitations of the first patriarchal temples there, and now were converted to idolatrous purposes. 2. Because it was a type of Messiah, or _JEHOVAH_ who was to come in the flesh, therefore cover’d with skins. And that we may have the greatest authority in the case, our Saviour himself declares in the most publick manner, that the temple of _Jerusalem_ was symbolical of his body, as we find it recorded in the gospel, _John_ ii. 19. And the author of the _Hebrews_ largely deduces the necessity of making temples to be the pictures of heavenly things, and particularly of the mediator, _Heb._ ix. 11, 23. which can be done no otherwise than symbolically. And authors that describe the tabernacle and temple, insist upon this largely. Nor is it otherwise with us christians, in our cathedrals, designing our saviour’s body extended on the cross. But in the more ancient patriarchal times, before the great advent, they form’d them upon the geometrical figures or pictures, or manner of writing, by which they express’d the deity, and the mystical nature thereof. And this same design of making temples in some kind of imitation of the deity, as well as they could conceive it, was from the very beginning. The heathen authors retain some notion of this matter, when they tell us, of temples being made in the form and nature of the gods. _Porphyry_ in _Eusebius pr. ev._ III. 7. affirms the round figure to be dedicated to eternity, and that they anciently built temples round; but he did not understand the whole reason. And when they built temples properly, in imitation of the jewish, they made them often of a round form, and often open at top, to preserve as near as might be, the most ancient manner they had been acquainted with. Whence _Pausanias_ writes, the _Thracians_ us’d to build their temples round, and open at top.