grace, baptism, and other sacraments of salvation, are perfectly revealed in all languages;--for every language is alike, so that there be the same piety; neither is there any other name in heaven or on earth, by which we can be saved, but only the name of Jesus. Therefore the Jews, most skilful in divine names, after the coming of Christ, were able to do nothing, in comparison of their forefathers:--the Cabala of the Jews, therefore, is nothing else, but a most pernicious superstition, the which by collecting, dividing, and changing several names, words, and letters, dispersed up and down in the bible, at their own good will and pleasure, and making one thing out of another, they dissolve the members of truth, raising up sentences, inductions, and parables of their own, apply thereto the oracles of divine scripture to them, defaming the scriptures, and affirming their fragments to consist of them, blaspheme the word of God by their wrested suppositions of words, syllables, letters and numbers; endeavouring to prop up their villainous inventions, by arguments drawn from their own delusions." FOOTNOTES: [2] Antonio de Haen, S.C.R.A. Majestate a consiliis anticis, et Archiatri, medicinae in alma et antiquissimo universitate professoris primarij, plurium eruditorium societatem socii, de magia liber. 8vo. Vienna. [3] Many significations have been attached to the word miracle, both by the ancients and moderns. With us a miracle is the suspension or violation of the laws of nature; and a miracle, which can be explained upon physical principles, ceases to be such. Whatever surpassed their comprehension was regarded by the ancients as a miracle, and every extraordinary degree of information attained by an individual, as well as any unlooked-for occurrence, was referred to some peculiar interposition of the deity. Hence among the ancients, the followers of different divinities, far from denying the miracles performed by their opponents, admitted their reality, but endeavoured to surpass them; and thus in the "life of Zoroaster," we find that able innovator frequently entering the lists with hostile enchanters, admitting but exceeding the wonderful works they performed; and thus also when the thirst of power, or of distinction, divided the sacerdotal colleges, similar trials of skill would ensue, the successful combatant being considered to derive his knowledge from the more powerful god. That the science on which each party depended was derived from experimental physics, may be proved. 1. by the conduct of the Thaumaturgists, or wonder-workers: 2. from what they themselves had said concerning magic; the genii invoked by the magicians, sometimes denoting physical or chemical agents employed, sometimes men who cultivated the science. [4] All the three orders of Magi enumerated by Porphyry, abstained from wine and women, and the first of these orders from animal food. [5] Vol. ii. p. 287. [6] See Tobit. chap. viii. v. 2 and 2.