is to be punished with death, Deut. xix. | free them from all obscurity. To defend 11, 12. 1 Kings, ii. 28, 29. It is re-religion in this manner, is to expose it to markable that God often gives up mur- contempt. The following maxim points derers to the terrors of a guilty con- out the proper way of defence, by which science, Gen. iv. 13, 15, 23, 24. Such both extremes are avoided. Where are followed with many instances of the truth of a doctrine depends not on divine vengeance, 2 Sam. xii. 9, 10; the evidence of the things themselves, their lives are often shortened, Psalm, but on the authority of him who reveals lv. 23; and judgments of their sin are it, there the only way to prove the docoftentimes transmitted to posterity, Gen. trine to be true is to prove the testimony xlix. 7. 2 Sam. xxi. 1. of him that revealed to be infallible." Dr. South observes, that the myterious. the credenda, or matters of our faith, is most subservient to the great and im. portant ends of religion, and that upon these accounts: First, because religion in the prime institution of it was de MUSSELMAN, or MUSYLMAN, a titie by which the Mahometans dis-ness of those parts of the Gospel called tinguish themselves; signifying in the Turkish language "true believer, or orthodox." There are two kinds of Musselmen very averse to each other; the one called Sonnites, and the other Shiites. The Sonnites follow the inter-signed to make impressions of awe and pretation of the Alcoran given by Omar; the Shiites are the followers of Ali The subjects of the king of Persia are Shiites, and those of the grand seignior || Sonnites. See MAHOMETANS. reverential fear upon men's minds.-2. To humble the pride and haughtiness of man's reason --3. To engage us in a closer and more diligent search into them.-4. That the full and entire knowledge of divine things may be one principal part of our felicity hereafter. Robinson's Claude, vol. i. p. 118, 119, 304, 305; Campbell's Preliminary Dissertation to the Gospel, vol. i. p. 383; Stilling fleet's Origines Sacrde, vol. ii c. 8; Ridgley's Div. qu. 11; Calmet's Dict. Cruden's Concordance; South's Serm. ser. 6. vol. iii. MYSTERIES, a term used to denote the secret rites of the Pagan superstition, which were carefully con cealed from the knowledge of the vulgar. The learned bishop Warburton sup. posed that the mysteries of the Pagan religion were the invention of legislators and other great personages, whem for tune or their own merit had placed at the head of those civil societies which were formed in the earliest ages in different parts of the world. Mystery, Tv, secret (from To re, to shut the mouth.) It is taken, 1. for a truth revealed by God which is above the power of our natural reason, or which we could not have discovered without revelation; such as the call of the Gentiles, Eph. i. 9; the transforming of some without dying, &c. 1 Cor. xv. 51-2. The word is also used in reference to things which remain in part incomprehensible after they are revealed; such as the incarnation of Christ, the resurrection of the dead, &c. Some critics, however, observe that the word in Scripture does not import what is incapable in its own nature of being understood,but barely a secret, any thing not disclosed or published to the world. In respect to the mysteries of religion, divines have run into two extremes "Some," as one observes, "have given up all that was mysterious, thinking that they were not called to believe any thing but what they could comprehend. But if it can be proved that mysteries make a part of a religion coming from God, it can be no part of piety to discard them, as if we were wiser than he." And besides, upon this principle, a man must believe nothing: the various works of nature, the growth of plants, instincts of brutes, union of body and soul, properties of matter, the nature of spirit, Others, however, suppose that the and a thousand other things, are all re- mysteries were the offspring of bigotry plete with mysteries. If so in the com- and priestcraft, and that they originated mon works of nature, we can hardly in Egypt, the native land of idolatry. suppose that those things which more In that country the priesthood ruled immediately relate to the Divine Being predominant. The kings were engrafthimself, can be without mystery. "The ed into their body before they could asother extreme lies in an attempt to excend the throne. They were possessed plain the mysterics of revelation, so as to of a third part of all the land of Egypt. Mosheim was of opinion that the mysteries were entirely commemorative; that they were instituted with a view to preserve the remembrance of heroes and great men who had been deified in consideration of their martial exploits, useful inventions, public virtues, and especially in consequence of the benefits by them conferred on their contemporaries. The number of the Mystics increased in the fourth century, under the influ The sacerdotal function was confined to and in this blessed frame they not only one tribe, and was transmitted unalien-enjoy inexpressible raptures from their able from father to son. All the orien- communion with the Supreme Being, tals, but more especially the Egyptians, but are also invested with the inestidelighted in mysterious and allegorical mable privilege of contemplating truth doctrines. Every maxim of morality, undisguised and uncorrupted in its naevery tenet of theology, every dogma of tive purity, while others behold it in a philosophy, was wrapt up in a veil of vitiated and delusive form. allegory and mysticism. This propensity, no doubt, conspired with avarice and ambition to dispose them to a darkence of the Grecian fanatic, who gave and mystericus system of religion. Besides the Egyptians were a gloomy race of men; they delighted in darkness and solitude. Their sacred rites were generally celebrated with melancholy airs, weeping, and lamentation. This gloomy and unsocial bias of mind must bave stimulated them to a congenial mode of worship. MYSTICS, a sect distinguished by their professing pure, sublime, and perfect devotion, with an entire disinterested love of God, free from all selfish considerations. The authors of this mystic science, which sprung up towards the close of the third century, are not known; but the principles from which it was formed are manifest. Its first promoters proceeded from the known doctrine of the Platonic school, which was also adopted by Origen and his disciples, that the divine nature was diffused through all human souls; or that the faculty of reason, from which proceed the health and vigour of the inind, was an emanation from God into the human soul, and comprehended in it the principles and elements of all truth, human and divine. They denied that men could, by labour or study, excite this celestial flame in their breasts; and therefore they disapprove highly of the attempts of those who, by definitions, abstract theorems, and profound speculations, endeavoured to form distinct notions of truth, and to discover its hidden nature. On the contrary, they maintained that silence, tranquillity, repose, and solitude, accompanied with such acts as might tend to extenuate and exhaust the body, were the means by which the hidden and internal word was excited to produce its latent virtues, and to instruct men in the knowl. edge of divine things. For thus they reasoned:-Those who behold with a noble contempt all human affairs; who turn away their eyes from terrestrial vanities, and shut all the avenues of the outward senses against the contagious influence of a material world, must necessarily return to God when the spirit is thus disengaged from the impedi ments that prevented that happy union; himself out for Dyonysius the Areopagite, disciple of St. Paul, and probably lived about this period; and by pretending to higher degrees of perfection than other Christians, and practising greater austerity, their cause gained ground, especially in the eastern provinces, in the fifth century. A copy of the pretended works of Dionysius was sent by Balbus to Lewis the Meek, in the year 824, which kindled the only flame of mystecism in the western provinces, and filled the Latins with the most enthusiastic admiration of this new religion. In the twelfth century these Mystics took the lead in their method of expounding the Scriptures. In the thirteenth century they were the most formidable antagonists of the schoolmen; and towards the close of the fourteenth, many of them resided and propagated their tenets almost in every part of Europe. They had, in the fifteenth century, many persons of distinguished merit in their number; and in the sixteenth century, previous to the reformation, if any sparks of real piety subsisted under the despotic empire of superstition, they were only to be found among the Mystics. The celebrated Madame Bourignon, and the amiable Fenelon, archbishop of Cambray, were of this sect. Dr. Haweis, in speaking of the Mystics, Church History, vol. iii. p. 47, thus observes: "Among those called Mystics, I am persuaded some were found who loved God out of a pure heart fervently; and though they were ridiculed and reviled for proposing a disinterestedness of love withcut other motives, and as professing to feel in the enjoyment of the temper itself an abundant reward, their holy and heavenly conversation will carry a stamp of real religion upon it." As the late Reverend William Law, who was born in 1687, makes a distinguished figure among the modern Mystics, a brief account of the outlines of his system may, perhaps be entertaining to some readers-He supposed that the material world was the very region which originally belonged to the fallen angels. At length the light and by degrees,a new birth of that life which was lost in paradise. No son of Adam can be lost, only by turning away from the Saviour within him. The only re which can raise the light, life, and Spirit of God in our souls. Nothing can enter into the vegetable kingdom till it have the vegetable life in it, or be a member of the animal kingdom till it have the animal life. Thus all nature joins with the Gospel in affirming that no man can enter into the kingdom of heaven till the heavenly life is born in him. Nothing can be our righteousness or recovery but the divine nature of Jesus Christ derived to our souls. Law's Life; Law's Spirit of Prayer and Appeal; Law's Spirit of Love, and on Regeneration. Spirit of God entered into the chaos, and turned the angels' ruined kingdom into a paradise on earth. God then created man, and placed him there. He was made in the image of the Tri-ligion which can save us, must be that une God, a living mirror of the divine nature, formed to enjoy communion with Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, and live on earth as the angels do in heaven. He was endowed with immortality, so that the elements of this outward world could not have any power of acting on his body; but by his fall be changed the light, life, and Spirit of God for the light, life, and spirit of the world. He died the very day of his transgression to all the influences and operations of the Spirit of God upon him, as we die to the influences of this world when the soul leaves the body; and all the influences and operations of the elements of this MYTHOLOGY, in its original imlife were open in him, as they were in port, signifies any kind of fabulous docany animal, at his birth into this world: trine. In its more appropriated sense, he became an earthly creature, subject it means those fabulous details concernto the dominion of this outward world, ing the objects of worship, which were and stood only in the highest rank of invented and propagated by men who animals. But the goodness of God would lived in the early ages of the world, and not leave man in this condition; re-by them transmitted to succeeding gedemption from it was immediately grant-nerations, either by written records or ed,and thebruiser of the serpent brought by oral tradition. See articles HEAthe light, life, and spirit of heaven, once THEN, PAGANISM, and Gale's Court of more into the human nature. All men, the Gentiles, a work calculated to show in consequence of the redemption of that the pagan philosophers derived Christ, have in them the first spark, or their most sublime sentiments from the seed, of the divine life, as a treasure hid Scriptures. Bryant's System of Ancient in the centre of our souls, to bring forth, Mythology. N NAME OF GOD. By this term we thew, 1. Luke, i. 27. His coming into are to understand, 1. God himself, Ps. the world was after the manner of other xx. 1.-2. His titles peculiar to himself, men, though his generation and concepExod. iii. 13, 14.-3. His word, Ps. v. tion were extraordinary. The place of 11. Acts, ix. 15.-4. His works, Ps. viii.|| his birth wasBethlehem,Mic. v. 2. Matt. 1.-5. His worship, Exod. xx. 24.-6. ii. 4, 6., where his parents were_wonHis perfections and excellencies, Exod. derfully conducted by providence, Luke, xxxiv. 6. John, xvii. 26. The properties ii. 1, 7. The time of his birth was foreor qualities of this name are these: 1. A told by the prophets to be before the glorious name, Ps. lxxii. 17.-2. Trans- sceptre or civil government departed cendent and incomparable, Rev. xix. from Judah, Gen. xlix, 10. Mal. iii. 1. 16.-3. Powerful, Phil. ii. 10.-4. Holy || Hag. ii. 6, 7, 9. Dan. ix. 24; but the and reverend, Ps. cxi. 9.-5. Awful to exact year of his birth is not agreed on the wicked.-6. Perpetual, Is. lv. 13. by chronologers, but it was about the Cruden's Concordance; Hannam's four thousandth year of the world; nor Anal. Comp. p. 20. can the season of the year, the month, NATIVITY OF CHRIST. The and day in which he was born, be asbirth of our Saviour was exactly as pre-certained. The Egyptians placed it in dicted by the prophecies of the Old January; Wagenseil, in February; BoTestament, Isa. vii. 14. Jer. xxxi. 22. chart, in March; some, mentioned by He was born of a virgin of the House of Clement of Alexandria,inApril; others, David, and of the tribe of Judah, Mat-in May; Epiphanius speaks of some who placed it in June, and of others who supposed it to have been in July; Wagenseil, who was not sure of February fixed it probably in August; Lightfoot, on the fifteenth of September; Scaliger, Casaubon, and Calvisius, in October; others, in November; and the Latin church in December. It does not, however, appear probable that the vulgar account is right; the circumstance of the shepherds watching their flocks by night, agrees not with the winter season. Dr. Gill thinks it was more likely in autumn, in the month of September, at the feast of tabernacles, to which there seems some reference in John, i. 14. The Scripture, however, assures us that it was in the "fulness of time." Gal. iv. || 4; and, indeed the wisdom of God is evidently displayed as to the time when, as well as the end for which Christ | came. in the most early ages, was divided into small independent states, differing from each other in language, manners, laws, and religion. The shock of so many opposite interests, the interfering of so many contrary views, occasioned the most violent convulsions and disorders; perpetual discord subsisted between these rival states, and hostility and bloodshed never ceased. Commerce had not hitherto united mankind, and opened the communication of one nation with another: voyages into remote coun tries were very rare; men moved in a narrow circle, little acquainted with any thing beyond the limits of their own small territory. At last the Roman ambition undertook the arduous enterprise of conquering the world: They trod down the kingdoms, according to Daniel's prophetic description, by their exceeding strength; they devoured the It was in a time when the world stood whole earth, Dan. vii. 7, 23. However, in need of such a Saviour, and was best by enslaving the world, they civilized prepared for receiving him. " About it, and while they oppressed mankind, the time of Christ's appearance," says they united them together: the same Dr. Robertson, "there prevailed a ge- laws were every where established, and neral opinion that the Almighty would the same languages understood; men send forth some eminent messenger to approached nearer to one another in communicate a more perfect discovery sentiments and manners, and the interof his will to mankind. The dignity of course between the most distant corners Christ, the virtues of his character, the of the earth was rendered secure and glory of his kingdom, and the signs of his agreeable. Satiated with victory, the coming, were described by the ancient first emperors abandoned all thoughts prophets with the utmost perspicuity.cf new conquests; peace, an unknown Guided by the sure word of prophecy, blessing, was enjoyed through all that the Jews of that age concluded the period vast empire; or if a slight war was predetermined by God to be then com- waged on an outlying and barbarous pleted, and that the promised Messiah frontier, far from disturbing the tranwould suddenly appear, Luke, ii. 25 to quility, it scarcely drew the attention of 38. Nor were these expectations pe- mankind. The disciples of Christ, thus culiar to the Jews. By their dispersions favoured by the union and peace of the among so many nations, by their con- Roman empire, executed their comversation with the learned men among mission with great advantage. The sucthe heathens and the translation of their cess and rapidity with which they difinspired writings into a language almost fused the knowledge of his name over universal, the principles of their reli- the world are astonishing. Nations gion were spread all over the East; were now accessible which formerly had and it became the common belief that a been unknown. Under this situation, Prince would arise at that time in Judea, into which the providence of God had who should change the face of the world, brought the world, the joyful sound in and extend his empire from one end of a few years reached those remote corthe earth to the other. Now, had Christners of the earth into which it could not been manifest at a more early period, the world would not have been prepared to meet him with the same fondness and zeal: had his appearance been put off for any considerable time, men's expectations would have begun to languish, and the warmth of desire, from a delay of gratification, might have cooled and died away. "The birth of Christ was also in the fulness of time, if we consider the then political state of the world. The world, otherwise have penetrated for many ages. Thus the Roman ambition and bravery paved the way, and prepared the world for the reception of the Christian doctrine." If we consider the state of the world with regard to morals, it evidently ap pears that the coming of Christ was at the most appropriate time. "The Romans," continues our author, "by subduing the world, lost their own liberty. "Many vices, engendered or nourished by prosperity, delivered them over to structions would have been more seathe vilest race of tyrants that ever af- sonable and necessary;" and no won flicted or disgraced human nature. The der that those who were looking for salcolours are not too strong which the vation should joyfully exclaim, "Blessapostle employs in drawing the charac-ed be the Lord God of Israel, for he ter of that age. See Eph. iv. 17, 19. In hath visited and redeemed his people." this time of universal corruption did the The nativity of Christ is celebrated wisdom of God manifest the Christian among us on the twenty-fifth day of Derevelation to the world. What the wis-cember, and divine service is performed dom of men could do for the encourage-in the church, and in many places of ment of virtue in a corrupt world had worship among dissenters; but, alas! been tried during several ages, and all the day, we fear, is more generally prohuman devices were found by expe- faned than improved. Instead of being rience to be of very smail avail; so that a season of real devotion, it is a season no juncture could be more proper for || of great diversion. The luxury, extrapablishing a religion, which, independent vagance, intemperance, obscene pleaof human laws and institutions, explains sures and drunkenness that abound, are the principles of morals with admirable striking proofs of the immoralities of perspicuity, and enforces the practice of the age. "It is matter of just com. them by most persuasive arguments." plaint," says a divine, "that such irreThe wisdom of God will still farther gular and extravagant things are at this appear in the time of Christ's coming, time commonly done by many who call if we consider the world with regard to themselves Christians; as if, because its religious state. "The Jews seem to the Son of God was at this time made have been deeply tinctured with super-man, it were fit for men to make them. stition. Delighted with the ceremonial selves beasts." Manne's Dissertation on prescriptions of the law, they utterly the Birth of Christ; Lardner's Cred. neglected the moral. While the Phap. i. vol. ii. p. 796, 963; Gill's Body of risees undermined religion, on the one Divinity on Incarnation; Bishop Law's hand,by their vaiutraditions and wretch- Theory of Religion; Dr. Robertson's ed interpretations of the law, the Sad-admirable Sermon on the Situation of ducees denied the immortality of the the World at Christ's appearance; soul, and overturned the doctrine of fu- Edwards's Redemption, 313, 316; Roture rewards and punishments; so that binson's Claude, vol. i p. 276, 317: between them the knowledge and power || John Edwards's Survey of all the Disof true religion were entirely destroyed. || pensations and Methods of Religion. But the deplorable situation of the hea-chap. 13. vol. i. then world called still more loudly for NATURE, the essential properties an immediate interposal of the divine of a thing, or that by which it is dishand. The characters of their heathen tinguished from all others. It is used deities were infamous, and their reli- also, for the system of the world, and gious worship consisted frequently in the Creator of it; the aggregate powers the vilest and most shameful rites. Ac-of the human body, and common sense, cording to the apostle's observation, they || Rom. i. 26, 27. í Cor. xi. 14. The vere in all things too superstitious. || word is also used in reference to a vaStately temples, expensive sacrifices, riety of other objects which we shall pompous ceremonies, magnificent festi- here enumerate. 1. The divine nature is vals, with all the other circumstances of not any external form or shape, but his show and splendour, were the objects glory, excellency, and perfections, pewhich false religion presented to its vo- culiar to himself.-2 Human nature taries; but just notions of God, obe-signifies the state, properties, and pecudience to his moral laws, purity of liarities of man.-3. Good nature is a heart, and sanctity of life, were not disposition to please, and is compoundonce mentioned as ingredients in relied of kindness, forbearance, forgiveness, gious service. Rome adopted the gods and self-denial.-4. The law of nature is of almost every nation whom she had the will of God relating to human acconquered, and opened her temples to tions, grounded in the moral differences the grossest superstitions of the most of things. Some understand it in a more barbarous people. Her foolish heart comprehensive sense, as signifying those being darkened, she changed the glory stated orders by which all the parts of of the incorruptible God into an image the material world are governed in made like to corruptible man, and to their several motions and operations.— birds, and four-footed beasts, and creep-5. The light of nature does not consist ing things, Rom. i. 21, 23. No period, merely in those ideas which heathens therefore, can be mentioned when in- have actually attained, but those which |