rest being brought to Rome, and depo- || their minds a strong idea of our Sasited in the church of the Holy Cross | viour's passion. of Jerusalem. Exaltation of the Cross, an ancient feast held on the 14th of September, in memory of this, that Heraclitus restored to Mount Calvary the true cross, in 642, which had been carried off fourteen years before by Cosrocs, king of Persia, upon his taking Jerusalem from the emperor Phocas. The Adoration of the Cross seems to have been practised in the ancient church, in as much as the heathens, particularly Julian, reproached the primitive Christians with it; and we do not find that their apologists disclaimed the charge. Mornay, indeed, asserted that this had been done by St. Cyril, but could not support his allegation at the conference of Fontainbleau. St. Helena is said to have reduced the adoration of the cross to its just principle, since she adored Christ in the wood, not the wood itself. With such modifications some Protestants have been induced to admit the adoration of the cross. John Huss allowed of the phrase, provided it were expressly added, that the adoration was relative to the person of Christ. But, however Roman catholics may seem to triumph by virtue of such distinction and mitigations, it is well known they have no great place in their own practice. Imbert, the prior of Gascony, was severely prosecuted in 1683, for telling the people, that, in the ceremony of adoring the cross, practised in that church on Good Friday, they were not to adore the - wood, but Christ, who was crucified on it. The curate of the parish told them the contrary. It was the wood; the wood they were to adore! Imbert replied, it was Christ, not the wood; for which he was cited before the archbishop of Bourdeaux, suspended from his functions, and even threatened with chains and perpetual imprisonment. It little availed him to cite the bishop of Meaux's distinction; it was answered, that the church allowed it not. CROSS-BEARER, in the Romish church, the chaplain of an archbishop, who bears a cross before him on solemn occasions. Cross-bearers also denote certain officers in the Inquisition, who make a vow before the Inquisitors, or their vicars, to defend the catholic faith, though with the loss of fortune and life. Their business is also to provide the Inquisitors with necessaries. CRUCIFIX, a cross, upon which the body of Christ is fastened in effigy, used by the Roman catholics, to excite in CRUCIFIXION OF CHRIST. See CROSS. CRUSADE. See CROISADE. CURATE, the lowest degree in the church of England; he who represents the incumbent of a church, parson, or vicar, and officiates in his stead: he is to be licensed and admitted by the bishop of the diocese, or by an ordinary having episcopal jurisdiction; and when a curate hath the approbation of the bishop, he usually appoints the salary too; and, in such case, if he be not paid, the curate hath a proper remedy in the ecclesiastical court, by a sequestration of the profits of the benefice: but if the curate be not licensed by the bishop, he is put to his remedy at common law, where he must prove the agreement, &c. A curate, having no fixed estate in his curacy, not being instituted and inducted, may be removed at pleasure by the bishop, or incumbent. But there are perpetual curates as well as temporary, who are appointed where tithes are impropriate, and no vicarage endowed: these are not removeable, and the improprietors are obliged to find them; some whereof have certain portions of the tithes settled on them. Curates must subscribe the declaration according to the act of uniformity, or are liable to imprisonment. Though the condition of curates be somewhat ameliorated by a late act, it must be confessed that they are still, in many respects, exposed to hardships: their salaries are not equal to many dissenting ministers, who have nothing to depend on but the liberality of their people. Can there be a greater reproach to the dignified ecclesiastics of this country, than the comparatively miserable pittance allowed the curates, who do all the labour? Surely they must be a set of useless beings, to reap so little wages; or else they are unjustly treated!!! CURIOSITY, a propensity or disposition of the soul which inclines it to enquire after new objects, and to delight in viewing them. Curiosity is proper, when it springs from a desire to know our duty, to mature our judgments, to enlarge our minds, and to regulate our conduct; but improper when it wishes to know more of God, of the decrees; the origin of evil; the state of rpen, or the nature of things, than it is designed for us to know. The evil of this is evident. It reproaches God's goodness; it is a violation of Scripture, Deut. xxii. 29; it robs us of our time; it often makes us unhappy, lessens our usefulness, and ture language it signifies the just and lawful sentence of God's law, condemning sinners to suffer the full punishment of their sin, Gal. iii. 10. CURSING and Swearing. See CUSTOM, a very comprehensive term, denoting the manners, ceremonies, and fashions of a people, which having turned into habit, and passed into use, obtain the force of laws. Custom and habit are often confounded. By custom, we mean a frequent reiteration of the same act; and by habit, the effect that custom has on the mind or the body. See HABIT. 66 produces mischief. To cure this dispo- of man.' CURSE, the action of wishing any tremendous evil to another. In Scrip "Viewing man," says Lord Kames, as a sensitive being, and perceiving the influence of novelty upon him, would one suspect that custom has an equal influence? and yet our nature is equally susceptible of both; not only in different objects, but frequently in the same. When an object is new, it is enchanting; familiarity renders it indifferent; and custom, after a longer familiarity, makes it again desirable. Human nature, diversified with many and various springs of action, is wonderful, and indulging the expression, intricately constructed. Custom hath such influence upon many of our feelings, by warping and varying them, that we must attend to its operations, if we would be acquainted with human nature. A walk upon the quarter-deck, though intolerably confined, becomes, however, so agreeable by custom, that a sailor, in his walk on shore, confines himself commonly within the same bounds. I knew a man who had relinquished the sca for a country life: in the corner of his garden he reared an artificial mount, with a level summit, resembling, most accurately, a quarter-deck, not only in shape, but in size; and here was his choice walk." Such we find is often the power of custom. CYNICS, a sect of ancient philosophers, who valued themselves upon their contempt of riches and state, arts and sciences, and every thing, in short, except virtue and morality. They owe their origin and institution to Antisthenes of Athens, a disciple of Socrates; who being asked of what use his philosophy had been to him, replied, "it enables me to live with myself." Diogenes was the most famous.of his disciples, in whose life the system of this philosophy appears in its greatest perfection. He led a most whimsical life, despising every kind of convenience; a tub serving him for a lodging, which he rolled before him wherever he went: yet he was not the more humble on account of his still greater pride, Diogenes!" He had ragged cloak, bag and tub. One day the utmost contempt for all the human entering Plato's house, at a time when race; for he walked the street of Athens there was a splendid entertainment for at noon day, with a lighted lantern in several persons of distinction, he jump-his hand, telling the people "he was in ed, in all his dirt, upon a very rich couch, search of an honest man." But with all saying, "I trample on the pride of his maxims of morality, he held some Plato!" "yes," replied Plato, "but with very pernicious opinions. D. DAMIANISTS, a denomination in || volition and other mental faculties are the sixth century, so called from Da- overpowered and restrained, and his mian, bishop of Alexandria. Their opi-body possessed and actuated by some nions were the same as the Angelites, which see. DÆMONS, a name given by the ancients to certain spirits or genii, which, they say, appeared to men, either to do them service, or to hurt them. Several of the heathen philosophers held that there were different kinds of dæmons; that some of them were spiritual substances, of a more noble origin than the human race, and that others had once been men. But those dæmons who were the more immediate objects of the established worship among the ancient nations were human spirits, such as were believed to become dæmons, or deities, after their departure from their bodies. created spiritual being of superior power. Such seems to be the determinate sense of the word; but it is disputed whether any of mankind ever were in this unfortunate condition. That the reader may form some judgment, we shall lay before him the arguments on both sides." 1. Dæmoniacs, arguments against the existence of. Those who are unwilling to allow that angels or devils have ever intermeddled with the concerns of, human life, urge a number of specious arguments. The Greeks and Romans of old, say they, did believe in the reality of dæmoniacal possession. They supposed that spiritual beings did at times enter into the sons and daughters of men, and distinguish themselves in that situation by capricious freaks, deeds of wanton mischief, or prophetic enunciations. But in the instances in which they supposed this to happen, it is evident no such thing took place. Their accounts of the state and conduct of those persons whom they believed to be possessed in this supernatural manner, show plainly that what they ascribed to the influence of dæmons were merely the effect of natural diseases. Whatever they relate concerning the larvati, the cerriti, and the lymphatici, shows that these were merely people disor It has been generally thought, that by dæmons we are to understand devils, in the Septuagint version of the Old Testament. Others think the word is in that version certainly applied to the ghosts of such dead men as the heathens deified, in Deut. xxxii. 17. Ps. cvi. 37. That dæmon often bears the same meaning in the New Testament, and particularly in Acts xvii. 18. 1 Cor. x. 21. 1 Tim. iv. 1. Rev. ix. 13. is shown at large by Mr. Joseph Mede, (see Works, p. 623, et. seq.) That the word is applied always to human spirits in the New Testament, Mr. Farmer has attempted to shew in his Essay on Da-dered in mind, in the same unfortunate moniacs, p. 208. et. seq. As to the meaning of the word Damon in the fathers of the Christian church, it is used by them in the same sense as it was by the heathen philosophers, especially the latter Platonists; that is, sometimes for departed human spirits, and at other times for such spirits as had never inhabited human bodies. In the fathers, indeed, the word is more commonly taken in an evil sense, than in the ancient philosophers. DÆMONIAC, a human being whose situation with those madmen, ideots, and melancholy persons, whom we have among ourselves. Festus describes the larvati, as being furiosi et mente moti. Lucian describes dæmoniacs as lunatic, and as staring with their eyes, foaming at the mouth, and being speechless. It appears still more evident that all the persons spoken of as possessed with devils in the New Testament, were either mad or epileptic, and precisely in the same condition with the madmen and epileptics of modern times. The tinue to enter into mankind in all cases of madness, melancholy, or epilepsy Besides, it is by no means a sufficient reason for receiving any doctrine as true, that it has been generally received through the world. Error, like an epidemical disease, is communicated from one to another. In certain cir-, cumstances, too, the influence of imagination predominates, and restrains the exertions of reason. Many false opinions have extended their influence through a very wide circle and maintained it long. On every such occasion as the present, therefore, it becomes us to enquire not so much how generally any opinion has been received, or how long it has prevailed, as from what cause it has originated, and on what evidence it rests. When we contemplate the frame of Nature, we behold a grand and beautiful simplicity prevail its immense extent, and though it contains such numberless diversities of being, yet the simplest machine constructed by human art does not display greater simplicity, or an happier connection of parts. We may, therefore, infer by analogy, from what is observable of the order of Nature in general to the present case, that to permit evil spirits to intermeddle with the concerns of human life, would be to break through that order which the Deity appears to have established through his works; it would be to introduce a degree of confusion unworthy of the wisdom of Divine Providence. Jews, among other reproaches which they threw out against our Saviour, said, He hath a devil, and is mad; why hear ye him? The expressions he hath a devil, and is mad, were certainly used on this occasion as synonymous. With all their virulence, they would not surely ascribe to him at once two things that were inconsistent and contradictory. Those who thought more favourably of the character of Jesus, asserted concerning his discourses, in reply to his adversaries, These are not the words of him that hath a dæmon; meaning, no doubt, that he spoke in a more rational manner than a madman could be expected to speak. The Jews appear to have ascribed to the influence of dæmons, not only that species of madness in which the patient is raving and furious, but also melancholy madness. Of John, who secluded himself from intercourse with the world, and was dis-ing through the whole: notwithstanding tinguished for abstinence and acts of mortification, they said, He hath a damon. The youth, whose father applied to Jesus to free him from an evil spirit, describing his unhappy condition in these words, have mercy on my son, for he is lunatic, and sore vexed with a dæmon; for oft times he falleth into the fire, and oft into the water, was plainly epileptic. Every thing, indeed, that is related in the New Testament concerning dæmoniacs, proves that they were people affected with such natural diseases as are far from being uncommon among mankind in the present age. When the symptoms of the disorders cured by our Saviour and his apostles as cases of dæmoniacal possession correspond so exactly with those of diseases well known as natural in the present age, it would be absurd to impute them to a supernatural cause. It is much more consistent with common sense and sound philosophy to suppose that our Saviour and his apostles wisely, and with that condescension to the weakness and prejudices of those with whom they conversed, which so eminently distinguished the character of the Author of our holy religion, and must always be a prominent feature in the character of the true Christian, adopted the vulgar language in speaking of those unfortunate persons who were groundlessly imagined to be possessed with dæmons, though they well knew the notions which had given rise to such modes of expression to be ill founded, than to imagine that diseases which arise at present from natural causes, were produced in days of old by the intervention of dæmons, or that evil spirits still con II. Dæmoniacs, arguments for the existence of. In opposition to these arguments, the following are urged by the Dæmonianists. In the days of our Saviour, it would appear that dæmoniacal possession was very frequent among the Jews and the neighbouring nations. Many were the evil spirits whom Jesus is related in the Gospels to have ejected from patients that were brought unto him as possessed and tormented by those malevolent dæmons. His apostles too, and the first Christians, who were most active and successful in the propagation of Christianity, appear to have often exerted the miraculous powers with which they were endowed on similar occasions. The dæmons displayed a degree of knowledge and malevolence which sufficiently distinguished them from human beings: and the language in which the demoniacs are mentioned, and the actions and sentiments ascribed to them in the New Testament, show that our Saviour and his apostles did not consider the idea of demoniacal possession as being merely a vulgar error concerning || then ready, whenever any difficulty the origin of a disease or diseases pro- arises to us in considering the conduct duced by natural causes. The more en- of Providence, to model things accordlightened cannot always avoid the use ing to our own ideas; to deny that the of metaphorical modes of expression; Deity can possibly be the author of which though founded upon error, yet things which we cannot reconcile; and have been so established in language by to assert, that he must act on every octhe influence of custom, that they cannot casion in a manner consistent with our be suddenly dismissed. But in descrip- narrow views. This is the pride of reations of characters, in the narration of son; and it seems to have suggested the facts, and in the laying down of systems strongest objections that have been at of doctrine, we require different rules to any time urged against the reality of be observed. Should any person, in damoniacal possession. But the Deity compliance with popular opinions, talk may surely connect one order of his in serious language of the existence, creatures with another. We perceive dispositions, declarations, and actions of mutual relations and a beautiful conneca race of beings whom he knew to be tion to prevail through all that part of absolutely fabulous, we surely could not Nature which falls within the sphere of praise him for integrity: we must sup- our observation. The inferior animals pose him to be either exulting in irony are connected with mankind, and subover the weak credulity of those around jected to their authority, not only in inhim, or taking advantage of their weak- stances in which it is exerted for their ness, with the dishonesty and selfish advantage, but even where it is tyranviews of an impostor. And if he himself nically abused to their destruction, should pretend to any connection with Among the evils to which mankind have this imaginary system of beings; and been subjected, why might not their beshould claim, in consequence of his con- ing liable to dæmoniacal possession be nection with them, particular honours one? While the Supreme Being retains from his contemporaries; whatever the sovereignty of the universe, he may might be the dignity of his character in employ whatever agents he thinks proall other respects, nobody could hesitate per in the execution of his purposes; to brand him as an impostor. In this he may either commission an angel, or light must we regard the conduct of our let loose a devil; as well as bend the Saviour and his apostles, if the idea of human will, or communicate any partidæmoniacal possession were to be con- cular impulse to matter. All that revesidered merely as a vulgar error. Theylation makes known, all that human talked and acted as if they believed that evil spirits had actually entered into those who were brought to them as possessed with devils, and as if those spirits had been actually expelled by their authority out of the unhappy persons whom they had possessed. They demanded, too, to have their professions and declarations believed, in consequence of their performing such mighty works, and having thus triumphed over the powers of hell. The reality of dæmoniacal possession stands upon the same evidence with the Gospel system in general. Nor is there any thing unreasonable in this doctrine. It does not appear to contradict those ideas which the general appearances of Nature and the series of events suggest, concerning the benevolence and wisdom of the Deity, by which he regulates the affairs of the universe. We often fancy ourselves able to comprehend things to which our understanding is wholly inadequate; we persuade ourselves, at times, that the whole extent of the works of the Deity must be well known to us, and that his designs must always be such as we can fathom. We are reason can conjecture, concerning the existence of various orders of spiritual beings, good and bad, is perfectly consistent with, and even favourable to, the doctrine of dæmoniacal possession. It is mentioned in the New Testament in such language, and such narratives are related concerning it, that the Gospels cannot be well regarded in any other light than as pieces of imposture, and Jesus Christ must be considered as a man who took advantage of the weakness and ignorance of his contemporaries, if this doctrine be nothing but a vulgar error; it teaches nothing inconsistent with the general conduct of Providence; in short, it is not the caution of philosophy, but the pride of reason that suggests objections against this doctrine. See the essays of Young, Farmer, Worthington, Dr. Lardner, Macknight, Fell, Burgh, &c. on Dæmoniacs; Seed's Posthumous Sermons, ser. vi. and article DÆMONIAC in Enc. Brit. DAMNATION, condemnation. This word is used to denote the final loss of the soul; but it is not always to be understood in this sense in the sacred Scripture. Thus it is said in Rom. xiii |