by degrees, a new birth of that life which Spirit of God entered into the chaos, || by oral tradition. See articles HEA- 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 was Bethlehem, 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 or qualities of this name are these: 1. A glorious nanie, Ps. lxxii. 17.-2. Transcendent and incomparable, Rev. xix. 16.-3. Powerful, Phil. ii. 10.-4. Holy and reverend, Ps. cxi. 9.-5. Awful to the wicked.-6. Perpetual, Is. lv. 13. Cruden's Concordance; Hannam's Anal. Comp. p. 20. ii. 1, 7. The time of his birth was foretold by the prophets to be before the sceptre or civil government departed from Judah, Gen. xlix. 10. Mal. iii. 1. Hag. ii. 6, 7, 9. Dan. ix. 24; but the exact year of his birth is not agreed on by chronologers, but it was about the four thousandth year of the world; nor 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 Testament, Isa. vii. 14. Jer. xxxi. 22. He was born of a virgin of the House of David, and of the tribe of Judah, Mat January; Wagenseil, in February; Bochart, in March, some, mentioned by Clement of Alexandria, in April; others, in May; Epiphanius speaks of some.who 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 ard disorders; perpetual discord subsisted between these rival states, and hostility and 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 shep-bloodshed never ceased. Commerce herds 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. It was in a time when the world stood in need of such a Saviour, and was best prepared for receiving him. "About the time of Christ's appearance," says Dr. Robertson, "there prevailed a general opinion that the Almighty would send forth some eminent messenger to communicate a more perfect discovery of his will to mankind. The dignity of Christ, the virtues of his character, the glory of his kingdom, and the signs of his coming, were described by the ancient prophets with the utmost perspicuity. Guided by the sure word of prophecy, the Jews of that age concluded the period predetermined by God to be then completed, and that the promised Messiah would suddenly appear, Luke, ii. 25 to 38. Nor were these expectations peculiar to the Jews. By their dispersions among so many nations, by their conversation with the learned men among the heathens and the translation of their inspired writings into a language almost universal, the principles of their religion were spread all over the East; and it became the common belief that a Prince would arise at that time in Judea, who should change the face of the world, and extend his empire from one end of the earth to the other. Now, had Christ 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, had not hitherto united mankind, and opened the communication of one nation with another: voyages into remote countries 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 whole earth, Dan. vi 7, 23. However, by enslaving the world, they civilized it, and while they oppressed mankind, they united them together: the same laws were every where established, and the same languages understood; men approached nearer to one another in sentiments and manners, and the intercourse between the most distant corners of the earth was rendered secure and agreeable. Satiated with victory, the first emperors abandoned all thoughts of new conquests; peace, an unknown blessing, was enjoyed through all that vast empire; or if a slight war was waged on an outlying and barbarous frontier, far from disturbing the tranquillity, it scarcely drew the attention of mankind. The disciples of Christ, thus favoured by the union and peace of the Roman empire, executed their commission with great advantage. The suc cess and rapidity with which they diffused the knowledge of his name over the world are astonishing. Nations were now accessible which formerly had been unknown. Under this situation, into which the providence of God had brought the world, the joyful sound in a few years reached those remote corners of the earth into which it could not 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 wonflicted 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 encouragement of virtue in a corrupt world had been tried during several ages, and all human devices were found by experience to be of very small avail; so that no juncture could be more proper for || publishing a religion, which, independent of human laws and institutions, explains the principles of morals with admirable perspicuity, and enforces the practice of them by most persuasive arguments." in the church, and in many places of worship among dissenters; but, alas! the day, we fear, is more generally profaned than improved. Instead of being a season of real devotion, it is a season of great diversion. The luxury, extravagance, intemperance, obscene pleasures, and drunkenness that abound, are striking proofs of the immoralities of the age. "It is matter of just complaint," says a divine, "that such irregular and extravagant things are at this time commonly done by many who call themselves Christians; as if, because the Son of God was at this time made man, it were fit for men to make themselves beasts." Manne's Dissertation on the Birth of Christ; Lardner's Cred. p. i. vol. ii. p. 796, 963; Gill's Body of Divinity on Incarnation; Bishop Law's Theory of Religion; Dr. Robertson's admirable Sermon on the Situation of the World at Christ's appearance; Edwards's Redemption, 313, 316; Robinson's Claude, vol. i. p. 276, 317; John Edwards's Survey of all the Dispensations and Methods of Religion The wisdom of God will still farther appear in the time of Christ's coming, if we consider the world with regard to its religious state. "The Jews seem to have been deeply tinctured with superstition. Delighted with the ceremonial prescriptions of the law, they utterly neglected the moral. While the Pharisees undermined religion, on the one hand, by their vain traditions and wretched interpretations of the law, the Sadducees denied the immortality of the soul, and overturned the doctrine of future rewards and punishments; so that between them the knowledge and power || of true religion were entirely destroyed. But the deplorable situation of the hea-chap. 13, vol. i. then world called still more loudly for an immediate interposal of the divine hand. The characters of their heathen deities were infamous, and their religious worship consisted frequently in the vilest and most shameful rites. According to the apostle's observation, they were in all things too superstitious. Stately temples, expensive sacrifices, pompous ceremonies, magnificent festivals, with all the other circumstances of show and splendour, were the objects which false religion presented to its votaries; but just notions of God, obedience to his moral laws, purity of heart, and sanctity of life, were not once mentioned as ingredients in religious service. Rome adopted the gods of almost every nation whom she had conquered, and opened her temples to the grossest superstitions of the most barbarous people. Her foolish heart being darkened, she changed the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and four-footed beasts, and creeping things, Rom. i. 21, 23. No period, therefore, can be mentioned when in NATURE, the essential properties of a thing, or that by which it is distinguished from all others. It is used also, for the system of the world, and the Creator of it; the aggregate powers of the human body, and common sense, Rom. i. 26, 27. 1 Cor. xi. 14. The || word is also used in reference to a variety of other objects which we shall here enumerate. 1. The divine nature is not any external form or shape, but his glory, excellency, and perfections, peculiar to himself.-2. Human nature signifies the state, properties, and peculiarities of man.-3. Good nature is a disposition to please, and is compounded of kindness, forbearance, forgiveness, and self-denial.-4. The law of nature is the will of God relating to human actions, grounded in the moral differences of things. Some understand it in a more comprehensive sense, as signifying those stated orders by which all the parts of the material world are governed in their several motions and operations.— 5. The light of nature does not consist merely in those ideas which heathens have actually attained, but those which are presented to men by the works of creation, and which, by the exertion of reason, they may obtain, if they be desirous of retaining God in their mind. See RELIGION.-6. By the dictates of nature, with regard to right and wrong, we understand those things which appear to the mind to be natural, fit, or reasonable.-7. The state of nature is that in which men have not by mutual engagements, implicit or express, entered communities.-8. Depraved nature is that corrupt state in which all mankind are born, and which inclines them to evil. and a ram for a peace offering. They offered likewise loaves and cakes, with wine necessary for the libations. After all this was sacrificed and offered to the Lord, the priest or some other person, shaved the head of the Nazarite at the door of the tabernacle, and burnt his hair, throwing it upon the fire of the altar. Then the priest put into the hand of the Nazarite the shoulder of the ram, roasted, with a loaf and a cake, which the Nazarite returning into the hands of the priest, he offered them to the Lord, lifting them up in the presence of the Nazarite. And from this time he might again drink wine, his Nazariteship being now accomplished. Numb. vi. Âmos ii. 11, 12. Those that made a vow of Nazariteship out of Palestine, and could not come to the temple when their vow was expired, contented themselves with observing the abstinence required by the law, and after that, cutting their hair in the place where they were: as to the offerings and sacrifices prescribed by Moses, which were to be offered at the temple by themselves, or by others for them, they deferred this till they could NAZARENES, Christians converted from Judaism, whose chief error consisted in defending the necessity or expediency of the works of the law, and who obstinately adhered to the practice of the Jewish ceremonies. The name of Nazarenes, at first, had nothing odious in it, and it was often given to the first Christians. The fathers frequently mention the Gospel of the Nazarenes, which differs nothing from that of St. Matthew, which was either in Hebrew or Syriac, for the use of the first converts, but was afterwards corrupted by the Ebionites. These Naza-have a convenient opportunity. Hence renes preserved their first Gospel in its primitive purity. Some of them were still in being in the time of St. Jerome, who does not reproach them with any errors. They were very zealous observers of the law of Moses, but held the traditions of the Pharisees in very great contempt. The word Nazarene was given to Jesus Christ and his disciples; and is commonly taken in a sense of derision and contempt in such authors as have written against Christianity. it was that St. Paul, being at Corinth, and having made a vow of a Nazarite, had his hair cut off at Cenchrea, and put off fulfilling the rest of his vow till he should arrive at Jerusalem, Acts xviii. 18. When a person found that he Nazariteship, or had not leisure to perwas not in a condition to make a vow of form the ceremonies belonging to it, he contented himself by contributing to the expense of the sacrifice and offerings of those that had made and fulfilled this vow; and by this means he became a NAZARITES, those under the an- partaker in the merit of such Nazaritecient law who made a vow of observing ship. When St. Paul came to Jerusa a more than ordinary degree of purity, lem, in the year of Christ 53, the aposas Samson and John the Baptist. The tle St. James the Less, with the other Nazarites engaged by a vow to abstain brethren, said to him (Acts xxi. 23, from wine and all intoxicating liquors; 24,) that to quiet the minds of the conto let their hair grow without cutting or verted Jews, who had been informed shaving; not to enter into any house that he every where preached up the that was polluted by having a dead entire abolition of the law of Moses, he corpse in it; nor to be present at any ought to join himself to four of the funeral. And if by chance any one faithful who had a vow of Nazariteship should have died in their presence, they upon them, and contribute to the charge began again the whole ceremony of of the ceremony at the shaving of their their consecration and Nazariteship.- heads; by which the new converts This ceremony generally lasted eight would perceive that he continued to days, sometimes a month, and some-keep the law, and that what they had times their whole lives. When the time heard of him was not true. of their Nazariteship was accomplished, the priest brought the person to the door of the temple, who there offered to the Lord a he-lamb for a burnt-offering, a she-lamb for an expiatory sacrifice, NECESSARIANS, an appellation which may be given to all who maintain that moral agents act from necessity. See next article, and MATERIALISTS. NECESSITY, whatever is done by a cause or power that is irresistible, in he will with his own. That necessity which sense it is opposed to freedom. doth not render actions less morally Man is a necessary agent, if all his ac- good, is evident; for if necessary virtue tions be so determined by the causes be neither moral nor praise-worthy, it preceding each action, that not one past will follow that God himself is not a action could possibly not have come to moral being, because he is a necessary pass, or have been otherwise than it one; and the obedience of Christ canhath been, nor one future action can not be good because it was necessary. possibly not come to pass, or be other- Fart), say they, necessity does not wise than it shall be. On the other preclude the use of means; for means hand, it is asserted, that he is a free are no less appointed than the end. It agent, if he be able at any time, under was ordained that Christ should be dethe causes and circumstances he then livered up to death; but he could not is, to do different things; or, in other have been betrayed without a betrayer, words, if he be not unavoidably deter- nor crucified without crucifiers. That mined in every point of time by the cir- it is not a gloomy doctrine, they allege, cumstances he is in, and the causes he because nothing can be more consolais under, to do any one thing he does, tory than to believe that all things are and not possibly to do any other thing. under the direction of an all-wise Being; Whether man is a necessary or a free that his kingdom ruleth over all, and agent, is a question which has been de- that he doth all things well. So far bated by writers of the first eminence. from its being inimical to happiness, Hobbes, Collins, Hume, Leibnitz, Kaims, they suppose there can be no solid true Hartley, Priestley, Edwards, Crombie, happiness without the belief of it; that Toplady, and Belsham, have written on it inspires gratitude, excites confidence, the side of necessity; while Clarke, teaches resignation, produces humility, King, Law, Reid, Butler, Price, Bryant, and draws the soul to God. It is also Wollaston, Horsley, Beattie, Gregory, observed, that to deny necessity is to and Butterworth, have written against deny the foreknowledge of God, and to it. To state all their arguments in this wrest the sceptre from the hand of the place, would take up too much room; Creator, and to place that capricious suffice it to say, that the Anti-necessa- and undefinable principle-The self-derians suppose that the doctrine of ne- termining power of man, upon the cessity charges God as the author of throne of the universe. Beside, say sin; that it takes away the freedom of || they, the Scripture places the doctrine the will, renders man unaccountable, beyond all doubt, Job xxiii. 13, 14. Job makes sin to be no evil, or morality or xxxiv. 29. Prov. xvi. 4. Is. xlv. 7. Acts virtue to be no good; precludes the use xiii. 48. Eph. i. 11. 1 Thess. iii. 3. Matt. of means, and is of the most gloomy ten- x. 29, 30. Matt. xviii. 7. Luke xxiv. 26. dency. The Necessarians deny these John vi. 37. See the works of the to be legitimate consequences, and ob- above-mentioned writers on the subject; serve that the Deity acts no more im- and articles MATERIALISTS, and PREmorally in decreeing vicious actions, than in permitting all those irregularities which he could so easily have prevented. The difficulty is the same on each hypothesis. All necessity, say they, doth not take away freedom. The actions of a man may be at one and the same time free and necessary too. It was infallibly certain that Judas would betray Christ, yet he did it voluntarily. Jesus Christ necessarily became man, and died, yet he acted freely. A good man doth naturally and necessarily love his children, yet voluntarily. It is part of the happiness of the blessed to love God unchangeably, yet freely, for it would not be their happiness if done by compulsion. Nor does it, says the Necessarian, render man unac-vering obedience. countable, since the Divine Being does no injuries to his rational faculties; and man, as his creature, is answerable to him; besides he has a right to do what DESTINATION. NECROLOGY, formed of vexpos, dead, and Ayos, discourse, or enumeration; a book anciently kept in churches and monasteries, wherein were registered the benefactors of the same, the time of their deaths, and the days of their commemoration; as also the deaths of the priors, abbots, religious canons, &c. This was otherwise called calendar and obituary. NECROMANCY, the art of revealing future events, by conversing with the dead. See DIVINATION. NEONOMIANS, so called from the Greek ves, new, and vous, law; signifying a new law, the condition whereof is imperfect, though sincere and perse Neonomianism seems to be an essential part of the Arminian system. "The new covenant of grace which, through the medium of Christ's death, the Fa |