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4642. [Matt. x. 1. Unclean spirits] There are in the world men-angels, and men-devils: heaven is from the former, hell from the latter. A man-angel is continually withdrawn from evil by the Lord, and led to what is good: a mandevil is also continually withdrawn by the Lord from evil, yet only from a more grievous to a less one; he cannot be led to what is good. The man-angel and the man-devil appear like each other as to externals, but internally they are wholly unlike when therefore, their externals are put off by death, their dissimilarity becomes evident, and they are consequently removed, the one to heaven, the other to hell. See SWEDENBORG, on the Athanasian Creed, n. 43.

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4643. [ 3. Alpheus] Alias Cleopas, who lived in Cana of Galilee, and in whose house was the Marriage, mentioned John ii. 1.

4650. feeds only on vegetables.

The dove is a delicate creature, that GEDDES, on Gen. viii. 9.

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4651. [ — 23.] The progress of Christianity was 120 at the Ascension, soon after 3000, then 5000, and in little less than two years after the Ascension to great multitudes at Jerusalem only.

4652.

GIBBON.

26.] Angels and spirits discern the nature and temper of another, the instant he appears in view. They perceive also the quality of his faith; and receive, by communication, a knowledge of his scientific attainments. They penetrate the interior of every idea; perceive the nature, origin and end of each one's affection; and receive, by transmission, another's communicated delights and happiness.

See SWEDENBORG, Arcana, nn 1338-1392.

By a peculiar sphere, spirits are thus known at a distance as to their natures and qualities; that is, as to their affections and persuasions. This sphere exists from the activity of the things in their interior memory.

Ibid. n. 2489.

A sphere from any thing, gives forth the image of the thing itself. See Acts xvi. 9.

Let not man, therefore, any longer believe, that his thoughts are concealed; and that he must not give an account of his thoughts, and of his actions according to the quantity and quality of the thought by which they were influenced; for actions have their quality from the thoughts, as thoughts have their quality from the ends proposed.

Ibid. n. 2488.

4647. 14.] It was customary for the Greeks and Eastern people to shake their clothes, at the door of the house they went from.

Madame DACIER. - Compare Luke x. 11.

4653. [- 29. Sold for a farthing] If Assaron be originally Latin, as Beza pretends, it answers to our halfpenny, or at least to a farthing and a half; but if we understand it of a piece of money of the same name, which was

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4662. [12.] For an intelligible idea of this passage, Dr. GREGORY refers us to the following Tradition of the Jewish elders.-Two men had an inheritance divided betwixt them in equal portions; but it is said of one of them, that he carried away his own part and his fellow's too: therefore they called him Ben Hamtsen, the son of violence, until the day of his death. (Talmud in Joma. c. 4. fol. 30. a.) -Thus the kingdom of heaven, the gospel of the kingdom (Matt. ix. 35 compared with Luke xvi. 16), adds the Doctor, was first offerred to the Jew, with an invitation that he would take his half: This the Jew refusing to do, the Gentile, like a good Ben Hamtsen or son of violence, took his own share, and the Jew's also.

4663.

See Gregory's Notes and Observations, &c. p. 27.

mently. Sce Amos ii. 13.

The kingdom of heaven presseth veheThe kingdom of heaven exciteth, and the excited catch it. See No. 1268.

4664. If the gas exterior to a body be condensed or rarified in any degree, the gas absorbed is condensed or rarified in the same degree.

DALTON'S Chem. Philos. part i. p. 202.

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4666. [——— 15.] Truth is a fine pearl, and the wicked man a crocodile, who cannot take it into his ear, because he has none: Rev. xii. 3. If you throw a pearl to a crocodile, instead of decking himself with it, he will try to devour it, at the risk of breaking his teeth with the effort, and will then fly at you in a rage: Matt. vii. 6.

Truth must be sought for with singleness of heart; it is to be found only in Nature; it is to be told only to the good. St. PIERRE, vol. iv, pp. 538, 562.

4667. [Matt. xi. 27.] A finite can never aspect or directly view the Infinite; but the Infinite can aspect or look at what is infinite from Himself in finites.

See No. 1084. SWEDENBORG, on Divine Providence, n. 53.

4668. [29.] In antient Rome, when a couple were ready for the ceremony (of marriage), they put a yoke on their necks, called conjugium; and hence our word conjugal (rather, conjugial), or yoked together, is derived; a ceremony highly emblematical of the matrimonial state.

4669.

Dr. W. ALEXANDER'S Hist. of Women, vol. ii. p. 252.

As to the Gimmal, or Gemmow (from gamos (Grk.), marriage) Ring; it was constructed, as the name (gimmal, from gemella) imports, of twin or double hoops, which played one within the other, like the links of a chain. Each hoop had one of its sides flat, the other convex; each was twisted once round, and each surmounted by a hand, issuing from an embossed fancy-work wrist or sleeve; the hand rising somewhat above the circle, and extending in the same direction. The course of the twist, in each hoop, was made to correspond with that of its counterpart, so that on bringing together the flat surfaces of the hoops, the latter immediately united in one ring. On the lower hand, or that of which the palm was uppermost, was represented a heart; and, as the hoops closed, the hands slid into contact, forming, with their ornamented wrists, a head to the whole. The device thus presented a triple emblem of love, fidelity and union. The French term for this ring is foi, or alliance; the definition of which, in the Dictionnaire de Trevoux, supposes the two hoops to be composed, one of gold, the other of silver; a distinction evidently meant to characterize the bridegroom and bride.—From a simple love-token, the Gimmal was at length converted into the more serious "sponsalium annulus," or ring of affiance. The lover putting his finger through one of the hoops, and his mistress hers through the other, were thus, symbolically, yoked together; a yoke which neither could be said wholly to wear, one half being allotted to the other.

Archæologia, vol. xiv. p. 7.

4670. It is a trite objection, and grounded on a misapprehension of the design of Christianity, which would represent it as an intolerable yoke, so opposite to the propensities, as to be utterly destructive of the felicity of the human mind. It is in truth quite the reverse; there is not a single precept in the Gospel, without excepting either that which ordains the forgiveness of injuries, or that which commands every one to possess his vessel in sanctification and honor, which is not calculated to promote our happiness. Christianity regulates, but does not extinguish our affections;

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4671. [Matt. xii. 1.] The next day, says ADANSON, I went a herborising and coursing over the beautiful fields on the opposite bank of the river Senegal. At that time (June) they were covered with a large kind of millet, called guiarnatt, or guinea corn: it was now almost ripe, and the negroes had covered the ears with its own leaves, to shelter it from the sparrows. My negroes in order to amuse themselves in this long walk, and to quench their thirst plucked several entire stalks of millet, and sucked the juice, after stripping it of its husk. They gave me some to taste, and I found it sweet and pleasant. I do not doubt but the stalks of millet, prepared in the same manner as sugar canes, would afford a very proper juice for making sugar.

4672. [

Adanson's Voy. to Senegal, in Pinkerton's Coll. part lxvii. p. 615.

26-28.] When two miraculous assertions oppose each other, believe the less miraculous.

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in hell, but are taken out thence. The place where they then are, is in the midst between heaven and hell, and is called the world of spirits. SWEDENBORG, Arcana, nn. 5717, 5852.

4676. [Matt. xii. 50. The same is my brother, and sister, and mother] As the Juno of the Romans was represented to be the wife, mother, and sister of Jupiter. BARTOLOMEO, by Johnston, p. 329.

See No. 1297, 1066.

4677. [Matt. xiii. 3.] Analogy is founded in the very nature of the things ou both sides of the comparison: And the correspondeucy or resemblance is certainly real, though we do not know the exact nature, or manner, or degree of it; at least we may safely presume this from the truth and veracity of God, who has made his Revelations to mankind under the Analogical Conceptions and Language of this world.

Bp. BROWNE'S Procedure of the Understanding, p. 142.

The real nature and intrinsic properties of the divine things as they are in themselves, which are ultimately referred to in our (parables, or) christian doctrines of mysteries, are utterly imperceptible and inconceivable to us; and cousequently are no immediate objects of our present knowledge or faith But the (parabolic) doctrines and propositions in which those things are revealed by a correspondent representation and mediate similitude; are as plain, and obvious, and as easily understood as any thing in nature or in human language.

Bp. BROWNE's Divine Analogy, p. 192.

4678. [ 8.] Mr. Charles Miller of Cambridge sowed some wheat on the second of June 1766, and on the eighth of August one plant was taken up and separated into eighteen parts and replanted; these plants were again taken up and divided between the middle of September and the iniddle of October, and again planted separately to stand the winter, and this second division produced sixty-seven plants. They were again taken up, and divided between the middle of March and the middle of April, and produced five hundred plants. The number of ears thus produced from one grain of wheat was 21,109, which measured three pecks and three quarters of coru, weighed forty-seven pounds seven ounces, and were estimated at 576,840 grains!

Phil Trans. vol. Iviii. p. 203.

4679. [15.] If the eyes of an ass be covered, he

will not stir a step; and, if he be laid down in such a manner that one eye be covered with the grass while the other is hidden with a stone, or whatever is next at hand, he will continue fixed in the same situation, and will not so much as attempt to rise to free himself from those slight impediments. GOLDSMITH'S Hist. of the Earth, vol. ii. p. 382.

4680. [Matt. xiii. 15.] To cure only the understanding, is merely to cure a man outwardly. This would be like a palliative healing, by which the interior malignity, shut in and prevented from making its escape, consumes first the neighbouring parts and afterwards the more remote, till the whole is mortified. It is the will itself which is to be cured, not by an influx of the understanding into it, which never takes place, but by instruction and exhortation from the understanding. If the understanding alone were healed, the man would become like a dead body embalmed, or covered over with fragrant aromatics and roses. Such would be the defilement of celestial truths in the understanding, if the evil love of the will were obstructed.

SWEDENBORG, on Divine Providence, n. 282.

4681. [21] Those whom interest and not affeetion binds to our service, will be the first to desert us in the hour of difficulty and distress. W. WHITE, Junr.

4682. [29, 30.] The roots of wheat and darnel are so intertwined in the earth, that it is often impossible to pull out the one without hurting the other, perhaps bringing it up along with it. Both, therefore, should be left to grow together until harvest: but then the daruel must not be suffered to remain any longer among the good wheat; else would it not only intoxicate and sicken those who might eat of the bread made from it; but likewise spoil the succeeding crop by its pernicious mixture. See Lev. xix. 19.

4683.

Smith's MICHAELIS, vol. iii. p. 347,

During the time of this world, God may be considered as the good Husbandman; he sows the seed, the end of the world is the harvest, the Angels are the reapers; if you are wheat you are to be gathered into the barn, if you are tares it signifies nothing whence, or how, or by what means you are become so; tares are to be rejected because they are tares, and wheat to be gathered by the Angels because it is wheat: This is the Mercy, and Goodness, and discretionary Justice of God, that you are to expect at the last Day. If you are not wheat, that is, if the heavenly Life, or the kingdom of God, is not grown up in you,

it signifies nothing what you have chosen in the stead of it, or why you have chosen it, you are not that, which alone oan help you to a place in the divine granary.

LAW's Appeal, p. 26.

4684. [Matt. xiii. 32.] The mustard-plant thrives so mightily in Chili, says OVALLE, that it is as big as a man's arm, and so high and thick, that it looks like a tree. I have travelled many leagues, through groves, which were taller than horse and man; and the birds build their nests in them, as the gospel mentions in these words (ita ut volucres cœli veniant et habitent in ramis ejus): " so that the birds of the air come and lodge in the branches thereof." Pinkerton's Coll. part Ivi. p.

38.

4685. Near Orotava, the Canary birds (the melodious tenants of the mustard-tree) were in general, says HUMBOLDT, uniformly green; some had a yellow tint on their backs their note was the same as that of the tame canary. The yellow canaries, he adds, are a variety which has taken birth in Europe.

4689. [Matt. xiv. 1. Herod the tetrarch] Alias Herod Antipas, Second Son of Herod the Great, by Malthace.

Verse 3. For Herod had laid hold on John] Herod Philip, by Mariamne.

4690. [7.] Sujeutra, a rich and populous village, fifteen miles from Cambay, belongs, says FORBES, to a set of dancing-girls, who frequently have lands and villages assigned them by the princes of Hindostan. Oriental Memoirs, vol. iii. p. 95.

4691. [8-11.] In Egypt, the officer of the night in his rounds, and the officer of the day in his circuit, judge, condemn, and execute in the twinkling of an eye, without appeal. Executioners attend them, and, on the first signal, the head of the unhappy victim falls into the leathern bag, in which it is received for fear of soiling the place.

VOLNEY'S Trav. vol. i. p. 190.

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4692.

By an antient custom in Persia, the queen had a right, on the king's birth-day, to demand of him any favor that she thought proper; Amestris asked that the wife of Masistus (whom she erroneously supposed to pimp for the king) should be delivered into her hands; whom she had no sooner received than she ordered her breasts, nose, tongue, and lips to be cut off, and thrown to the dogs; and that she should be detained to see her own flesh devoured by them. Dr. W. ALEXANDER's Hist. of Women, vol. i. p. 234.

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4694. [ 17.] Instead of ichthuas (Grk.), used here and in Mark and Luke, John uses opsaria, from opsarion, whatever is eaten with bread. Now Michaelis contends, that Matthew wrote his Gospel in Hebrew about the 8th year after the Ascension of our Lord, or A. D. 41 ; and that the Translation of it into Greek, was made about A. D. 61, or later. Whether this Gospel were written originally in Hebrew or Greek, is a question by which the most eminent critics have been greatly puzzled and divided. The balance however is clearly in favor of a Hebrew original.

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