Who were the first hermits cannot easily be known; though Paul, surnamed the hermit, is generally reckoned the first. The persecutions of Decius and Valerian were supposed to have occasioned their first rise. HERMOGENIANS, a sect of ancient heretics; denominated from their leader Hermogenes, who lived towards the close of the second century. Hermogenes established matter as his first principle; and regarding matter as the fountain of all evil, he maintained, that the world, and everything contained in it, as also the souls of men and other spirits, were formed by the Deity from an uncreated and eternal mass of corrupt matter. The opinions of Hermogenes with regard to the origin of the world, and the nature of the soul, were warmly opposed by Tertullian. HERNHUTERS. See MORAVIANS. HERODIANS, a sect among the Jews, at the time of our Saviour. Matt. xxii. 16; Mark iii. 6. The critics and commentators are very much divided with regard to the Herodians. St. Jerome, in his dialogue against the Luciferians, takes the name to have been given to such as owned Herod for the Messiah; and Tertullian and Epiphanius are of the same opinion. But the same Jerome, in his comment on Matthew, treats this opinion as ridiculous; and maintains that the Pharisees gave this appellation, by way of ridicule, to Herod's soldiers, who paid tribute to the Romans; agreeable to which the Syrian interpreters render the word by the domestics of Herod, i. e. "his courtiers." M. Simon, in his notes on the 22d chapter of Matthew, advances a more probable opinion: the name Herodian he imagines to have been given to such as adhered to Herod's party and interest, and were for preserving the government in his family, about which were great divisions among the Jews. F. Hardouin will have the Herodians and Sadducees to have been the same. Dr. Prideaux is of opinion that they derived their name from Herod the Great; and that they were distinguished from the other Jews by their concurrence with Herod's scheme of subjecting himself and his dominions to the Romans, and likewise by complying with many of their heathen usages and customs. This symbolizing with idolatry upon views of interest and worldly policy, was probably that leaven of Herod, against which our Saviour cautioned his disciples. It is further probable that they were chiefly of the sect of the Sadducees: because the leaven of Herod is also denominated the leaven of the Sadducees. HERVEY, JAMES, M.A., the distinguished author of "Meditations," bearing his name, was born at Hardingstone, near Northampton, on February the 26th, 1713. His father was a clergyman, then residing at Collingtree; and Mr. Hervey received from him, and his excellent mother, his early education. At the age of seven they sent him to the grammar school of Northampton, where he remained till he was seventeen. He there acquired a knowledge of the Greek and Latin languages, and attained considerable proficiency in various branches of general literature. At the age of eighteen he was sent to the University of Oxford; and there, becoming acquainted with the distinguished John Wesley, he devoted himself, with great zeal, to various studies, and became seriously impressed with the importance of religion. For some years afterwards he felt a peculiar attachment to the doctrinal sentiments of Mr. Wesley; but subsequently conceiving such sentiments to be erroneous, he attached himself to the Calvinists. During the continuance of Mr. Hervey at Lincoln College, he attained great proficiency in the knowledge of the classics, and was justly celebrated for the decorousness of his conduct. At the age of twenty-two, his father appointed him to the situation of curate of Weston Favel, and he discharged the duties of his office with piety and integrity. In a few years he was curate at Biddeford, and several other places in the west of England; and, during that time, he wrote his celebrated "Meditations and Contemplations," which he published in 1746, and which have been universally read, and very generally admired. In 1750, on the death of his father, he succeeded to the livings of Weston and Collingtree, and he devoted most of his time in attention to the duties of his profession. In 1753 he published "Remarks on Lord Bolingbroke's Letters on the Study and Use of History, so far as they relate to the History of the Old Testament, &c.; in a Letter to a Lady of Quality;" and a recommendatory Preface to Burnham's Pious Memorials. In 1755 he published his "Theron and Aspasio," which is regarded as decidedly the best effort of his genius; but it was attacked by Mr. Robert Sandeman, of Edinburgh, with extraordinary ability, on the nature of justifying faith, and other points connected with it, in a work, entitled, "Letters on Theron and Aspasio," two volumes. (See the article SANDEMAN.) This] attack threw Mr. Hervey into the arms of Mr. W. Cudworth, a dissenting minister in London, in whom he found a powerful coadjutor; but Mr. Hervey does not appear to have understood Cudworth's system, which, in some important points, was very different from his own, though they were agreed in making appropriation essential to the nature of true faith. The health of Mr. Hervey was generally imperfect; and for many years he was the subject of affliction; till, at length, on December the 25th, 1758, his labours were terminated by death, and his spirit, emancipated from the burdens of mortality, was conducted to regions of purity and peace. Mr. Hervey's writings have had an extensive circulation: for many years the press could hardly supply the demand for them. Yet his style has been severely censured by Dr. Blair and others for its turgid and bombastic qualities; rendering it the very opposite of the chaste and elegant diction of Addison and our best prose writers. They are now, however, less in repute and less in demand than formerly. Of his character but one opinion prevails: he was eminently pious, though not deeply learned; habitually spiritually minded; zealous for the doctrines of divine grace; animated with ardent love to the Saviour; and his humility, meekness, submission to the will of God, and patience under his afflicting hand, exemplified the Christian character, and adorned his profession. HESYCASTS, certain eastern monks, so called from the Greek word yovxacw, which signifies to be quiet. Their distinguishing tenet was that of the Messalians, who maintained that, abandoning all labour, we should give ourselves wholly to religious exercises, especially to contemplation. They appeared about Constantinople in the year 1340; and because they fixed their eyes upon their belly, while engaged in prayer, regarding the navel as the seat of the soul, they were likewise called Omphalopsychi or Umbilici. They were joined by Gre gory Palamas, archbishop of Thessalo nica, who was attacked by the monk Barlaam, and the order was condemned in a synod held at Constantinople in the year 1342. HETERODOX, something that is contrary to the faith or doctrine established in what has been accounted the true church. See ORTHODOX. HEXAPLA, a Bible disposed in six columns, containing the text, and divers versions thereof, compiled and published by Origen, with a view to secure the sacred text from future corruptions, and to correct those that had been already introduced. Eusebius relates that Origen, after his return from Rome under Caracalla, applied himself to learn Hebrew, and began to collect the several versions that had been made of the sacred writings, and of these to compose his Tetrapla and Hexapla; others, however, will not allow him to have begun till the time of Alexander, after he had retired into Palestine, about the year 231. To conceive what this Hexapla was, it must be observed, that, besides the translation of the sacred writings, called the Septuagint, made under Ptolemy Philadelphus, above 280 years before Christ, the Scripture had been since translated into Greek by other interpreters. The first of those versions, or (reckoning the Septuagint) the second, was that of Aquila, a proselyte Jew, the first edition of which he published in the 12th year of the emperor Adrian, or about the year of Christ 128; the third was that of Symmachus, published, as is commonly supposed, under Marcus Aurelius, but as some say, under Septimius Severus, about the year 200; the fourth was that of Theodotion, prior to that of Symmachus, under Commodus, or about the year 175. These Greek versions, says Dr. Kennicott, were made by the Jews from their corrupted copies of the Hebrew, and were designed to stand in the place of the Seventy, against which they were prejudiced, because it seemed to favour the Christians. The fifth was found at Jericho, in the reign of Caracalla, about the year 217; and the sixth was discovered at Nicopolis, in the reign of Alexander Severus, about the year 228; lastly, Origen himself recovered part of a seventh, containing only the Psalms. Now, Origen, who had held frequent disputations with the Jews in Egypt and Palestine, observing that they always objected to those passages of Scripture quoted against them, appealed to the Hebrew text, the better to vindicate those passages, and confound the Jews, by showing that the Seventy had given the sense of the Hebrew; or rather to show, by a number of different versions, what the real sense of the Hebrew was, undertook to reduce all these several versions into a body, along with the Hebrew text, so as they might be easily confronted, and afford a mutual light to each other. He made the Hebrew text his standard; and allowing that corruptions might have happened, and that the old Hebrew copies might and did read differently, he contented himself with marking such words or sentences as were not in his Hebrew text, nor the later Greek versions, and adding such words or sentences as were omitted in the Seventy, prefixing an asterisk to the additions, and an obelisk to the others. In order to this, he made choice of eight columns; in the first he made the Hebrew text, in Hebrew characters; in the second, the same text in Greek characters; the rest were filled with the several versions above mentioned; all the columns answering verse for verse, and phrase for phrase; and in the Psalms there was a ninth column for the seventh version. This work Origen called 'Ezana, Hexapla, q. d. sextuple, or work of six columns, as only regarding the first six Greek versions. St. Epiphanius, taking in likewise the two columns of the text, calls the work Octapla, as consisting of eight columns. This celebrated work, which Montfaucon imagines consisted of sixty large volumes, perished long ago; probably with the library at Cæsarea, where it was preserved in the year 653; though several of the ancient writers have preserved us pieces thereof, particularly St. Chrysostom on the Psalms, Phileponus in his Hexameron, &c. Some modern writers have earnestly endeavoured to collect fragments of the Hexapla, particularly Flaminius, Nobilius, Drusius, and F. Montfaucon, in two folio volumes, printed at Paris in 1713. An edition was also published by Bahrdt in two volumes 8vo., which is convenient for reference. HIERACITES, heretics in the third century; so called from their leader Hierax, a philosopher, of Egypt, who taught that Milchisedec was the Holy Ghost, denied the resurrection, and condemned marriage, HIE tablishment, or a church governed by HIERARCHY, an ecclesiastical espriests, from iepa, sacred, and apxn, government. presbyters and bishops, stood at the Though elders, called constitution was democratic, each of the head of the primitive churches, yet their members having a share in all the conthe election of office-bearers, the admiscerns of the association, and voting in sion of new members, and the expulsion of offenders. Soon, however, the government was transferred into the hands of the officers, or, more properly speaking, was assumed by them; and, in the second century, some of their number, arrogating to themselves exclusively the title of bishops, acquired a superiority and, in many cases, all the members of over the other presbyters, though these, the churches, retained some share in the government. The bishops residing in the capitals of provinces soon acquired a superiority over the provincial bishops, and were called metropolitans. They, in their turn, became subject to a still higher order, termed patriarchs; and thus a complete aristocratic constitution was formed, which continues in the Greek church to this day; but in the Latin it was speedily transformed into a monarchy, centring in the person of the pope. government of the church, the term Besides thus designating the internal hierarchy is sometimes used to denote the dominion of the church over the state. In the first centuries the church had no connexion with the state, and was for the most part persecuted by it. After its amalgamation with it, under Constantine the Great, it obtained protection, but was dependent on the temporal ruler, who asserted the right of convoking general councils, and nominating the metropolitans, and otherwise frequently interfered in the internal affairs of the church. It was the same in the Gothic, Lombard, and Frankish states. The hierarchical power, however, especially, exerted himself to enforce its was incessantly at work; Gregory VII. claims. It was greatly promoted by the crusades; and thus, from the end of the century, the hierarchical influence was eleventh to the middle of the thirteenth rendered predominant. The church bestate, and stood, in public opinion, above came an institution elevated above the all secular princes. The papal tiara was the sun; the imperial crown the moon. From the fourteenth century the hierarchy began gradually to decline; it was shaken almost to its foundations by the attacks of the Reformers; and the remains of its principles, as still existing in the different Protestant establishments, as well as in the Roman, are becoming daily more and more weakened by the influence of public opinion, and a firm determination, on the part of the people, to obtain the full enjoyment of those civil and religious rights which have been arrogantly and wantonly wrested from them.-The word is also used in reference to the subordination some suppose there is among the angels; but whether they are to be considered as having a government or hierarchy among themselves, so that one is superior in office and dignity to others; or whether they have a kind of dominion over one another; or whether some are made partakers of privileges others are deprived of, cannot be determined, since Scripture is silent as to this matter. HIERONYMITES, hermits of the order of St. Jerome, established in 1373, which wears a white habit with a black scapulary. In the Netherlands, and in Spain, where it was devoted to a contemplative life, and possessed among other convents the splendid one of St. Laurence, in the Escurial, the sepulchre of the kings, this order became one of the most opulent and considerable. In Sicily, the West Indies, and Spanish America, it possesses convents. HIGH CHURCHMEN, a term first given to the non-jurors, who refused to acknowledge William III. as their lawful king, and who had very proud notions of church power; but it is now commonly used in a more extensive signification, and is applied to all those who, though far from being non-jurors, yet form pompous and ambitious conceptions of the authority and jurisdiction of the church. It has generally been found that, both in the Episcopal and Presbyterian establishments, those who have been most violent in their efforts to uphold and vindicate hierarchical power, and the exclusive claims of the church, have been the most indifferent to the interests of evangelical truth, and the practice of scriptural piety; but within these few years many of those who are in repute as the advocates of gospel-doctrine, have gradually been contracting in their liberality, and assuming an air and tone of high churchmanship, approximating to those of the party who regard them as a kind of half dissenters or schismatics. HIGH MASS is that mass which is read before the high altar on Sundays, feast days, and particular occasions, such as the celebration of a victory, &c. HILLEL, a famous Jewish rabbi, who lived a little before the time of Christ. He was born at Babylon, and was the disciple of Shammaï. At the age of forty he went to Jerusalem, where he applied himself to the study of the law, and, at the age of fourscore, was made head of the Sanhedrim. Differing in opinions from his master Shammaï, their disciples engaged in the quarrel, and several persons were killed on both sides. By the Jews, Hillel is extolled to the skies, and is said to have educated upwards of a thousand pupils in the knowledge of the law, among whom were thirty who were worthy that the Spirit of God should have rested on them as he did on Moses; thirty who, like Joshua, were worthy to stop the sun in his course; and twenty little inferior to the first, and superior to the second. Rabbi Hillel was the grandfather of Gamaliel, Paul's master. HISTORY, ECCLESIASTICAL. See ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY. HOFFMANISTS, those who espoused the sentiments of Daniel Hoffman, professor in the university of Helmstadt, who in the year 1598 taught that the light of reason, even as it appears in the writings of Plato and Aristotle, is adverse to religion; and that the more the human understanding is cultivated by philosophical study, the more perfectly is the enemy supplied with weapons of defence. HOHENLOHE, PRINCE, the eighteenth son of Charles Albert, the Crown Prince, who was disqualified for taking the reigns of government by mental derangement. At the wish of his mother, he determined to study for the clerical profession, and an ex-Jesuit was his first instructor. He studied in Vienna and Berne, and finished his studies at Ellwangen, under the care of his uncle, the suffragan bishop, and was ordained deacon by the Chapter of Olmutz. At this time he was fond of conversing with such as believed in wonders; and after visiting Rome, where he lived in a Jesuits' College, he returned to Germany, where he was considered by his colleagues as devoted to the interests of Jesuitism, and the inveterate enemy of knowledge. In 1820 he wrote a pamphlet, dedicated to the emperors Francis and Alexander, and the King of Prussia, in which he attempts to prove that none but a true Christian, by which he means a Roman Catholic, can be a faithful subject of government. Having become acquainted with a Baden peasant, Martin Michel, who for several years had the repute of working miraculous cures, he was persuaded by this pretended thaumaturgist, that, being a priest, it would be much easier for him to perform miracles! The experiment was made. The princess Matilda of Schwartzenberg, who had been grievously afflicted with a distortion of the spine, from which she had been partially cured by a skilful physician, was called on by the priest and the peasant to walk, and she succeeded. He now tried his powers alone, and multitudes flocked to him for cures. Many were in fact benefited; many believed that they were; but many went away in despair because they could not believe. His attempts in the hospitals of Würtzburg and Bamberg failed, and the police were ordered not to allow him to try his experiments, except in their presence. A prince of Hildburghausen called in his aid; but his suffering eyes soon became worse in consequence of his exchanging the use of medicine for faith in the miraculous energies of Hohenlohe. In 1821 he laid a statement of his miracles before the pope, the answer to which is not known; only it is rumoured that his holiness expressed much doubt respecting them, and hints were received from Rome, that the process should no longer be called the working of miracles, but priestly prayers for healing. Since then he has pretended to cure persons at a distance, and cases have been published of cures performed, in one instance at Marseilles, and in another in Ireland, and several others, by appointing an hour in which the individual should unite their prayers with his. Much has been done by Mr. Hornthal, an officer of Bamberg, towards checking the progress of his delusion. The prince is a person of fine exterior, gentle manners, a most insinuating voice, and good pulpit talents. HOLINESS, freedom from sin, or the conformity of the heart to God. It does not consist in knowledge, talents, nor outward ceremonies of religion, but hath its seat in the heart, and is the effect of a principle of grace implanted by the Holy Spirit. Eph. ü. 8, 10; John iii. 5; Rom. vi. 22. It is the essence of happiness and the basis of true dignity. Prov. iii. 17; Prov. iv. 8. It will manifest itself by the propriety of our conversation, regularity of our temper, and uniformity of our lives. It is a principle progressive in its operation. Prov. iv. 18, and absolutely essential to the enjoyment of God here and hereafter. Heb. xii. 14. See SANCTIFICATION. WORKS. HOLINESS OF GOD is the purity and rectitude of his nature. It is an essential attribute of God, and the glory, lustre, and harmony of all his other perfections. Ps. xxvii. 4; Exod. xv. 11. He could not be God without it. Deut. xxxii. 4. It is infinite and unbounded; it cannot be increased or diminished. Immutable and invariable. Mal. iii. 6. God is originally holy; he is so of and in himself, and the author and promoter of all holiness among his creatures. The holiness of God is visible by his works; he made all things holy. Gen. i. 31. By his providences, all which are to promote holiness in the end. Heb. xii. 10. By his grace, which influences the subjects of it to be holy. Tit. ii. 10, 12. By his word, which commands it. 1 Pet. i. 15. By his ordinances, which he hath appointed for that end. Jer. xliv. 4, 5. By the punishment of sin in the death of Christ. Is. liii., and by the eternal punishment of it in wicked men. Matt. xxv. last verse. See ATTRIBUTES. HOLOCAUST, formed from oλos, "whole," and raw, "I consume with fire;" a kind of sacrifice wherein the whole burnt-offering was burnt or consumed by fire, as an acknowledgment that God, the Creator, Preserver, and Lord of all, was worthy of all honour and worship, and as a token of men's giving themselves entirely up to him. It is called in scripture a burnt-offering. Sacrifices of this sort are often mentioned by the Heathens as well as Jews. They appear to have been in use long before the institution of the other Jewish sacrifices by the law of Moses. Job i. 5. Job xlii. 8. Gen. xxii. 13. Gen. viii. 20. On this account, the Jews, who would not allow the Gentiles to offer on their altar any other sacrifices peculiarly enjoined by the law of Moses, admitted them by the Jewish priests to offer holocausts, because these were a sort of sacrifices prior to the law, and common to all nations. During their subjection to the Romans, it was no uncommon thing for those Gentiles to offer sacrifices to the |