then learning, you will find abundant evidence of the same sort, which they who are disaffected to the Christian system, and would set up the classics against the Bible, will never like to hear of; but will endeavour to discountenance all such things, and dismiss them in the lump, as if they had no relation to the sacred history, but such as fancy or partiality hath given them. LETTER XV. ON THE SAME SUBJECT. AS you seemed to be entertained with those passages of Horace which are parallel to the Sacred History, I shall lead you on to some more passages of the same sort in other authors; and if you should not understand all of them critically at present, I hope the time will come when you will find little or no difficulty in any of them. Herod, you know, who was king in Judæa at the birth of Christ, slew all the children in Bethlehem. By birth and education he was a Jew, and as such would eat no swine's flesh. Macrobius, a learned heathen writer in the earliest times of the Church, tells us, that the slaughter of infants by Herod was so sudden and indiscriminate, that Herod's own child, then at nurse, was put to death among the rest; which fact being told to the emperor Augustus, he made this reflection upon it, that "it was better to be Herod's hog than A a VOL. V. his son." You will naturally argue upon this case, that if Augustus actually said this, Herod's child was slain: if so, the infants were slaughtered in Bethlehem; Jesus Christ was born there; the Wise Men of the East came to worship him, and reported his birth to Herod, &c. as the Gospel relates; for all these circumstances hang together, and account for one another. Tacitus and Suetonius, both bitter enemies to the Christians, agree in relating that extraordinary circumstance of a persuasion generally prevailing among the heathens, about the time of Christ's birth, that a king should come from the East. The Roman senate were in such a panic at the apprehension of a king, that they were about to make a decree, that no child born in a certain year should be brought up, lest this great king should arise among themselves. Some temporizing Jews, called Herodians, flattered Herod that he was the king expected; and it is probable this opinion, which they had infused into him, made him so jealous of a rival, when the birth of Christ was reported to him. Persius, in his fifth satire, alludes to the extraordinary pomp and illumination with which Herod's birth-day was celebrated even in the reign of Nero. But the manner in which this tradition operated upon Virgil is still more extraordinary, and little short of a prodigy. It produced from that serious and cautious poct, the wonderful eclogue entitled Pollio; the imagery and expressions of which are so different from the Roman style, and so near to the language of the prophet Isaiah, that if this eclogue had been written as early as the days of Hesiod, the infidels of this time would most probably undertaken to prove, that the prophet had borrowed from the poet. 6 Bishop Lowth has shewn, with great judgment, that this eclogue could not possibly be meant of any one of those persons to whom heathen critics have applied it: and it does not appear how we can give any rational account of it, unless we allow that the poet had seen the predictions of the prophet, and accommodated the matter of them to the prevailing expectation of the times; ascribing them unjustly to a Sibylline oracle of heathen original, because nothing great was to be allowed to the Jews. It will be worth your attention to consider some of the particulars minutely. He calls the time in which this wonderful person is to be born, ultima ætas, the last days, after the manner of the Scripture: God, saith the apostle, hath in these last days spoken unto us, by his Son. According to the prophet Daniel, the Messiah was to finish the transgression, and to make an end of sins, and to make reconciliation for iniquity. So saith the poet: Te duce siqua manent sceleris vestigia nostri, The prophet Isaiah saith, unto us a child is born; unto us a son is given; and his name shall be called, the mighty God, the Prince of Peace: the sense of all which is thus expressed in the eclogue, Ille Deum vitam accipiet, divisque videbit The scenery by which the prophet hath figuratively signified the times of the Gospel is minutely adopted, being extremely beautiful and poetical-The wilderness and the solitary place shall be glad; the desert shall rejoice, and blossom as the rose; the wolf shall dwell with the lamb, &c. At tibi prima puer nullo munuscula cultu - If the prophet informs us that serpents should no longer hurt or destroy, the poet saith the same: Occidet et serpens, et fallax herba veneni Instead of expatiating any farther on the passages of this poem, let me recommend to your perusal Mr. Pope's Imitation of it, entitled The Messiah; and let me observe upon the whole, that if Virgil had received his intelligence from Bethlehem, and had thereupon searched the prophets for materials, he could scarcely have risen higher in his description: so very extraordinary is the whole tenor of that eclogue. "Truly," says the learned Casaubon, "I must confess, though I have read that poem pretty often (on Christmas-day, after church-service, I seldom omitted it) yet I still read it with great delight and admiration; not so much for the loftiness of the verse, which is admirable, but for the clear evidence of God's hand and providence in it, which I think none can doubt or question, but they that can believe the world was made of atoms." I borrow this observation from his treatise on Cre dulity, and Incredulity p. 144; a precious little work, which is worthy to be considered by every Christian scholar. I have hitherto presented to you such passages as have already attracted the notice of learned men. To these I may now add some others which are less open to observation. If you examine the story of Aristæus, in the fourth book of Virgil's Georgics, you will see the poet opening a passage for him through the waters by a miracle; and he describes the fact in terms as much like those in the book of Exodus, as if they had been professedly taken from it: -Simul alta jubet discedere latè Flumina, qua juvenis gressus inferret; at illum Georg. iv. 359. This passage in the Georgics reminds me of another in Callimachus, which describes a miraculous act, parallel to that of Moses in the wilderness, when he smote the rock with his rod, and brought forth water for the people in abundance; as related Numb. xx. 11. Thus does Rhea, in a land of drought, command the earth to bring forth its waters; she lifts up her arm on high, strikes a mountain with her sceptre, which is instantly parted asunder, and pours forth water abundantly: -αν ανύσασα θεα μεγαν ὑψοθι πηχυν Πληξεν όρος σκηπτρω το δε οι διχα πολυ διεση, Εκ δ' εχεεν μεγα γεύμα. Call. Προς τον Δια. 1. 30. You will think it less remarkable that the poet Callimachus should use such language, when I tell |