and glory, and represents them as kings and judges, who shall shine in heaven, and exercise there a jurisdiction as glorious, as their humiliation was on earth contemptible. He commends virginity, and opposes it to the many disorders of lust and incontinence, and, in particular, inveighs against the sin of adulterers, whose posterity he shews to be unfortunate, and of short continuance..

He speaks of wisdom in the most magnificent and pompous terms, in such a manner, that he often attributes to her what in strictness, belongs only to the divinity itself, of whom she is a ray and emanation. He gives her the name of the Spirit of God, the Holy Spirit, Creator, which fills and knows all things, and is Almighty; one in essence, but manifold and diversified in her operations. He says, that wisdom is a sort of efflux or vapour, which issues and proceeds from the sovereign virtue of God, an emanation of his splendor, the brightness of the everlasting light, the spotless mirror of the majesty of God, and the express image of his goodness: That being but one, she can do all things, and continuing the same, renovates, or makes all things new. That none are beloved of God who are not filled with wisdom; that she is always about his throne, and was present at, and assisted in the first creation of man. He prays to the Lord to send her down from heaven, that she may instruct him, and be his guide and assistant.

He shews the advantages which wisdom procures to men by his own happy experience; that Adam, who fell at the beginning, recovered himself by wisdom; that through her, Noah had the happiness to please God, and to preserve himself pure and unspotted in the midst of a wicked and perverse generation; that it was wisdom which preserved Abraham from the general corruption of the world, and Lot in the destruction of Sodom. He relates the history of Jacob. and Joseph; that of Moses and the Hebrews in Egypt and in the desert; and the principal miracles that God wrought in their favour, and always ascribes to wisdom the glory of them. He draws an elaborate and judicious parallek of the different manner in which God treated the Egyptians and the Hebrews, and compares the just severity of God towards the former, with the many signal instances of favour shewn to the latter. He enlarges upon the original of idolatry, and shews its folly, progress, fatal consequences and effects, and foretels its ruin and downfal. That idolaters are the most senseless of all men, and their blindness absolutely inexcusable, in not discovering and finding out the true God by the help and scale of the creatures. And in general it may be said, that in no other book of Scripture, nobler and more grand conceptions. of the Deity are to be met with than in this.msdhon

There are some particular sentiments in this book, which have made some doubt of the inspiration of the author, and of the canonicalness of the book itself. We shall examine, in a particular Dissertation, what he says about the original of idolatry. There is some difficulty in what he asserts with respect to his own soul, that it being naturally good, had the happiness to light into a body likewise pure and undefiled, ch. viii. 20. We have examined the passage in the course of this work, and shewn, that he speaks there only of natural at he speaks t there only of natural parts, and not of any moral qualities or endowments. of e He says in another place, that Joseph had the sceptre of Egypt, which is not mentioned in the Books of Moses; and that the Hebrews, whilst they remained there, under the bondage of Pharaoh, were a just and irreproachable people, which is contrary to what Ezekiel and other prophets say of them, who accuse them of idolatry in that very country. He approves of the Hebrews spoiling the Egyptians of their goods, as being only the just recompence of their labour, which before was so badly requited. He adds likewise many particulars to Moses's account: He seems to believe that Abraham lived at the time of the building of the tower of Babel, and that wisdom prevented him from consenting to that bold and presumptuous design, and kept him free. from idolatry, which, like an inundation, overspread the earth. He accuses the Canaanites of magic, eating human flesh, worshipping flies and insects, which the Scriptures do not charge them with. It is true indeed, that the Philistines adored Beelzebub, the god of flies; but these people were not of the race of Canaan, nor of his extraction.

He says, that the fire which fell with hail and rain upon Egypt, spared those animals which plagued the Egyptians, supposing that the frogs, flies, and locusts were still subsisting at that time, which is contrary to the account of Moses. He speaks of manna, as a food prepared in heaven, as the nourishment of angels, and in which the Hebrews found every thing agreeable to

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their palate that they could wish for; whereas Moses tells us, that the taste of manna was like that of wafers, or bread prepared with oil; that the Israelites were so surfeited with it, that they disliked the very sight of it. He makes apparitions and spectres to haunt the Egyptians during the three days darkness in Egypt, supposing them to be visible by the light of some sudden and occasional flashes; and adds some circumstances about the Israelites passage through the Red Sea, which seems fabulous, as what he says of grass and flowers appearing at the bottom of it, to make their journey more easy and delightsome; and, in fine, seems to believe, that the quails which fell in the wilderness, round about the camp of the Hebrews, was a miraculous production, like that of the flies and frogs which Moses brought upon the land of Egypt.

But to all this we may answer in general, 1. That it is a piece of natural justice due to an author, that is not living nor capable of explaining his own sentiments, to understand his expressions in the most favourable sense, and not to impute a bad meaning to him, as long as one is not forced to it by the plain evidence of his own words: Now we have shewn in the comment, that there are none of these passages which have been excepted against, but what may be understood in a good and consistent sense. 2. With respect to the additions which are complained of, it is common, we know, both in sacred and profane history, for one writer to supply what hath been omitted by another.

"This answer will hold, it may be replied, when two authors cotemporary, or nearly so, record the same fact; but the case is quite otherwise here, as the author of this book lived many ages after Moses." To this we rejoin, that there are two ways by which the memory of events may be transmitted to posterity, viz. by scripture or by tradition. If the author could not come to the knowledge of these particulars by the first of these ways, he might learn them by the second. But if this author was inspired, as we assert, and shall hereafter shew, there is no withstanding the force of his evidence, unless there could be found in his account of things some manifest contradiction to the sacred history, or sentiments contrary to truth and religion, which can never be shew.n.

For, with regard to Joseph's having the sceptre of Egypt, it is not to be understood of a kingdom or sovereignty properly so called; it means only that he was the second person in the king. dom, and had a very extensive rule over all that country. And do not Joseph's own brethren say as much?" Joseph is yet alive, and is ruler over all the land of Egypt." As to the Hebrews, who lived under the cruel bondage of Pharaoh, loaded and overwhelmed with hardships, they were just and irreproachable with respect to that king and his subjects, who had cruelly enslaved them, though not so indeed in regard to God, who permitted their slavery to punish their idolatry.The spoil of the goods of the Egyptians by the Hebrews is not condemned any where in scripture; and such as have wrote on that subject, justify the action by many substantial reasons.What this author says of the Canaanites is but too true. The description which the scripture gives of their abominations is much more shocking than any thing said of them in this book. We have already answered, in general, to the objection drawn from the addition to the sacred account; the rest will be discussed in the Commentary itself. Some have raised an argument from the author himself," If he is not the real Solomon, why does he endeavour to pass for that prince? Can the Holy Spirit inspire a writer to personate what he is not?" We answer, that such an artifice in this writer, whoever he be, is neither fraudulent nor false. It is no more than a sort of prosopopaia, an ingenious fiction, whereby a writer, to give more weight and authority to the instructions delivered, assumes the name and person of another more ancient. The woman of Tecoah speaks in such a disguised manner, when she pretends before the king to have lost one of her sons, 2 Sam. xiv. 4. By the same artifice, one of the sons of the prophets feigns himself wounded for having let a prisoner escape, 1 Kings xx. 35. Thus Nathan reproved David for his sin with Bathsheba, under the significant parable of the ewe lamb. And thus the prophets introduce God, Moses, Abraham as occasionally talking, to render their discourses, by such a fiction, the more lively and affecting.

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The author of this book designed to give the heathens a just idea of the original and end of true wisdom. The Greeks were passionately fond of philosophy; but they knew not its true origin, ascribing it to their own industry and pains, which the wise man, in this treatise, shews to be the gift of God. They make it consist in fruitless speculations, or in rules of a morality merely chimerical (as was that of the Stoics, which exceeded the power of human nature) or one purely natu

ral, which went no further than common honesty, and the doing such actions as were agreeable to right reason. But this writer proposes to them supernatural wisdom, having God for its end, and holiness for its object. He overthrows idolatry by shewing its ridiculous rise, sad consequences, and the horrors and abominations which accompanied it; that therefore men, and, above all, philosophers are inexcusable, in not knowing and acknowledging God, and transferring to creatures that honour which is due to the Creator only. In a word, he destroys the opinions of the Epicureans and Sadducees, who denied the immortality of the soul, a future judgment, the reality of hell, and the punishments and rewards of another life. After this manner he opposes the principle mistakes of the philosophers, and gives here the plan of a true and sound philosophy. Original sin, the fall, repentance, and recovery of the first man, the rewards and punishments in a future state, are as well, or perhaps more clearly described in this book than in any of the Old Testament, which is of great consequence, to establish the truth of these opinions, and to shew the antiquity of such a belief among the Jews.

The six first chapters of this book are as a preface to the rest of the work; they are a sort of an abridgment of the nine first chapters of the book of Proverbs. In them kings and nobles are exhorted earnestly to the study of wisdom. In the seventh and eighth chapters, the author, assuming the name of Solomon, proposes himself as a pattern, and shews what means he employed to attain true wisdom. One sees there the description of his happy reign, and of his consummate knowledge, agreeably to what is said of it in the first book of Kings. The ninth chapter is a paraphrase on the prayer which Solomon made to God in the beginning of his reign, which is mentioned 1 Kings iii. 6, 7, 8, 9. The tenth chapter, to the end of the book, is a continuation of the same prayer, where he enlarges upon the power of wisdom, and its effects, the evils. which accompany the wicked and inconsiderate, and the rewards of the truly wise and righteous, which he confirms by various instances and examples. The work seems not to have been. finished, or at least the conclusion of it has not reached us, for the author does not finish his prayer, as it is natural to suppose he should, according to his first design.

We shall not enlarge here upon the writer of this book, nor the time in which it was written,. we shall do that in a particular dissertation. The original text is in Greek, which is yet preserved, and it does not appear that it was ever extant in Hebrew, notwithstanding what some authors have thought to the contrary. We find none of those Hebraisms, which are hardly to be avoided by those who translate from the Hebrew, nor any turns but what are usual in the Greek tongue. The author manifestly had read the Heathen writers, and wrote Greek well; he even borrows some expressions which are peculiar to them, as the Giants being drowned in the waters of the deluge; the river of forgetfulness, or Lethe; the kingdom of Pluto, or Hades; Ambrosia, &c. There are some passages, in which he plainly appears to have imitated Plato, and one clearly perceives that he had studied that philosopher. His style is swelling, abounds. with epithets, often obscure, and almost throughout poetical and figurative. The Jewish writ-. . ers had some knowledge of him, and have quoted him sometimes; Rabbi Moses ben Nachman cites particularly chap. vii. 7. which he gives in Syriac, or such Hebrew, as was spoken at Jerusalem in the time of our Saviour..

The author often quotes Scripture, and always according to the Septuagint. Thus ch. v. 10, 11, 12, 13. he compares the life of man to a shadow, to a vessel cutting the waves, to a bird which parts the air, and to narrow shot at a mark, which is taken from Prov. xxx. 19. where the wise man says, according to the LXX, that "there are four things which are hard to be known, the way of an eagle in the air, the way of a serpent upon a rock, the way of a ship in the midst of the sea, and the way of a young man in his youth; but, in the Hebrew, the last clause is," and the way of a young man with a virgin." So that passage in ch. ii. 12. "Let us lie in wait for the righteous, because he is not for our turn," is taken from Is. iii. 10. where the Septuagint reads, "Let us bind the righteous, because he is disagreeable to us;" but, in the Hebrew, it is, "" say ye to the righteous, that all shall be well with him." In his account of the plagues of Egypt, he follows the LXX, particularly in what he says of the flies and locusts. And when he speaks of idols in the xiiith and xivth chapters, he almost, word for word,. copies what we have in Isaiah, Jeremiah, Baruch, and the Psalms on that subject.

The Latin translation which we have of this book is not St Jerom's; it is the ancient Vulgate, used in the church before the time of that father, and made from the Greek, in the first

ages of the church, by an author unknown. The translator does not seem well acquainted with the purity of the Latin tongue, often making use of words that are not used by approved au'thors in that sense; as honestas for riches, honestus for a rich man, respectus or visitatio for the punishment which God inflicts upon the wicked, supervacuitas for vanity, or vain-glory, animalia supervacua for dangerous and noxious animals. The translation keeps very close to the text, and is strictly exact in rendering every single word faithfully, neglecting all ornaments of speech, and the beauties of the Latin idiom. St Jerom, in his preface to the books of Solomon says, that he corrected Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and Canticles, from the ancient version of the LXX, but did not meddle with the translation of this book, or Ecclesiasticus. There are not many various readings in the Greek copies, but a much greater number in the Latin ones. The Complut. edition,, that of Antwerp, and of.Sixtus V. in 1590, afford a great variety, which are corrected in the Bibles of Clement VIII, and in the Vulgate. We have marked them at the bottom of each page in the commentary.

The book of Wisdom was not always received by the church as canonical, as not being admitted into the Jewish Canon of scripture among those books, which were written in their language, and passed through their hands to the Christian Church without any doubt or exception. But such as were written in Greek, as Wisdom and Ecclesiasticus, have been disputed and contested, and the church, always cautious and wary in her decisions, did not decree to admit them for Canonical, till after mature judgment and long deliberation; which slowness in her proceedings and determination, shews, that she did not admit them hastily, or by chance. The scarcity of books in the beginning of Christianity, the great distance of churches from one another, the diffculty of assembling general councils, made each church keep to its own tradition, to admit, or not to admit books, till the truth was at length discovered.

The principal reasons brought against the canonicalness of this book are, 1. That there is no appearance that Philo the Jew, to whom very many authors ascribe it, was inspired; he lived and died a Jew without any knowledge of Jesus Christ, or receiving his gospel. 2. The doubts of some ancient fathers, who have ranked it in the number of disputed writings. That several particular churches left it out of their Canon; and even some late interpreters, as Lyranus and Catejan, did not admit it as indisputably canonical. 3. The Jews not admitting it into their Canon, for it does not appear to have been known among them before the time of Jesus Christ. 4. Internal evidence in the book itself to reject it, as plain imitations of the gospel, and writings of the apostles; the opposition of some passages to the undoubted scriptures; and the addition of others, which appears to have been made on purpose. All that can be objected on this head, we have mentioned before in the body of this preface; and will examine, in the dissertation upon the author of this book, the objections with respect to Philo, and those passages in the gospel and writings of the apostles, which resemble some in this book. We have also answered, both in the commentary and in this preface, the accusation of untruth, which has been urged against this writer. There remains only the difficulty which arises from the Jews not acknowledging it to be canonical, and some of the ancients not receiving it.

The authority of the Jews hath never been of any great weight in the church, particularly of the modern Jews, whose malice and unfair dealing, in every thing relating to our faith and holy religion, is open and notorious. The apostles, whose authority is of infinitely more weight than theirs, have taken quotations and proofs from this book [a]. And it is begging the question to say, that this writer copied from them. They recommended it to the faithful, who have ever since preserved, read, and cited it as inspired scripture, so that we cannot now form any reasonable doubt about its canonicalness. To the testimony of those few among the ancients, who have disputed its authority, we oppose a croud of witnesses in all ages of the church, who have acknowledged and quoted it as divine scripture. In short, to the scruples of those who, seeing antiquity wavering upon this point, have found some difficulty to persuade themselves to admit this book into the Canon, we oppose the third council of Carthage, in 397; that of Sardica, in 347; that of Constantinople in Trullo, in 692; the 11th of Toledo, in 675; that of Florence, in 1438; and lastly, the 4th session of the council Trent, all which expressly admitted this book into the class of Holy Scripture. And there is scarce any ancient father who has not quoted and com[a] See this objection discussed in note on chap. ix. 13. and Bishop Cosin's Scholast. Hist. p. 23.

mended it. Many of them attribute it to Solomon, others to some prophet, and all to an inspired writer [6]. We may therefore reasonably urge upon this occasion, the argument of prescription against our adversaries, and let them produce their title against our quiet possession. Let them attack and confute, if they can, so many councils [c], and those learned ecclesiastical [d] writers [b] Some of the later Fathers, as St Jerom, St Austin, &c. give indeed very honourable titles to the Book of Wisdom, and the other apocryphal books, calling them canonical, sacred, divine; but then they mean not by canonical, as the church of Rome does, canones fidei, a perfect rule of faith; but canones morum et historia, such as are profitable only for instruction, and to inform men in the history of the Jewish church. See Dupin's Biblioth. Pat. tom. i. p. 1. Nor, when they call them sacred or divine, do they mean to equal them to divine scripture, strictly so called, or to make them of the same sovereign authority with the undoubted canonical books themselves, for the establishing matters of faith, or determining controversies in religion. See St Jer. Epist. 7. et Læet. Epist. ad Paul. Præf. in lib. Sol. Aust. de Doctr. Christ. lib. ii. c. 8. Retract. lib. ii. c. 10. De Civit. Dei, lib. xv. c. 23. Cyril. Hieros. in Catech. sect. 4. Euseb. Eccl. Hist. lib. vi. c. 25. Ruffin. in Expos. Symb. [] As the catholics lay the stress of their cause upon these councils, and this learned commentator triumphs in them as their bulwark, it seems proper, and even necessary, to examine into the authority of these councils, and consider how far they prove the point they are brought for. I shall take them in the order as they stand in this preface. With respect to the third council of Carthage, whereat St Austin himself, they say, was present, we reply, 1. This council was not oecumenical, but only a provincial one. 2. The 47th canon (according to Binius) which they urge against us, was not originally in the acts of this council, but added in the time of Pope Boniface. For if this council was held under the consulate of Cæsarius and Atticus in the year 397, as the inscription or title of this council in all copies has it, there can be no such canon in it; for Boniface, to whom this canon refers, was not, at that time, pope of Rome, nor above twenty years after, not till 418. 3. The great and general council of Chalcedon, consisting of 630 bishops, confirmed the code of the universal church; in that code were contained the learned canons of the council of Laodicea, wherein we have the catalogue of the canonical books of scripture; but the canons of the council of Carthage were not confirmed by it, as not having yet any place in it. And therefore we may safely conclude, that neither Pope Leo the First (whose legate subscribed the council for him), nor any of the bishops there gathered together, acknowledged any other books of canonical scripture than what the council of Laodicea (which left out all these books) had declared to be received, and read for such in the church, before their time. 4. The Romanists themselves do not generally allow the authority of this council, to determine what books are canonical: For Wisdom, and the rest of the apocryphal books, have been since rejected by many great and considerable persons among them, as Isidore, Nicephorus, Rabanus Maurus, Hugo, Lyran, Cajetan. See Limborch's Theol. Christ. lib. i. c. 3. Melch. Canus. Loc. Theol. lib. v. cap. ult. Baron. Ann. tom. viii. ad Ann. 692.

The next is that of Sardica, or Sardis, in 347, which was so far from a general council, that it was only a western synod. The canons of this council were never received by the catholic church as general laws, they were never put into the code of the canons of the universal church, which was approved by the great council of Chaleedon, but were first added to the code by Dionysis Exiguus, as those of the council of Carthage likewise were. The east never received these canons, nor would the bishops of Africa own them. The popes only used them, and cited them under the name of the council of Nice, to give them the greater weight and authority. See Dupin's Eccl. Hist. vol. ii. p. 261.

As to that at Constantinople in Trullo, this is only cited by them as confirming the council of Carthage; for in other respects, the canons of this council are not so agreeable to the Roman writers, who represent them as falsified and corrupt. They do not relish the 36th canon, which makes the bishop of Constantinople equal to the bishop of Rome; nor the 55th, which lays some restraints upon the church of Rome. But it is to be well observed, that the 227 bishops here assembled, in the second canon, confirmed also the council of Laodicea (which was 37 years before that of Carthage which they urge), which reckons the canonical books of Scripture as we do, and excludes the rest, in canon 59th, as not properly belonging to them. When, therefore, in the same second canon, they allow also the council of Carthage, they cannot be supposed immediately to contradict themselves, but that they understood the Laodicean council to be taken in one sense, and the council of Carthage in another; the latter extended, in a large and improper acceptation of scripture, to the ecclesiastical books; and the former, in a more strict and proper sense, took in only those books that were really authentic and divine. For in one and the same sense they cannot be taken, nor otherwise be confirmed and stand together. See Cosin's Schol. Hist. sect. 104. Episcop. Instit. Theol. lib. vii. c. 7.

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There is still less to be said in favour of the 11th council of Toledo, which was subscribed only by the archbishop of Toledo, sixteen bishops, two deacons, two bishops deputies, and seven abbots. A number too small and contemptible to make a council!

That of Florence, in 1438, is of so modern a date, that it can be of no great weight. It was assembled by the authority of the Pope, and under his influence and management. In the large tomes and editions of the councils, no such canon, as is pretended, is to be found; it is a decree added by some impostor, probably the epitomizer or abridger of the councils, and is supposed with reason to be a forgery, for nothing was mentioned at this council concerning the canon of scripture. Nor can it be called a general or occumenical council, even in respect of the Latin churches only; many of which neither acknowledged Eugenius or his council; and the