chancellor the bishop. They were many of them made chancellors for their lives: and he is the fittest man to govern, because divinity so overwhelms all other things.

XIII.

CHANGING SIDES.

I. 'Tis the trial of a man to see if he will change his side; and if he be so weak as to change once, he will change again. Your country fellows have a way to try if a man be weak in the hams, by coming behind him, and giving him a little blow unawares; if he bend once, he will bend again.

2. The lords that fall from the king, after they have got estates by base flattery at court, and now pretend conscience, do as a vintner, that when he first sets up, you may bring your wench to his house, and do your things there; but when he grows rich, he turns conscientious, and will sell no wine on the sabbath-day.

3. Colonel Goring serving first the one side and then

1. 2. for their lives] Singer suggests that 'for their learning' would give a better sense here, but there is no authority for the change.

1. 17. Colonel Goring &c.] Goring, in 1641, gave evidence in Parliament about a real or alleged plot of the King for bringing up the army to London to surprise the Tower and overawe the Parliament. His disclosures were thought so important that he received public thanks 'for preserving the kingdom and the liberties of Parliament.'

In 1642 we hear of him as Governor of Portsmouth, 'having found means to make good impressions again in their Majesties of his fidelity.'

In the course of the same year, having come under the suspicion of the Parliament, and having been called to account by them, he contrived so to clear himself that 'they desired him to repair to his government, and to finish those works which were necessary for the safety of the place.' They supplied him with money for

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the other, did like a good miller, that knows how to grind which way soever the wind sits.

4. After Luther had made a combustion in Germany about religion, he was sent to by the pope, to be taken off, and offered any preferment in the church, that he would make choice of: Luther answered, if he had

the purpose, and gave him a lieutenant-general's commission in the Parliamentary army. On his return to Portsmouth he declared for the King.

His next act was to surrender Portsmouth to the Parliament, treacherously according to Clarendon, but certainly not without having made strenuous efforts for its defence.

In 1643 he was appointed to a command in the King's army at York by the Queen's favour notwithstanding all former failings,' and from this date onwards he continued to serve the King. Clarendon sketches his character and conduct in terms of great bitterness, very unlike Selden's easy-going remark. See Hist. of Rebellion, i. 414-417, 651, 1114–1119; ii. 27, 212, 830 ff.

1. 3. After Luther had made a combustion &c.] The story of the offers made to Luther by the Pope's legate, and of Luther's reply to them, rests on the authority of Father Paul Sarpi. But Selden does not tell it quite fairly to Luther. What Sarpi says is that in 1535 the legate, Vergerio, had a special commission to treat with Luther and with other prominent persons among the reformers, and to make all sorts of promises to them, if only he could bring them to terms. Vergerio, accordingly, arranged a meeting with Luther at Wittemburg, and threw out some very clear hints of what the Pope, Paul III, would do to reward him if he would but cease from troubling the Church and the world. Luther's answer was that the offers had come too late, for he had been driven by the harshness with which he had been formerly treated, to make a more exact enquiry into the errors and abuses of the papacy, and knowing what he now knew he could not in conscience refrain from telling it out to the world. See Istoria del Concilio Tridentino, lib. i. sec. 53 (edition of 1835, in 7 vols.). Luther speaks of this interview in a letter to Jonas, written in the same year, but he says only that he met the Pope's legate by invitation,-' sed quos sermones habuerim non licet homini scribere.' (De Wette, Luther's Briefe, iv. 648.) Sarpi's story must be taken for what it is worth. His authority is not by any means unimpeachable, and Pallavicino (iii. c. 18) ridicules the tale as a romance. I am indebted to the Bishop of Peterborough for all the above references.

offered half as much at first, he would have accepted it, but now he had gone so far, he could not come back. In truth he had made himself a greater thing than they could make him; the German princes courted him; he was become the author of a sect ever after to be called Lutherans. So have our preachers done that are against the bishops, they have made themselves greater with the people than they can be made the other way, and therefore there is the less probability of1 bringing them off. Charity to strangers is enjoined in the text. By strangers 10 is there understood, those that are not of your own kin, strangers to your blood, not those you cannot tell whence they come; that is, be charitable to your neighbours whom you know to be honest poor people.

XIV.

CHRISTIANS.

I. IN the church of Jerusalem, the Christians were but another sect of Jews, that did believe the Messias was come. To be called, was nothing else but to become a Christian, to have the name of a Christian, it being their own language; for among the Jews, when they made a 20 doctor of law, 'twas said he was called.

2. The Turks tell their people of a heaven where there is a sensible pleasure, but of a hell where they shall suffer they do not know what. The Christians quite invert this order; they tell us of a hell where we shall feel sensible pain, but of a heaven where we shall enjoy we cannot tell what.

3. Why did the heathen object to the Christians, that 1 Less probability of. Singer conjecturally] less charity probably of, MSS.

1. 28. Why did the heathen &c.] On the identification of Jews and Christians, and on the reasons for it, Selden speaks in several places.

they worshipped an ass's head? You must know, that to a heathen, a Jew and a Christian were all one, that they What he says in effect is that, since Christianity had its origin in Judæa, since the early Christians were in great part Jews by race, and worshipped the same supreme God as the Jews, and since they preserved for some time the civil rites and ceremonies of their nation, it was quite natural that the alien peoples, among whom they lived and from whose worship they both alike kept markedly aloof, should have seen no difference between them, and that in point of fact they habitually included them both under the common name of Jews. See Selden, Works, i. 59. II. Prolegomena, p. 10. II. 405 and 657.

The fiction about the ass's head was, Bochart says, started by Apion, an Egyptian grammarian of the first half of the first century, and he adds proof of the very wide credence which it received, about the Jews first, and about the Christians afterwards. The origin of the story he explains in several ways, but not very happily. See Hierozoicon, pt. 1, bk. ii. ch. xviii.

Morinus criticises Bochart and the authorities which Bochart quotes, and then with some hesitation tries his own hand on the problem. One of his conjectures is that the Hebrew words for a pot (sc. of manna) and for an ass are so nearly alike as hardly to be distinguished, and that the pot of manna, with its two handles or ears, preserved in the holy place, might itself be taken as an image of an ass's head.

Conf. Dissertationes Octo (Geneva, 1683), p. 157, on the question, 'Unde potuit venire in mentem gentium caput asininum esse Christianorum Deum?'

The story, as told by Apion, takes two forms, viz. that the head of an ass in gold, an object of worship among the Jews, was found in the holy place of the Temple by Antiochus Epiphanes; and again that a man named Zabidus, in the course of a war between the Jews and the Idumæans, managed to make his way into the Temple, and there found and carried away the golden head. See Josephus against Apion, bk. ii. ch. 7 and 10.

But if the calumny originated with Apion, and if the later versions of it can, as Bochart says, be traced to him as their source, it seems hardly worth while to enquire about it any further. Apion, it must be remembered, was notorious as a hater of the Jews. He not only wrote against them, but he was sent to Rome, on a special mission, as the most fit person to plead before the Emperor Caligula on behalf of the Alexandrian Greeks, in their quarrel with the Alexandrian Jews, and he did his work so effectively that the Emperor refused even to hear his opponent, Philo. The ass's head story, however started, and with whatever accessories it was adorned, would have

regarded him not, so he was not one of them. Now that of the ass's head might proceed from such a mistake as this. By the Jewish law, all the firstlings of cattle were to be offered to God, except a young ass, which was to be redeemed; a heathen being present, and seeing young calves, and young lambs killed at their sacrifices, only young asses redeemed, might very well think they had that silly beast in some high estimation, and thence might imagine they worshipped it as a God.

XV.

CHRISTMAS.

I. CHRISTMAS succeeds the Saturnalia, the same time, the same number of holy days; then the master waited upon the servant, just like the lord of misrule.

2. Our meats and our sports (much of them) have relation to church-work. The coffin of our christmas pies, in shape long, is in imitation of the cratch; our choosing

gained ready credence at Rome about a people of whom they knew little, and for whom they had no love. It was told first about the Jews, and the identification of Jews and Christians explains sufficiently how it came to be told about the Christians afterwards.

1. 13. the lord of misrule] Strutt gives a full account of this 'mock prince,' or 'master of merry disports,' of the manner of his appointment, of the length of his reign, and of the nature and privileges of his office. He refers to and endorses Selden's opinion that all these whimsical transpositions of dignity are derived from the ancient Saturnalia, or feasts of Saturn, when the masters waited upon their servants, who were honoured with mock titles and permitted to assume the state and deportment of their lords. Sports and Pastimes, bk. iv. chap. 3, sec. 1-8.

1. 16. the cratch] An old English word for rack or manger. Fr. crèche. It is frequently used for the manger in which Christ was laid. Conf. And sche bare hir first borun sone, and wlappide hym in clothis, and leide hym in a cratche.' Luke ii. 7; Wycliffe's Trans. second version, as printed by Forshall and Madden.

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