“ Rex Anius, rex idem hominum Pheebique sacerdos.”
And the most ancient reports among the heathen, both in the East- ern and Grecian traditions, mention these offices as distinetly exer- cised by diverse persons. Homer hath his priests as well as his kings, though that which then was peculiar to them was divination, and not sacrificing.
Thirdly, Priests among the heathen might have their origi- nal from some extraordinary afflatus, real or pretended. It was with respect unto their gods that men had thoughts of sacrificing, or of the way of it. And the world was generally now become utterly at a loss both as to the nature and manner of religious worship, though the light of nature kept them up to a persuasion that the Deity was to be worshipped, and some small remainders of original tradition that sacrificing was an acceptable mode of religious worship still continued with them. But how to exert these notions in prac- tice, or how to express their impressions from tradition, they knew
SECT. 12.] AND SACRIFICE OF CHRIST. 249
not. But yet they still had an apprehension that the knowledge hereof dwelt with the gods themselves, and that from them they were to expect and receive direction. In this posture of the minds of men and their consciences, it is no wonder if some quickly pre- tended themselves to be divinely inspired, and were as easily be- lieved; for men who are utterly destitute of all means of divine-and supernatural direction are given up unto as great an excess in facile credulity, as they are unto an obstinate unbelief of the most evident truths by whom such light and direction hath been rejected. And . as this latter frame at this day discourageth men wise and sober in the proposal of sacred truths, upon the highest and most evident warranty, unto the sceptical atheism of rebels against the light; so the former encouraged crafty impostors to impose their pretended inspirations on the credulous multitude, as that they easily gave up unto them the entire conduct of their religious affairs. And Satan himself was sure not to be wanting to so great an occasion of pro- moting his interest in the world; and therefore, as he had diverted the minds of men before from the true and only object of all religious worship, entangling them in an endless maze of abominable idola- tries, so, to secure them unto himself in those tormenting, disquiet- ing uncertainties whereinto he had cast them, he did actually intermix himself and all his power in the minds and imaginations of some persons, whom he had designed for the guides of others in their superstitions. And an appearance of his power and presence with them was that which instated and fixed them in a peculiar office of managing things esteemed sacred and religious. This was the certain and undoubted original of the stated solemn priesthood among the heathen, as will yet further appear.
12. To return, therefore, whence we have digressed, next to him who was the first priest in office in the world, and that by virtue of divine appointment,—of whom I must treat afterwards distinctly and by himself,—those first mentioned under that name are the priests of Egypt, Gen. xli. 45, xlvii. 22,26. Concerning them, there- fore, in the first place, our inquiry shall be.
It is very probable that the Egyptians began to have their stated “sacra,” very early in the world; for they were the posterity of him who unquestionably made the first defection from true religion after the flood, and therefore most likely they first improved that super- stition which they embraced in the room thereof. And hence it came to pass that having chosen both their deities and the manner of their veneration in the times of barbarity and darkness, before man- kind had leisure to improve the remaining light of nature by con- templation, arts, and sciences, they fixed on, and tenaciously adhered unto, such observances in their superstition as were ridiculous and
250 PREFIGURATIONS OF THE PRIESTHOOD [EXERC. XXXIV.
contemptible unto all the world besides. In process of time they received many customs and usages in sacred things from Abraham and his posterity whilst they dwelt amongst them; much, it may be, particularly under the rule of Joseph, and more upon the fame and renown of their glorious law and divine order in religious worship. These customs and usages being observed among them by some Grecian writers long afterwards, divers of late are inclined to believe that the Israelites took them from the Egyptians, and not on the contrary. I mean not any of those superstitious and idolatrous cus- toms which that people learned from the Egyptians, as weeping for Tammuz, even as they borrowed idolatries and superstitions from all their neighbours round about them, as I have elsewhere declared, but those institutions themselves which Moses gave them in the wilderness, and some that God had peculiarly given unto Abraham. Whether a due reverence unto divine revelations and institutions hath been observed herein, I shall elsewhere, God willing, make in- quiry. In brief, the plainest state of the difference is this: God gives a law of divine worship unto his people in the wilderness, declares all the parts and observances of it to be of his own immediate ap- pointment. And in the declaration of his mind he allowed not Moses the interposition of any one word or conception of his own, but made him a mere internuncius, to make known his express commands and will to the people; nor did he allow him to do any thing but what he expressly and immediately ordained. In the meantime, making known to the people that all they were enjoined was from himself, he straitly forbids them to do any thing in his service after the manner whereby other nations served their idol gods. Yet notwith- standing it appears afterwards that sundry of the things which were so instituted and observed amongst them were observed also by the Egyptians. Hereupon it is inquired whether the Egyptians learned those things and took up the practice of them from the Israelites, or whether Moses (who, indeed, had no more to do-with the intrud- ing or appointing of those sacred institutions than hath the present reader, whoever he be) did not learn them in Egypt and prescribe them in the wilderness unto the people. But whereas the inquiry ought to be, not what Moses might learn of and receive from the Egyptians, but what God himself did so (for if we believe the Scrip- ture at all, they were all of his own immediate appointment, with- out the interposition of the wit, invention, or memory of Moses), so I shall say, that if any learned man can produce any one evident testimony, or but such an one as whose pretence unto a probability of truth I cannot make manifest to be vain, of the observation of any one sacred institution belonging peculiarly unto the system of Mosai- cal ordinances among the Egyptians before the giving of the law, I