3. And he marked the posts of the gates. | not say to be applauded. William the Xth This is the version of the late Mr. Martin, but Duke of Aquitain, and Count of Thoulouse, allow me to lay aside all the versions of our declared himself against Innocent the IId in modern divines, and even those of the most favour of Peter de Leon, an antipope who had celebrated Rabbies, and to abide by my Sep- taken the name of Anacletus the IId. The tuagint and my Vulgate. The Septuagint Duke had driven the Bishops of Poictiers, and renders it και επιπτον επί της θύρας της πύλης, and of Limoges, from their sees. St. Barnard was the Vulgate says, et impingebat in ostia portia sent into Guienne to engage him to reconcile and he hurt himself, or he dashed himself against | himself to the holy see, and to re-establish the the posts of the gate. Munster" pretends indeed two bishops, but he could not prevail with him that the Latin interpreter first wrote, et pingebat to be reconciled to the bishop of Poictiers. in ostia portic, and that it was afterwards While they were talking at the church gate, changed into impingebat; but though this in- St. Barnard went up to the altar and said mass. genious conjecture has been adopted by able Having consecrated the host, and pronounced critics, yet it seems to me futile, because on the benediction on the people, he took the body the one hand the Vulgate evidently follows the of the Lord in a patine, and going out with a Septuagint, and on the other, because the Latin countenance on fire, and with eyes in a flame, interpreter would have contradicted himself, col- he addressed with a threatening air these terrilabebatur inter manus eorum, et pingebat in ostia ble words to the Duke: "We have entreated portia, if he fell into their hands how could he you, but you have despised us. In a former write, or scratch with his fingers on the gate interview, a great number of the servants of or the door? Nor is it necessary with the cele- God besought you, and you treated them with brated Lewis Capelf to suppose the change of contempt. Behold, now the Son of the Virgin a letter, and to say that the Septuagint reads comes to you, the head and lord of the church vajatoph, instead of vajetau. The verb tava you persecute. Behold your judge, at whose signifies to mark, to make an impression, or name every name in heaven, earth, and hell, some print with the hand, or an instrument, bow. Behold the avenger of your crimes, into and to shake, and make the body tremble whose hand, sooner or later, your stubborn where the mark is imprinted. David. was soul shall fall. Have you the hardiness to deviolently hurt against the posts of the gate, so spise him? And will you contemn the master that marks were left in his flesh. This signifi- as you have done the servants?" The spectacation of the verb is agreeable to the Chaldean tors were all dissolved in tears, and the count language, in which teva signifies to tremble, to himself, unable to bear the sight of the abbott, shiver, and in the Arabic, where the same root who addressed him with so much vehemence, signifies to be troubled or astonished. and who held up to him all the while the body of the Lord, fell all shaking and trembling, to the earth. Being raised up by his soldiers, he fell back again, and lay on his face, saying nothing and looking at nobody, but uttering deep groans, and letting his spittle fall down on his beard, and discovering all the signs of a person convulsed in an epilepsy. St. Barnard approached, pushed him with his foot, commanded him to rise, and to stand up and hear the decree of God. "The bishop of Poictiers, whom you have driven from his church, is here; ga and reconcile yourself to him; and by giving him a holy kiss of peace become friendly, and reconduct him yourself to his see. Satisfy the God you have offended, render him the glory due to his name, and recall all your divided subjects into the unity of faith and love. Submit yourself to pope Innocent; and as all the church obeys him, resign yourself to this eminent pontiff chosen by God himself. At these words the count ran to the bishop, gave him the kiss of peace, and re-established him in his see."

4. King Achish uses another word, which modern translations render fool, madman. Lo, you see the man is mad. Have I need of madmen, and so on. The Septuagint, which I follow step by step, and the authors of which understood Hebrew better than we, translates it, adcu adets avôęæ STATO and so on: Why have you brought this man? Do you not see that he is attacked with an epilepsy?" Have I need of epileptics, that you have brought him to fall into convulsions in my presence? This single testimony of the Septuagint ought to determine this question.

2. My second class of arguments is taken from the scope of the place, and I think, even supposing the original terms were as favourable to the idea of folly or madness as they are to that of an epilepsy, yet we should be more inclined to the latter sense than to the former.

First, if there be some examples of persons frightened into folly or madness, there are more of persons terrified into an epilepsy. Among the various causes of this sickness, the author of a book on the subject, supposed to be Hippocrates, has given sudden fright as one. It would be needless to multiply proofs when a sorrowful experience daily gives us so many! But I recollect one instance of the zeal of St. Barnard, which deserves to be related, I do

Munsterus in h. 1. in criticis magnis.-See Bayle Achish. Rem. C.

L. Capellus criticiæ sacra libro. iv. cap. 5. S. 35. Hippocrates περι τέρας νόσου, T. ii. S. xi. P. 336. Vita Sancti Bernardi. lib. ii. cap. 6. n. 38. Rogavimus te, et sprevisti nos, supplicavit tibi in altero quam jam tecum habuimus, conventu servorum Dei ante te adunata multitudo, et contempsisti. Ecce ad te

2. I return, sir, from this digression, which is not quite foreign to my subject, to observe, in the second place, that the sacred historian attributes to David the three characteristical marks of the falling sickness, falling, convulsion, and frothing. Falling, for it is said he

processit filius virginis, qui est caput et Dominus ecclesiæ, quam tu persequeris. Adest Judex tuus, in cujus nomine omne genu curvatur cælestium, terrestrium et infernorum. Adest vindex tuus, in cujus manua illa anima tua deveniet. Nunquid et ipsum spernes? Nunquid et ipsum sicut servos ejus contemnes?

Elevatus a militibus, rursum in faciem ruit, nec quippiam alieni loquens, aut intendens in aliquem, salivis barbam defluentibus, cum profundis efflatis gemitibus, epilepticus videbatur.

fell "into the hands" of the officers of the
king: convulsion, for he hurt himself against
the "
posts of the gate:" and frothing, for he
let fall his "spittle upon his beard." These
are symptoms, which Isidore of Seville gives
of an epilepsy, cujus tanta vis est, ut homo
valens concidat, spumetque. We may see the
cause, or at least what physicians say of it, in
the work of Hippocrates just now quoted, in
the posthumous works of Mr. Manjot, and in
all the treatises of pathological physic. The
manner in which Hippocrates explains the
symptom of froth seems very natural, po
IX TOU STOμNTOS, &c. The froth, that comes
out of the mouth, proceeds from the lungs,
which, not receiving any fresh air, throw up
little bubbles, like those of a dying man.

avoided them, and thought, to meet them was
a bad omen. Dion Cassius says, the Roman
senate always broke up, when any one of them
happened to be taken with an epilepsy, for
which reason it was called morbus comitialis,*
witness these verses of Serenus Sammonicus:
Est subiti species morbi, cui nomen ab illo est,
Quod fieri nobis suffragia justa recusat:
Sæpe etenim membris acri languore caducis,
Consilium populi labes horrenda diremit.
Pliny the elder, who relates the same thing,
informs us of another custom, that was, to spit
at the sight of an epileptic: Despuimus comi-
tiales morbos, hoc est, contagia regerimus;
simili modo et fascinationes repercutimus,
dextræque clauditatis accursum.
There was
then as much superstition in this custom as
aversion to the illness. Accordingly Theo-
phrastes has not forgotten, in his character of
a superstitious man, to represent him seized
with horror, and spitting at meeting a mad-
man, or an epileptic. This was so common,
and so much confined to an epilepsy, that it
was frequently called the sickness to be spitted
at: Thus Plautus, in the comedy of the Cap-
tives, where Tyndarus, to prevent Hegio from
staying with Aristophontes, accuses him of be-
ing subject to the illness that is spit at.§

3. The horror of king Achish concerning the condition of David, is a third reason, which confirms our opinion. "You see," said this prince to his officers, "this man is epileptic, shall such a man. come into my house? And he drove him away," as it is said in the title of the thirty-fourth psalm. According to the common opinion, David feigned himself a natural, a fool, not a madman: he did actions of imbecility, and silliness, not of madness and fury. Now the ancients, far from having any aversion to this sort of fools, kept them in their palaces to make diversion. Tarquin the proud kept Lucius Junius Brutus in his family less as a relation of whom he meant to take care, than as a fool to please his children by absurd discourses and ridiculous actions. charsis, who lived about three hundred years after David, could not bear this custom of the Greeks. This wise Scythian said, "Man was a thing too serious to be destined to a usage so ridiculous." Seneca, in one of his letters to Lucilius, speaks of a female fool, whom his wife had left him for a legacy, and who had suddenly lost her sight. She did not know she was blind, and was always asking to be let out of a house where she could see nothing. Seneca says, that he had a great dislike to this kind of singularities; that if ever he should take it into his head to divert himself with a fool, he need not go far in search of one, that he would make a fool of himself: and he agree- First, that the hundred and sixteenth has so ably compares mankind with their defects to much connexion with the fifty-sixth, and the Harpasta the fool of his wife. Every body thirty-first with the hundred and sixteenth, knows, adds this philosopher,§ ambition is not that it is very evident these three psalms were my vice, but we cannot live otherwise at composed at the same time, and in view of the Rome. I dislike luxury, but to live at a great same deliverance: with this difference, howexpense is essential to living in this great city; ever, that in the fifty-sixth David confines and so on. Pliny the younger, writing to one himself to the malignity of his enemies, to the of his friends, complained of having misspent punishment they might expect, and to his own his time at an elegant supper through the im-confidence in God, who engaged him to despise pertinence of these fools, who interrupted conversation: he says, that every one had his own whim; that he had no relish for such absurdities; but that some complaisance was necessary to the taste of our acquaintances.

In this custom of spitting at the sight of an epileptic, I think I have formed a very probable conjecture on another famous passage of Scripture; but, sir, I shall do myself the honour to treat of this in a future letter to you. At Ana-present, I avail myself of this custom to explain why Achish discovered so much indignation against his courtiers, and so much disdain for David, and why he drove him so quickly from his palace.

It was not the same with madmen, and particularly epileptics. Every body carefully

4. In fine, I think, it is easy to see in the thanksgiving psalms, which David composed after he had escaped this imminent danger, several indications of the nature of the illness that had seized him so suddenly. It is agreed that he composed the thirty-fourth and the fifty-sixth on this occasion, as the titles assure us, and to them I add the thirty-first and the hundred and sixteenth, concerning which I beg leave to make two remarks.

all their efforts; whereas in the thirty-first he expresses more clearly the terror which had been excited in him by the conversation of Achish and his officers, and the prayers which he had addressed to the Lord in his distress. In the hundred and sixteenth he attends more to the success of these prayers, and to the gratitude he felt for deliverance from his great danger, and to the profound impression which

*Dio Cassius. lib. 37.

Plin. lib. xxviii, cap. 4.

Theophrastes Charact. περι δεισιδαιμονίας.

Plut. Capt. Act. iii. Scen. 4. ver. 15, &c. morbus qui insputatur.

his late situation had made on his mind. A bare parallel of these three hymns discovers a great resemblance both in sentiment and expression. Compare Ps. lvi. verses 5. 9. 1114, with cxvi. 8. 12, 13. 17. 14. 18. 8. 9.—and cxvi. 1-3. 11. 16, with xxxi. 23, 24. 3. 10, 11. |

23. 17.

The second observation I make on the thirtyfirst and hundred and sixteenth psalm is, that they perfectly agree with the occasion of the two other psalms, and that some passages seem to refer to the supposed epileptic fit. The cause is remarked Ps. xxxi. 10, 11. 14. The effects and consequences are spoken of in the same psalm, ver. 12, 13. The condition to which the illness had reduced David is described Ps. cxvi. 11.-Ps. xxxi. 23, (22 in the English version,) "I said in my haste, I am cut off from before thine eyes. All men are liars." However the Hebrew words rendered in my haste be translated, either with the Septuagint in my ecstacy, or with Symmachus in my swoon or fainting fit, or with the old Italian version, in my great dread, or with St. Jerome in my stupefaction,* either of the senses supposes and confirms my opinion. Suidas explains the word ecstacy, which the Septuagint uses here by bævμxoμos xxi æÃäs. This last word is the same as that in the title of the thirty-fourth psalm, where David is said to have changed countenance, for so I think it should be translated.

In regard to the two psalms before mentioned, which were always understood to be composed on this occasion, they both of them furnish a great deal to establish our opinion.

In the fifty-sixth psalm, there is a verse, the seventh I mean, which modern interpreters seem not to have well understood. David there, speaking of his enemies, says, according to our version, "Shall they escape by iniquity? In thine anger cast down the people, O God." I think the words may be rendered, without violence to the original, O God, because of their iniquity spue them out, and cast down the people in thine anger;t because the Hebrew word palleth, which in the conjugation kal signifies to escape, when it is in the conjugation piel signifies to vomit, to reject; so the celebrated Rabbi David Kimchi says. Indeed the Chaldee paraphrast uses it in two places in this sense, Lev. xviii. 28. 25, "The land itself vomiteth out her inhabitants-That the land spue not you out also, as it spued out the nations before you." Jon. ii. 10, "The fish vomited out Jonah." This word is used in the Talmud, which forbids a disciple ever to vomit in the presence of his master; for, according to this Rabinnical code of law, he who spits before his master, is worthy of death. According to Mr. d'Arvieux,§ the Arabians religiously observe this custom to this day. Among them no man ever spits before his superior, it would be considered as treating them with disrespect and contempt. The Chaldee paraphrast understood this psalm in this sense, and rendered the passage thus, because of the falsehood that

Hierom, in Epist. 135.

Hammond's Annotations on Ps. lvi. 7. Mag. Lex. Chaldaic. Thalm. et Rabbinicum Eux torf. in verb. palleth.

La Roque Voyage dans la Palestine. p. 140.

is in their hands, spit them, or vomit them out. Now, sir, would it be improper to apply this verse to my explication, and to affirm, that David here manifestly alludes to two of the symptoms of an epilepsy, which he himself had lately experienced? This holy man prays to God that his enemies might be treated in a manner which had some resemblance to the illness they had caused him; that as he had frothed and cast out his spittle, so God would spit or vomit them out of his mouth; and as he fell to the ground through their hands, so they might be degraded and cast out. The former image is used by an inspired writer, Rev. iii. 16, "Because thou art lukewarm, I. will spue thee out of my mouth."

Perhaps, sir, you will think another observation which I am going to make, not sufficiently solid. David says, while he is celebrating the deliverance God had granted him, Ps. xxxiv. 20, that "the Lord keepeth all the bones of the righteous man, not one of them is broken." It is not worth while to refute the Jews on this article, for they quote these words in proof of a little bone, which they call luz, and which they place in the form of a small almond at the bottom of the back bone. They pretend that David had this bone in view; that nothing, neither fire, nor water, nor time, can destroy it, and that it is the germ of the resurrection of the body. Probably it was from this Jewish tradition that Peter Lombard, the master of the sentences, derived his little piece of flesh, which every man inherits from the flesh of Adam, and which renders us all corrupt, and on account of which we are called the children of Adam. Much less will I pretend to dispute the application which St. John makes of this oracle to our Lord Jesus Christ, of whom it was both predicted and prefigured, that not one of his bones should be broken, chap. 36; Exod. xii. 46; Numb. ix. 12. Nothing hinders our taking this verse in its literal sense. David here blesses his God for watching so marvellously to prevent him, that in spite of his violent epileptic fit, and of the fall, that might have broke all his bones, especially as he was so hurt by falling against the posts of the gate, as to receive marks or scars in his flesh, yet not one of his bones was broken.

For the rest, if any one should think proper to take occasion, from this one convulsion fit, to dispute the inspiration of the excellent psalms of David, or only to diminish our esteem for the works or the person of this prince, the following considerations may set aside such a frivolous objection.

1. As soon as the malady is over, the mind recovers its freedom and firmness, and is presently as well as before.

2. Even supposing frequent attacks to enfeeble the mind, yet this would not effect David, for he had only one fit.

3. Great men have been subject to this illness, but they have not been the less esteemed on that account; as for example a Julius Cesar, who was held by his army in more than

Pet. Lemb. lib. ii. Distinct. 30. N. p. m. 218. Transmisit adam modicum quid de substantia sua in corpore siliorum, quando eos procreavit, &c.

Plutarch in Cæsare. T. i. f. 715. Suidas in voce.

admiration; Plotinus too, that celebrated Pla- | esteemed of God, and so a Christian may rea-
tonic philosopher, to whom, after his death,
altars were erected in divers places.

་