, or Aben-Mallek, a learned rabbi of the 17th century, who wrote a commentary on
, or Aben-Mallek, a learned rabbi
of the 17th century, who wrote a commentary on the
Bible, called in Hebrew the “Beauty of Holiness,
” Amst.
, a learned rabbi of Carpentras, whose proper name was Mardocai,
, a learned rabbi of Carpentras,
whose proper name was Mardocai, or Mardocheus, was expelled from the synagogue of Avignon, in 16 10, on account
of attachment to Christianity. On this he went to the
kingdom of Naples, and was baptised at Aquino, from
which he took his name; but when he came to France he
gave it the French termination, Aquin. At Paris he devoted himself principally to teaching Hebrew, and Louis
XIII. appointed him professor in the lioyal college, and
Hebrew interpreter, which honourable station he held until
his death in 1650, at which time he was preparing a new
version of the New Testament, with notes on St. Paul’s
epistles. Le Jay also employed him in correcting the
Hebrew and Chaldee parts of his Polyglot. His principal
printed works are, 1. “Dictionarium Hebrao-ChalclaoTalmudico-RabbinicunV' Paris, 1629, fol. 2.
” Racines
de la langue sainte,“Paris, 1620, fol. 3.
” Explication
des treize moyens dont se servaient les rabbins pour entendre le Pentateuque, recueillis du Talmud.“4.
” An Italian translation of the Apophthegms of the ancient Jewish
doctors.“5.
” Lacrimae in obitum illust. cardinal de Berulle,“his patron. 6.
” Examen mundL“7.
” Discours
du Tabernacle et du Camp des Israelites,“Paris, 1623,
4to. 8.
” Voces primitiae seu radices Gnecac," Paris, 1620,
16mo, and others. Louis D‘Aquin, his son, who became
as great an adept as his father in the Oriental tongues, left
behind him several rabbinical works. Antoine D’Aquin,
first physician to Louis XIV. who died in 1696, at Vichi,
was son of the last-mentioned Louis.
vinces, he resided for some time at Amsterdam, and afterwards at Paris. At Amsterdam, by the help of a learned Rabbi, he increased his knowledge in the Hebrew language,
About six months after he returned to Scotland, where
he declined accepting the living of Saltoun, offered him
by sir Robert Fletcher of that place, resolving to travel for
some time on the continent, in 1664, he went over into
Holland; where, after he had seen what was remarkable
in the Seven Provinces, he resided for some time at Amsterdam, and afterwards at Paris. At Amsterdam, by the
help of a learned Rabbi, he increased his knowledge in
the Hebrew language, and likewise x became acquainted
with the leading men of the different persuasions tolerated
in that country: among each of whom, he used frequently
to declare, he had met with men of such real piety and
virtue, that he contracted a strong principle of universal
charity. At Paris he conversed with the two famous
ministers of Charenton, Dailie and Morus. His stay in
France was the longer, on account of the great kindness
with which he was treated by the lord Holies, then ambassador at the French court. Towards the end of the
year he returned to Scotland, passing through Londo/rr,
where he was introduced, by the president sir Robert
Murray, to be a member of the royal society. In 1665,
he was ordained a priest by the bishop of Edinburgh, and
presented by sir Robert Fletcher to the living of Saitoun,
which had been kept vacant during his absence. He soon
gained the affections of his whole parish, not excepting the
presbyterians, though he was the only clergyman in Scotland that made use of the prayers in the liturgy of the
church of England. During the five years he remained at
Saitoun, he preached twice every Sunday, and once on
one of the week-days; he catechized three times a-week,
so as to examine every parishioner, old or young, three
times in the compass of a year: he went round the parish
from house to house, instructing, reproving, or comforting
them, as occasion required: the sick he visited twice a
day: he administered the sacrament four times a year, and
personally instructed all such as gave notice of their intention to receive it. All that remained above his own necessary subsistence (in which he was very frugal), he gave
away in charity. A particular instance of his generosity
is thus related: one of his parishioners had been in execution for debt, and applied to our author for some small
relief; who inquired of him, how much would again set
him up in his trade: the man named the sum, and he as
readily called to his servant to pay it him: “Sir,” said he,
“it is all we have in the house.” “Well,” said Mr. Burnet, “pay it this poor man: you do not know the pleasure
there is in making a man glad.” This may be a proper
place to mention our author’s practice of preaching extempore, in which he attained an ease chiefly by allotting many
hours of the day to meditation upon all sorts of subjects,
and by accustoming himself, at those times, to speak his
thoughts aloud, studying always to render his expressions
correct. His biographer gives us here two remarkable
instances of his preaching without book. In 1691, when
the sees, vacant by the deprivation of the nonjuring
bishops, were filled up, bishop Williams was appointed to
preach one of the consecration -sermons at Bow-church;
but, being detained by some accident, the archbishop of
Canterbury desired our author, then bishop of Sarum, to
supply his place; which he readily did, to the general satisfaction of all present. In 1705, he was appointed to preach
the thanksgiving-sermon before the queen at St. Paul’s; and
as it was the only discourse he had ever written before-hand,
it was the only time that he ever made a pause in preaching, which on that occasion lasted above a minute. The
same year, he drew up a memorial of the abuses of the
Scotch bishops, which exposed him to the resentments of
that order: upon which, resolving to confine himself to
study, and the duties of his function, he practised such a
retired and abstemious course, as greatly impaired his
health. About 1668, the government of Scotland being in
the hands of moderate men, of whom the principal was sir
Robert Murray, he was frequently consulted by them; and
it was through his advice that some of the more moderate
presbyterians were put into the vacant churches; a step
which he himself has since condemned as indiscreet. In
1669, he was made professor of divinity at Glasgow; in
which station he executed the following plan of study.
On Mondays, he made each of the students, in their turn,
explain a head of divinity in Latin, and propound such
theses from it as he was to defend against the rest of the
scholars; and this exercise concluded with our professor’s
decision of the point in a Latin oration. On Tuesdays, he
gave them a prelection in the same language, in which he
proposed, in the course of eight years, to have gone
through a complete system of divinity. On Wednesdays,
he read them a lecture, for above an hour, by way of a
critical commentary on St. Matthew’s Gospel;' which he
finished before he quitted the chair. On Thursdays, the
exercise was alternate; one Thursday, he expounded a
Hebrew Psalm, comparing it with the Septuagint, the
Vulgar, and the English version; and the next Thursday,
he explained some portion of the ritual and constitution
of the primitive church, making the apostolical canons his
text, and reducing every article of practice under the head
of one or other of those canons. On Fridays, he made
each of his scholars, in course, preach a short sermon upon
some text he assigned; and, when it was ended, he observed upon any thing that was defective or amiss in the
handling of the subject. This was the labour of the mornings: in the evenings, after prayer, he every day read
some parcel of scripture, on which he made a short
discourse; and, when that was over, he examined into
the progress of their several studies. Ail this he performed
during the whole time the schools were open; and, in
order to acquit himself with credit, he was obliged to study
hard from four till ten in the morning; the rest of the day
being of necessity allotted, either to the care of his pupils,
or to hearing the complaints of the clergy, who, rinding he
had an interest with men of power, were not sparing in
their applications to him. In this situation he continued
four years and a half, exposed, through his principles of
moderation, to the censure both of the episcopal and presbyterian parties. The same year he published his “Modest and free Conference between a Conformist and a Nonconformist.
” About this time he was entrusted, by the
duchess of Hamilton, with the perusal and arrangement
of all the papers relating to her father’s and uncle’s
ministry; which induced him to compile “Memoirs of the
Dukes of Hamilton,
” and occasioned his being invited to
London, to receive farther information, concerning the
transactions of those times, by the earl of Lauderdale; between whom and the duke of Hamilton he brought about
a reconciliation. During his stay in London, he was offered a Scotch bishopric, which he refused. Soon after
his return to Glasgow, he married the lady Margaret Kennedy, daughter of the earl of Cassilis. In 1672, he published his “Vindication of the Authority, Constitution, and
Laws, of the Church and State of Scotland,
” against the
principles of Buchanan and others; which was thought, at
that juncture, such a public service, that he was again
courted to accept of a bishopric, with a promise of the
next vacant archbishopric, but he persisted in his refusal
of that dignity. In 1673, he took another journey to
London; where, at the express nomination of the king,
after hearing him preach, he was sworn one of his majesty’s
chaplains in ordinary. He became likewise in high favour
with his majesty and the duke of York . At his return to
Edinburgh, finding the animosities between the dukes of
Hamilton and Lauderdale revived, he retired to his station
at Glasgow; but was obliged the next year to return to
court, to justify himself against the accusations of the duke
of Lauderdale, who had represented him as the cause and
instrument of all the opposition the measures of the court
had met with in the Scotch parliament. Thus he lost the
favour of the court; and, to avoid putting himself into the
hands of his enemies, he resigned the professor’s chair at
Glasgow, and resolved to settle in London, being now
about thirty years of age. Soon after, he was offered the
living of St. Giles’s Cripplegate, which he declined accepting, because he heard that it was intended for Dr.
Fowler, afterwards bishop of Gloucester. In 1675, our
author, at the recommendation of lord Holies, and notwithstanding the interposition of the court against him, was
appointed preacher at the Rolls chapel by sir Harbottle
Grimstone, master of the Rolls. The same year he was
examined before the house of commons in relation to the
duke of Lauderdale, whose conduct the parliament was
then inquiring into. He was soon after chosen lecturer of
St. Clement’s, and became a very popular preacher. In
1676, he published his “Memoirs of the Dukes of Hamilton;
” and the same year, “An account of a Conference
between himself, Dr. Stillingfleet, and Coleman.
” About
this time, the apprehensions of popery increasing daily, he
undertook to write the “History of the Reformation of the
Church of England.
” The rise and progress of this his
greatest and 'most useful work, is an object of too great
curiosity to require any apology on account of its length.
His own account of it is as follows: “Some time after I
had printed the ‘ Memoirs of the Dukes of Hamilton,’
which were favourably received, the reading of these got
me the acquaintance and friendship of sir William Jones,
then attorney-general. My way of writing history pleased
him; and so he pressed me to undertake the History of
England. But Sanders’s book, that was then translated
into French, and cried up much in France, made all my
friends press me to answer it, by writing the History of
the Reformation. So now all my thoughts were turned
that way. I laid out for manuscripts, and searched into
all offices. I got for some days into the Cotton Library.
But duke Lauderdale hearing of my design, and apprehending it might succeed in my hands, got Dolben, bishop
of Rochester, to divert sir John Cotton from suffering me
to search into his library. He told him, I was a great
enemy to the prerogative, to which Cotton was devoted,
even to slavery. So he said, I would certainly make an ill
use of all 1 had found. This wrought so much on him,
that I was no more admitted, till my first volume was published. And then, when he saw how I had composed it,
he gave me free access to it.
” The first volume of this
work lay near a year after it was finished, for the perusal
and correction of friends; so that it was not published tiii
the year 1679, when the affair of the popish plot was in
agitation. This book procured our author an honour never
before or since paid to any writer: he had the thanks of
both houses of parliament, with a desire that he would
prosecute the undertaking, and complete that valuable
work. Accordingly, in less than two years after, he
printed the second volume, which met with the same general approbation as the first: and such was his readiness
in composing, that he wrote the historical part in the
compass of six weeks, after all his materials were laid in
order. The third volume, containing a supplement to the
two former, was published in 1714. “The defects of
Peter Heylyn’s
” History of the Reformation,“as bishop
Kicolson observes,
” are abundantly supplied in our
author’s more complete history. He gives a punctual account of all the affairs of the reformation, from its beginning in the reign of Henry VIII. to its final establishment
under queen Elizabeth, A. D. 1559. And the whole is
penned in a masculine style, such as becomes an historian,
and is the property of this author in all his writings. The
collection of records^ which he gives at the end of each
volume, are good vouchers of the truth of what he delivers
in the body of the history, and are much more perfect than
could reasonably be expected, after the pains taken, in
queen Mary’s days, to suppress every thing that carried
the marks of the reformation upon it.“Our author’s performance met with a very favourable, reception abroad, and
was translated into most of the European languages; and
even the keenest of his enemies, Henry Wharton, allows it
to have
” a reputation firmly and deservedly established.“The most eminent of the French writers who have attacked
it, M. Varillas and M. Le Grand, have received satisfactory
replies from -the author himself. At home it was attacked
by Mr. S. Lowth, who censured the account Dr. Burnet
had given of some of archbishop Cranmer’s opinions, asserting that both our historian and Dr. Stillingfleet had imposed upon the world in that particular, and had
” unfaithfully joined together“in their endeavours to lessen
episcopal ordination. Our author replied to Mr. Lowth,
in some
” letters. in answer“to his book. The next assailant was Henry Wharton, who, under the name of Anthony
Harrner, published
” A specimen of some Errors and
Defects in the History of the Reformation,“1693, 8vo, a
performance of no great candour; to which, however, our
historian vouchsafed a short answer, in a
” Letter to the
Bishop of Lichfield.“A third attack on this History was
made by Dr. Hickes in
” Discourses on Dr. Burnet and
Dr. Tillotson;“in which the whole charge amounts to no
more than this, that,
” in a matter of no great consequence,
there was too little care had in copying or examining a
letter writ in a very bad hand,“and that there was some
probability that Dr. Burnet
” was mistaken in one of his
conjectures.“Our author answered this piece, in a
” Vindication“of his History. The two first parts were translated into French by M. de Rosemond, and into Latin by
Melchior Mittelhorzer. There is likewise a Dutch translation of it. In 1682, our author published
” An abridgment of his History of the Reformation," in 8vo, in which
he tells us, he had wholly waved every thing that belonged
to the records, and the proof of what he relates, or to the
confutation of the falsehoods that run through the popish
historians; all which is to be found in the History at large.
And therefore, in this abridgment, he says, every thing is
to be taken upon trust; and those who desire a fuller satisfaction, are referred to the volumes he had before published.
, a learned rabbi, who flourished in the fifteenth century, was
, a learned rabbi, who flourished in the
fifteenth century, was the first Jew who compiled a Hebrew concordance to the bible, principally, as he allowed,
from Latin concordances. It was entitled “Light to the
Path,
” or “Meir Netib,
” and was first printed at Venice
in
, or Saadias the Excellent, a learned rabbi, the chief of the academy of the Jews, was born
, or Saadias the Excellent, a learned
rabbi, the chief of the academy of the Jews, was born at
Pithom in Egypt, about the year 892. In the year 927,
he was invited by David Ben- Chair, the prince of the captivity, to preside over the academy at Sora, near Babylon,
where one of his first objects was to explode the doctrine
ofthe transmigration of souls, which was very prevalent,
even among the Jews. But having refused to subscribe
to a new regulation, which appeared to him to be repugnant to the Jewish laws, a breach arose between David
and Saadias, which after some years was made up, and
Saadias was restored to his professorship, in which he continued with great reputation till his death, in the year 942.
His principal works are, “Sepher Haemunah,
” or a treatise concerning the Jewish articles of faith, in ten chapters; but we have only a translation of it from the original
Arabic into Hebrew, which was printed at Constantinople
in 1647, and often reprinted. “A Commentary on the
Book Jezira,
” printed, with other Commentaries on that
book, at Mantua, in 1592; “An Arabic translation of the
whole Old Testament,
” of whjch the Pentateuch is inserted
in Jay’s and Walton’s Polyglotts, accompanied with the
Latin version of Gabriel Sionita; “A Commentary on the
Song of Songs,
” in Hebrew, printed at Prague in A Commentary on Daniel,
” likewise in Hebrew,
inserted in the great rabbinical bibles of Venice and Basil
“A Commentary on Job,
” in Arabic, the ms. of which
is in the Bodleian library at Oxford and a commentary
on illicit alliances, mentioned by Aben Efra.