the infancy of thought the life, soul, mind, are supposed to be air—­’anima, animus’, that is, [Greek:  anemos], spiritus, [Greek:  pneuma].  In the childhood, they are fire, ‘mens ignea, ignicula’, and God himself [Greek:  pur noeron, pur aeizoon].  Lastly, in the youth of thought, they are refined into light; and that light is capable of subsisting in a latent state, the experience of the stricken flint, of lightning from the clouds, and the like, served to prove, or at least, it supplied a popular answer to the objection;—­“If the soul be light, why is it not visible?” That the purest light is invisible to our gross sense, and that visible light is a compound of light and shadow, were answers of a later and more refined period.  Observe, however, that the Hebrew Legislator precluded all unfit applications of the materializing fancy by forbidding the people to ‘imagine’ at all concerning God.  For the ear alone, to the exclusion of all other bodily sense, was he to be designated, that is, by the Name.  All else was for the mind—­by power, truth, wisdom, holiness, mercy.

Prop.  II. ch. ii. p. 36.

I fear I must surrender my hope that Mr. Oxlee was an exception to the rule, that the study of Rabbinical literature either finds a man ‘whimmy’, or makes him so.  If neither the demands of poetic taste, nor the peculiar character of oracles, were of avail, yet morality and piety might seem enough to convince any one that this vision of Micaiah, (2 ‘Chron’. c. xviii. 18, &c.) was the poetic form, the veil, of the Prophet’s meaning.  And a most sublime meaning it was.  Mr. Oxlee should recollect that the forms and personages of visions are all and always symbolical.

Ib. pp. 39-40.

It will not avail us much, however, to have established their incorporeity or spirituality, if what R. Moses affirms be true * * *.  This impious paradox * *.  Swayed, however, by the authority of so great a man, even R. David Kimchi has dilapsed into the same error, &c.

To what purpose then are the crude metaphysics of these later Rabbis brought forward, differing as they do in no other respect from the theological ‘dicta’ of the Schoolmen, but that they are written in a sort of Hebrew.  I am far from denying that an interpreter of the Scriptures may derive important aids from the Jewish commentators:  Aben Ezra, (about 1150) especially, was a truly great man.  But of this I am certain, that he only will be benefited who can look down upon their works, whilst studying them;—­that is, he must thoroughly understand their weaknesses, superstitions, and rabid appetite for the marvellous and the monstrous; and then read them as an enlightened chemist of the present day would read the writings of the old alchemists, or as a Linnaeus might peruse the works of Pliny and Aldrovandus.  If he can do this, well;—­if not, he will line his skull with cobwebs.

Ib. pp. 40, 41.