Mufti, that the grand seignior himself rises up to him, and advances seven steps towards him when he comes into his presence. He alone has the honour of kissing the sultan's left shoulder, whilst the prime vizier kisses only the hem of his garment.

When the grand seignior addresses any writing to the Mufti, he gives him the following titles:" To the esad, the wisest of the wise; instructed in all knowledge; the most excellent of excellents; abstaining from things unlawful; the spring of virtue and true science; heir of the prophetic doctrines; resolver of the problems of faith; revealer of the orthodox articles; key of the treasures of truth; the light to doubtful allegories; strengthened with the grace of the Supreme Legislator of Mankind. May the Most High God perpetuate thy fa

vours."

The election of the Mufti is solely in the grand seignior, who presents him with a vest of rich sables, and allows him a salary of a thousand aspers a day, which is about five pounds sterling. Besides this, he has the disposal of certain benefices belonging to the royal mosques, which he makes no scruple of selling to the best advantage; and, on his admission to his office, he is complimented by the agents of the bashas, who make him the usual presents, which generally amount to a very considerable sum.

Whatever regard was formerly paid to the Mufti, it is now become very little more than form. If he interprets the law, or gives sentence contrary to the sultan's pleasure, he is immediately displaced, and a more pliant person put in his room. If he is convicted of treason, or any very great crime, he is put into a mortar kept for that purpose in the seven towers of Constantinople, and pounded to death.

MUGGLETONIANS, the followers of Ludovic Muggleton, a journeyman tailor, who, with his companion Reeves (a person of equal obscurity), set up for great prophets, in the time of Cromwell. They pretended to absolve or condemn whom they pleased; and gave out that they were the two last witnesses spoken of in the Revelation, who were to appear previous to the final destruction of the world. They affirmed that there was no devil at all without the body of man or woman; that the devil is man's spirit of unclean reason and cursed imagination;

that the ministry in this world, whether prophetical or ministerial, is all a lie and abomination to the Lord; with a variety of other vain and inconsistent tenets.

MURDER, the act of wilfully and feloniously killing a person upon malice or forethought. Heart murder is the secret wishing or designing the death of any man; yea, the Scripture saith, "Whosoever hateth his brother is a murderer," 1 John iii. 15. We have instances of this kind of murder in Ahab, 1 Kings xxii. 9; Jezebel, 2 Kings xix. 2; the Jews, Mark xi. 18; David, 1 Samuel xxv. 21, 22; Jonah, ch. iv. 1, 4. Murder is contrary to the authority of God, the sovereign disposer of life, Deut. xxxii. 39; to the goodness of God, who gives it, Job x. 12; to the law of nature, Acts xvi. 28; to the love a man owes to himself, his neighbour, and society at large. Not but that life may be taken away, as in lawful war, 1 Chron. v. 22; by the hand of the civil magistrate for capital crimes, Deut. xvii. 8, 10; and in self-defence. See SELFDEFence.

According to the divine law, murder is to be punished with death, Deut. xix. 11, 12; 1 Kings ii. 28, 29. It is remarkable that God often gives up murderers to the terrors of a guilty conscience, Gen. iv. 13, 15, 23, 24. Such are followed with many instances of divine vengeance, 2 Sam. xii. 9, 10; their lives are often shortened, Psalm lv. 23; and judgments for their sin are oftentimes transmitted to posterity, Gen. xlix. 7; 2 Sam. xxi. 1.

MUSIC, the harmonious combination of sounds, an art of great antiquity, and early employed as a medium of religious worship. Both prophets and priests, among the Jews, appear to have cultivated it, and it was greatly promoted by the royal and "sweet singer of Israel." According to Josephus there were not fewer than 200,000 musicians at the dedication of Solomon's Temple. As practised in public worship among both Jews and Christians, it is of two kinds :

1. Vocal music:-This species, which is the most natural, may be considered to have existed before any other. It was continued by the Jews, and it is the only kind that is permitted in the Greek and Scotch churches, or in dissenting congregations, except a few that have departed from the general practice of the body, and of their fathers, "who used it before the present innova

tion was introdueed. The vocal music of the imperial choristers in St. Petersburgh incomparably surpasses, in sweetness and effect, the sounds produced by the combined power of the most exquisite musical instruments.

2. Instrumental music is also of very ancient date, its invention being ascribed to Tubal, the sixth descendant from Cain. The Jews appear to have used the harp, the nablum or psaltery, the organ, the reed or flute, the trumpet, the tabret, and the cymbal. That in strumental music was not practised by the primitive Christians, but was the innovation of later times, is evident from church history. The organ was first introduced into the church service by Marianus Sanutus, in the year 1290; and the first that was known in the west, was one sent to Pepin, by Constantinus Copronymus about the middle of the eighth century.

MUSSULMAN. See ISLAMISM. MYSTERY, μvorηpiov, secret (from μVEL TO σтоμa, to shut the mouth). It is taken,-1. For a truth revealed by God which is above the power of our natural reason, or which we could not have discovered without revelation; such as the call of the Gentiles, Eph. i. 9; the transforming of some without dying, &c., 1 Cor. xv. 51.-2. The word is also used in reference to things which remain in part incomprehensible after they are revealed; such as the incarnation of Christ, the resurrection of the dead, &c. Some critics, however, observe that the word in the Scripture does not import what is incapable in its own nature of being understood, but barely a secret, any thing not disclosed or published to the world.

In respect to the mysteries of religion, divines have run into two extremes. Some, as one observes, have given up all that was mysterious, thinking that they were not called to believe any thing but what they could comprehend. But if it can be proved that mysteries make a part of a religion coming from God, it can be no part of piety to discard them, as if we were wiser than he. And besides, upon this principle, a man must believe nothing: the various works of nature, the growth of plants, instincts of brutes, union of body and soul, properties of matter, the nature of spirit, and a thousand other things, are all replete with mysteries. If so in the common works of nature, we can hardly sup

pose that those things which more im mediately relate to the Divine Being himself, can be without mystery. The other extreme lies in an attempt to explain the mysteries of revelation so as to free them from all obscurity. To defend religion in this manner is to expose it to contempt. The following maxim points out the proper way of defence, by which both extremes are avoided. Where the truth of a doctrine depends not on the evidence of the things themselves, but on the authority of him who reveals it, there the only way to prove the doctrine to be true is to prove the testimony of him that revealed it to be infallible. Dr. South observes, that the mysteriousness of those parts of the Gospel called the credenda, or matters of our faith, is most subservient to the great and important ends of religion, and that upon these accounts:First, because religion in the prime institution of it was designed to make impressions of awe and reverential fear upon men's minds. 2. To humble the pride and haughtiness of man's reason. 3. To engage us in a closer and more diligent search into them. 4. That the full and entire knowledge of divine things may be one principal part of our felicity hereafter. Robinson's Claude, vol. i. pp. 118,11 9, 304, 305; Campbell's Preliminary Dissertation to the Gospels, vol. i. p. 383; Stilling fleet's Origines Sacrae, vol. ii. c. 8; Ridgley's Div. qu. 11; Calmet's Dict.; Cruden's Concordance; South's Serm. ser. 6. vol. iii.

MYSTERIES, a term used to denote the secret rites of the Pagan superstition, which were carefully concealed from the knowledge of the vulgar.

The learned bishop Warburton supposed that the mysteries of the Pagan religion were the invention of legislators and other great personages, whom fortune or their own merit had placed at the head of those civil societies which were formed in the earliest ages in different parts of the world.

Mosheim was of opinion that the mysteries were entirely commemorative; that they were instituted with a view to preserve the remembrance of heroes and great men, who had been deified in consideration of their martial exploits, useful inventions, public virtues, and especially in consequence of the benefits by them conferred on their contemporaries.

Others, however, suppose that the mysteries were the offspring of bigotry

and priestcraft, and that they originated in Egypt, the native land of idolatry. In that country the priesthood ruled predominant. The kings were engrafted into their body before they could ascend the throne. They were possessed of a third part of the land of all Egypt. The sacerdotal function was confined to one tribe, and was transmitted from father to son. All the Orientals, but more especially the Egyptians, delighted in mysterious and allegorical doctrines. Every maxim of morality, every tenet of theology, every dogma of philosophy, was wrapt up in a veil of allegory and mysticism. This propensity, no doubt, conspired with avarice and ambition to dispose them to a dark and mysterious system of religion. Besides, the Egyptians were a gloomy race of men; they delighted in darkness and solitude. Their sacred rites were generally celebrated with melancholy airs, weeping, and lamentation. This gloomy and unsocial bias of mind must have stimulated them to a congenial mode of worship.

MYSTERIES, or, as they were also called, Miracles, a kind of rude drama, which was a favourite spectacle in the middle ages, represented at solemn festivals. The subjects were of a religious character, and the ecclesiastics were at first the authors and performers. They received the above name because they professedly taught the mysterious doctrines of Christianity, and represented the miracles of the saints and martyrs. The first play of this sort, mentioned by name, appears to have been St. Catherine, written, according to Matthew Paris, by Geoffrey, a Norman, about 1110. They sometimes lasted several days. One which lasted eight days contained a great part of the Scripture History. The Corpus Christi, or famous Coventry mystery, begins with the creation, and ends with the day of judgment. The slaughter of the children at Bethlehem, the sufferings of Christ, &c. were represented.

MYSTICS, a sect distinguished by their professing pure, sublime, and perfect devotion, with an entire disinterested love of God, free from all selfish considerations. The authors of this mystic science, which sprung up towards the close of the third century, are not known; but the principles from which it was formed are manifest. Its first promoters proceeded from the known doctrine of the Platonic school, which was also

adopted by Origen and his disciples, that the divine nature was diffused through all human souls; or that the faculty of reason, from which proceed the health and vigour of the mind, was an emanation from God into the human soul, and comprehended in it the principles and elements of all truth, human and divine. They denied that men could, by labour or study, excite this celestial flame in their breasts; and therefore they disapproved highly of the attempts of those who, by definitions, abstract theorems, and profound speculatious, endeavoured to form distinct notions of truth, and to discover its hidden nature. On the contrary, they maintained that silence, tranquillity, repose, and solitude, accompanied with such acts as might tend to extenuate and exhaust the body, were the means by which the hidden and internal word was excited to produce its latent virtues, and to instruct them in the knowledge of divine things. For thus they reasoned: Those who behold with a noble contempt all human affairs; who turn away their eyes from terrestrial vanities, and shut all the avenues of the outward senses against the contagious influences of a material world, must necessarily return to God when the spirit is thus disengaged from the impediments that prevented that happy union; and in this blessed frame they not only enjoy inexpressible raptures from their communion with the Supreme Being, but are also invested with the inestimable privilege of contemplating truth undisguised and uncorrupted in its native purity, while others behold it in a vitiated and delusive form.

The number of the Mystics increased in the fourth century, under the influence of the Grecian fanatic, who gave himself out for Dionysius the Areopagite, disciple of St. Paul, and probably lived about this period; and by pretending to higher degrees of perfection than other Christians, and practising greater austerity, their cause gained ground, especially in the eastern provinces, in the fifth century. A copy of the pretended works of Dionysius was sent by Balbus to Lewis the Meek, in the year 824, which kindled the holy flame of mysticism in the western provinces, and filled the Latins with the most enthusiastic admiration of this new religion. In the twelfth century, these Mystics took the lead in their method of expounding the

Scriptures. In the thirteenth century they were the most formidable antagonists of the schoolmen; and, towards the close of the fourteenth, many of them resided and propagated their tenets almost in every part of Europe. They had, in the fifteenth century, many persons of distinguished merit in their number; and in the sixteenth century, previous to the reformation, if any spark of real piety subsisted under the despotic empire of superstition, they were only to be found among the Mystics. The celebrated Madame Bourignon, and the amiable Fenelon, archbishop of Cambray, were of this sect. Dr. Haweis, in speaking of the Mystics, Church History, vol. iii. p. 47, thus observes:among those called Mystics, I am persuaded some were found who loved God out of a pure heart fervently; and though they were ridiculed and reviled for proposing a disinterestedness of love without other motives, and as professing to feel in the enjoyment of the temper itself an abundant reward, their holy and heavenly conversation will carry a stamp of real religion upon it."

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As the late Reverend William Law, who was born in 1687, makes a distinguished figure among the modern Mystics, a brief account of the outlines of his system may, perhaps, be entertaining to some readers. He supposed that the material world was the very region which originally belonged to the fallen angels. At length the light and spirit of God entered into the chaos, and turned the angels' ruined kingdom into a Paradise on earth. God then created man, and placed him there. He was made in the image of the Triune God, a living mirror of the divine nature, formed to enjoy communion with Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, and live on earth as the angels do in heaven. He was endowed with immortality, so that the elements of this outward world could not have any power of acting on his body; but by his fall he changed the light, life, and Spirit of God, for the light, life, and spirit of the world. He died the very day of his transgression to all the influences and operations of the Spirit of God upon him, as we die to the influ

ences of this world when the soul leaves the body; and all the influences and operations of the elements of this life were open in him, as they were in any animal, at his birth into this world; he became an earthly creature, subject to the dominion of this outward world, and stood only in the highest rank of animals. But the goodness of God would not leave man in this condition; redemption from it was immediately granted, and the bruiser of the serpent brought the light, life, and spirit of heaven once more into the human nature. All men, in consequence of the redemption of Christ, have in them the first spark, or seed, of the divine life, as a treasure hid in the centre of our souls, to bring forth, by degrees, a new birth of that life which was lost in Paradise. No son of Adam can be lost, only by turning away from the Saviour within him. The only religion which can save us, must be that which can raise the light, life, and spirit of God in our souls. Nothing can enter into the vegetable kingdom till it have the vegetable life in it, or be a member of the animal kingdom till it have the animal life. Thus all nature joins with the Gospel in affirming that no man can enter into the kingdom of heaven till the heavenly life is born in him. Nothing can be our righteousness or recovery but the divine nature of Jesus Christ derived to our souls. Law's Life; Law's Spirit of Prayer and Appeal; Law's Spirit of Love, and on Regeneration.

MYTHOLOGY, in its original import, signifies any kind of fabulous doctrine. In its more appropriated sense, it means those fabulous details concerning the objects of worship, which were invented and propagated by men who lived in the early ages of the world, and by them transmitted to succeeding generations, either by written records, or by oral tradition. See articles HEATHEN, PAGANISM, and Gale's Court of the Gentiles, a work calculated to show that the pagan philosophers derived their most sublime sentiments from the Scriptures. Bryant's System of Ancient Mythology.

NAME OF GOD. By this term we are to understand,-1. God himself, Ps. xx. 1. 2. His titles peculiar to himself, Exod. iii. 13, 14. 3. His word, Ps. v. 11; Acts ix. 15. 4. His works, Ps. viii. 1. 5. His worship, Exod. xx. 24. 6. His perfections and excellencies, Exod. xxxiv. 6; John xvii. 26. The properties or qualities of this name are these-1. A glorious name, Ps. lxxii. 17. 2. Transcendent and incomparable, Rev. xix. 16. 3. Powerful, Phil. ii. 10. 4. Holy and reverend, Ps. cxi. 9. 5. Awful to the wicked. 6. Perpetual, Is. lv. Cruden's Concordance; Hannam's Anal. Comp., p. 20.

13.

NASSARIANS, OR NOSAIRI, a Mohammedan sect of the Shiite party, formed in the 270th year of the Hegirah, received its name from Nasar, in the environs of Koufa, the birth-place of its founder. They occupy a strip of Mount Lebanon, and are tributary to the Turks. They have about 800 villages, and their chief town is Sasita, eight leagues from Tripoli. Here their scheik resides. Their manners are rude, and corrupted by remnants of heathenish customs, which remind us of the Lingam worship. Although polygamy is not allowed, yet, on certain festival days, they permit the promiscuous intercourse of the sexes, and are divided, after the manner of the Hindoos, into numerous castes, which oppress one another. They profess to be worshippers of Ali, believe in the transmigration of souls, but not in a heaven or hell. They are friendly to Christians, and observe some of their festivals and ceremonies, but without understanding their meaning. A spiritual head, scheik khalil, directs their religious concerns, and travels about among them as a prophet.

The opinion formerly current, that this sect were Syrian Sabians, or disciples of St. John, has been completely exploded by Niebuhr, and the accounts of Rousseau, the French consul at Aleppo.

NATIVITY OF CHRIST. The birth of our Saviour was exactly as predicted by the prophecies of the Old Testament, Isa. vii. 14; Jer. xxxi. 22. He was born of a virgin of the house of David, and of the tribe of Judah, Matt. i.; Luke i. 27. His coming into the world was after the

manner of other men, though his generation and conception were extraordinary. The place of his birth was Bethlehem, Mic. v. 2; Matt. ii. 4, 6; where his parents were wonderfully conducted by providence, Luke ii. 1, 7. The time of his birth was foretold by the prophets to be before the sceptre or civil government departed from Judah, Gen. xlix. 10; Mal. iii. 1; Hag. ii. 6, 7, 9; Dan. ix. 24; but the exact year of his birth is not agreed on-by chronologers, but it was about the four thousandth year of the world; nor can the season of the year, the month, and day in which he was born, be ascertained. The Egyptians placed it in January; Wagenseil in February; Bochart in March; some, mentioned by Clement of Alexandria, in April; others in May; Epiphanius speaks of some who placed it in June, and of others who supposed it to have been in July; Wagenseil, who was not sure of February, fixed it probably in August; Lightfoot on the 15th of September; Scaliger, Casaubon, and Calvisius, in October; others in November; and the Latin Church in December. It does not, however, appear probable that the vulgar account is right; the circumstance of the shepherds watching their flocks by night, agrees not with the winter season. Dr. Gill thinks it was more likely in autumn, in the month of September, at the feast of tabernacles, to which there seems some reference in John i. 14. The Scripture, however, assures us that it was in the " fulness of time," Gal. iv. 4; and, indeed, the wisdom of God is evidently displayed as to the time when, as well as the end for which Christ came.

!

It was in a time when the world stood in need of such a Saviour, and was best prepared for receiving him. About the time of Christ's appearance, says Dr. Robertson, there prevailed a general opinion that the Almighty would send forth some eminent messenger to communicate a more perfect discovery of his will to mankind. The dignity of Christ, the virtues of his character, the glory of his kingdom, and the signs of his coming, were described by the ancient prophets with the utmost perspicuity. Guided by the sure word of prophecy, the Jews of that age concluded the period prede