'the sabbath. To enforce a religious observance of that sacred day it became necessary to inform them of the time and occasion of its first institution, that they might keep it holy in memory of the creation; but, in a country like Egypt, the people were in danger of holding sacrifices in too high rather than too low veneration, so that there was not the same necessity for mentioning explicitly the early institution of them. It was sufficient that they knew the divine institution of their own sacrifices, and the purposes for which they were offered. Faith,' says the apostle Paul, is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen,' and comes not by reasoning, but by hearing. What things then were they of which Abel, the first sacrificer, had heard, for which he hoped, and in the faith of which he offered sacrifice? Undoubtedly it was a restoration to that immortality which was forfeited by the transgression of his parents. Of such redemption an obscure intimation had been given to Adam, in the promise that the seed of the woman should bruise the head of the serpent; and it was doubtless to impress upon his mind in more striking colors the manner in which this was to be done that bloody sacrifices were first instituted. As long as such rites were thus understood they constituted a perfectly rational worship, as they showed the people that the wages of sin is death; but when men sunk into idolatry, and lost all hopes of a resurrection from the dead, the slaughtering of animals to appease their deities was a practice grossly superstitious. It rested in itself, without pointing to any farther end, and the grovelling worshippers believed that by their sacrifices they purchased the favor of their deities. When once this notion was entertained, human sacrifices were .soon introduced. By the Jewish law these abominable offerings were strictly forbidden, and the whole ritual of sacrifice restored to its original purity.

All Christian churches have, till very lately, agreed in believing that the Jewish sacrifices served, among other uses, for types of the death of Christ and the Christian worship. Many are of opinion that they were likewise fœderal rites, as they certainly were considered by the ancient Romans. (Liv. 21, 45). Of the various kinds of Jewish sacrifices, and the subordinate ends for which they were offered, a full account is given in the books of Moses. When an Israelite of fered a loaf or a cake, the priest broke it into two parts; and, setting aside that half which he reserved for himself, broke the other into crumbs, poured oil, wine, incense, and salt upon it, and spread the whole upon the fire of the altar. If these offerings were accompanied with the sacrifice of an animal, they were thrown upon the victim to be consumed along with it. If the offerings were of the ears of new corn, they were parched at the fire, rubbed in the hand, and then offered to the priest in a vessel, over which he poured oil, incense, wine, and salt, and then burnt it upon the altar, having first taken as much of it as of right belonged to himself. The principal sacrifices among the Hebrews consisted of bullocks, sheep, and goats: but doves and turtles were accepted from those who were not able to bring the other; these animals were to be perfect, and without blemish. The rites of

sacrificing were various, and are very minutely described in the books of Moses.

The manner of sacrificing among the Greeks and Romans was as follows:-In the choice of the victim, they took care that it was without blemish or imperfection; its tail was not to be too small at the end; the tongue not black, nor the ears cleft; and the bull must never have been yoked. The victim being pitched upon, they gilt his forehead and horns, especially if a bull, heifer, or cow. The head they also adorned with a garland of flowers, a woollen infula or holy fillet, whence hung two rows of chaplets with twisted ribands; and over the middle of the body a kind of stole, hung down on each side; the lesser victims were only adorned with garlands and bundles of flowers, together with white tufts or wreaths. The victims, thus prepared, were brought before the altar: the lesser being driven to the place, and the larger led by a

halter; when, if they made any struggle, or refused to go, the resistance was taken for an ill omen, and the sacrifice often delayed. The victim, thus brought, was carefully examined, to see that there was no defect in it; then the priest, clad in his sacerdotal habit, and accompanied with the sacrificers and other attendants, and being washed and purified according to the ceremonies prescribed, turned to the right hand, and went round the altar, sprinkling it and those who were present with meal and holy water. Then the crier proclaimed with a loud voice, Who is here? To which the people replied, Many and good. The priest then having exhorted the people to join with him, by saying Let us pray, confessed his own unworthiness, acknowledging that he had been guilty of divers sins; for which he entreated pardon of the gods, hoping that they would grant his requests, accept the oblations offered, and send them all health and happiness; and to this general form added petitions for such particular favors as were then desired. The priest then took a cup of wine; and, having tasted it, caused his assistants to do the like; and then poured forth the remainder between the horns of the victim. Then the priest or the crier, or sometimes the most honorable person in the company, killed the beast, by knocking it down or cutting its throat. If the sacrifice was in honor of the celestial gods, the throat was turned up towards heaven, but if they sacrificed to the heroes or infernal gods, the victim was killed with its throat towards the ground. If by accident the beast escaped the stroke, leaped up after it, or expired with pain and difficulty, it was thought to be unacceptable to the gods. The beast being killed, the priest inspected its entrails, and made predictions from them. They then poured wine and frankincense into the fire, to increase the flame, and then laid the sacrifice on the altar; which in the primitive times was burnt whole to the gods, and thence called a holocaust; but in after-times only part of the victim was consumed in the fire, and the remainder reserved for the sacrificers; the thighs, and sometimes the entrails, being burnt to their honor, the company feasted upon the rest. During the sacrifice, the priest, and the person who gave the sacrifice, jointly prayed, laying their hand upon the altar. Sometimes they

played upon musical instruments in the time of the sacrifice, and on some occasions they danced round the altar, singing sacred hymns in honor of the gods.

Concerning the origin of human sacrifices various opinions have been formed. When men had indulged the fancy of bribing their gods by sacrifice, it was natural for them to think of enhancing the value of the atonement by the cost and rarity of the offering, and thus at last they offered that which they conceived to be the most precious of all, a human sacrifice. It was customary,' says Sanchoniathon, in ancient times, in great and public calamities before things became incurable, for princes and magistrates to offer up in sacrifice to the avenging demons the dearest of their offspring.' Sanchoniathon wrote of Phoenicia; but the practice prevailed in every nation of which we have received any ancient account. The people of Dumah, in particular, sacrificed every year a child, and buried it underneath an altar; for they did not admit of images. The Persians buried people alive. Hamestris, the wife of Xerxes, entombed twelve persons alive under ground. It would be endless to enumerate every city and province where these dire practices obtained. The Cyprians, the Rhodians, the Phoceans, the Ionians, those of Chios, Lesbos, Tenedos, all offered human sacrifices. The natives of the Tauric Chersonesus offered up to Diana every stranger whom chance threw upon their coast. Hence arose that just expostulation of Euripides in his Iphigenia, upon the inconsistency of the proceeding. Iphigenia wonders, as the goddess delighted in the blood of men, that every villain and murderer should be priviledged to escape, nay, driven from the threshold of the temple; whereas, if an honest and virtuous man chanced to stray thither, he was only seized upon, and put to death. The Pelasgi, in a time of scarcity, vowed the tenth of all that should be born to them for a sacrifice, to procure plenty. Aristomenes the Messenian slew 300 noble Lacedemonians, among whom was Theopompus the king of Sparta, at the altar of Jupiter at Ithome. The Lacedemonians did not fail to make ample returns, and offered the like number of victims to Mars. Their barbarous festival of the Diamastigosis is well known. See DIAMASTIGOSIS. Phylarchus, as quoted by Porphyry, says that of old every Grecian state made it a rule, before they marched against an enemy, to solicit a blessing on their undertakings by human victims. The Romans were accustomed to the like sacrifices. They both devoted themselves to the infernal gods, and constrained others to submit to the same horrid doom. Hence we read in Livy that, in the consulate of Æmilius Paulus and Terentius Varro, two Gauls, a man and a woman, and two Greeks were buried alive at Rome in the ox-market. He says it was a sacrifice not originally of Roman institution; yet was often practised there by public authority. Plutarch mentions a similar instance a few years before, in the consulship of Flaminius and Furius. Caius Marius offered up his own daughter as a victim to the Dii Averrunci, to procure success in a battle against the Cimbri; as we are

informed by Dorotheus, quoted by Clemens, and by Plutarch, who says that her name was Calpurnia. Cicero, mentioning this custom as common in Gaul, adds that it prevailed among the people even at the time he was writing; and Pliny says that it had then, and not very long, been discouraged. For there was a law enacted when Lentulus and Crassus were consuls, so late as A. U. C. 657, that there should be no more human sacrifices. They were, however, again offered, though they became not so general. For Augustus Cæsar, when Perusia surrendered during the second triumvirate, offered up, upon the Ides of March, 300 persons, of the equestrian and senatorial order, to the manes of his uncle Julius Cæsar. Even in Rome this custom was revived: and Porphyry assures us that in his time a man was every year sacrificed at the shrine of Jupiter Latialis. Heliogabalus offered similar victims to the Syrian deity which he introduced among the Romans. The same is said of Aurelian. The Gauls and Germans were so devoted to this shocking custom that no business of any moment was transacted among them without the blood of men. They were offered up to Husus, Taranis, Thautates, &c. These deities are mentioned by Lucan. The altars of these gods were generally situated in the depth of woods, that the gloom might add to the horror of the operation. The persons devoted were led thither by the Druids, who presided at the solemnity, and performed the cruel office. Tacitus mentions the cruelty of the Hermunduri, in a war with the Catti, wherein they had greatly the advantage; at the close of which they made one general sacrifice of all their prisoners. The remains of the legions under Varrus suffered the same fate. There were many places destined for this purpose all over Gaul and Germany; but especially the woods of Arduenna (now Ardennes), and the great Hercynian forest; a wild that extended above thirty days' journey in length. The places set apart for this solemnity were held in the utmost reverence. Lucan mentions a grove of this sort near Marsilia, which even the Roman soldiers were afraid to violate, though commanded by Cæsar. Claudian compliments Stilicho that, among other advantages accruing to the Roman armies through his conduct, they could now venture into the awful forest 0. Hercynia, and follow the chace in those so much dreaded woods. These practices prevailed among all the nations of the north. The Massagetæ, the Scythians, the Getes, the Sarmatians, all the various nations upon the Baltic, particularly the Suevi and Scandinavians, held it as a fixed principle that their security could not be obtained but at the expense of the lives of others. Their chief gods were Thor and Woden, whom they thought they could never sufficiently glut with blood. They had many celebrated places of worship; especially in the island of Rugen, near the mouth of the Oder; and in Zealand, and among the Semnones and Naharvalli. But the most frequented was at Upsal; where there was every year a grand solemnity, which continued for nine days, during which they sacrificed animals of all sorts; but the most acceptable and numerous victims

were men. Uf these none were esteemed so auspicious a sacrifice as the prince of the country. When the lot fell for the king to die, it was received with universal joy; as it once happened in the time of a famine, when they cast lots, and it fell to king Domalder to be the people's victim; and he was accordingly put to death. They did not spare their own children. Harold the son of Gunild slew two of his sons to obtain, says Verstegan, such a tempest at sea, as should break and disperse the shipping of Harold king of Denmark.' Another king slew nine sons to prolong his own life. Adam Bremensis, speaking of the awful grove at Upsal where these horrid rites were celebrated, says that there was not a single tree but was reverenced, as if gifted with some portion of divinity; because they were stained with gore and foul with human putrefaction. The same is observed by Scheiffer in his account of this place. The manner in which the victims were slaughtered was diverse in different places. Some of the Gaulish nations chined them with the stroke of an axe. The Celtæ placed the man who was to be offered for a sacrifice upon a block or an altar, with his breast upwards, and with a sword struck forcibly across the sternum; then tumbling him to the ground, from his agonies and convulsions, as well as from the effusion of blood, they formed a judgment of future events. The Cimbri ripped open the bowels; and from them they pretended to divine. In Norway they beat men's brains out with an ox-yoke. In Iceland they dashed them against an altar of stone. In many places they transfixed them with arrows. After they were dead, they suspended them upon the trees, and left them to putrefy. At one time seventy carcases of this sort were found in a wood of the Scevi. Dithmar of Mersburg speaks of a place called Ledur in Zealand, where there were every year ninetynine persons sacrificed to the god Swantowite. During these bloody festivals a general joy prevailed, and banquets were most royally served. They fed, caroused, and gave a loose to indulgence, which at other times was not permitted. Their servants were numerous, who attended during the term of their feasting, and partook of the banquet. But, at the close of all, they were smothered in the same pool, or otherwise made away with. On which Tacitus remarks how great an awe this circumstance must necessarily infuse into those who were not admitted to these mysteries. They imagined that there was something mysterious in the number nine: for which reason these feasts were in some places celebrated every ninth year, in others every ninth month; and continued for nine days. When all was ended, they washed the image of the deity in a pool; and then dismissed the assembly. These accounts are handed down from a variety of authors in different ages; many of whom were natives of the countries which they describe, and to which they seem strongly attached. The like custom prevailed to an excessive degree at Mexico (see MEXICO), and even under the mild government of the Peruvians; and in most parts of America. But, among the nations of Canaan, the victims were peculiarly chosen.

Their own children, and whatever was nearest and dearest to them, were deemed the most worthy offering to their gods. The Carthaginians, who were a colony from Tyre, carried with them the religion of their country, and instituted the same worship in the parts were they settled. It consisted in the adoration of several deities, but particularly of Kronus, to whom they offered human sacrifices, and especially children. If the parents were not at hand to make an immediate offer, the magistrates did not fail to make choice of those who were most fair and premising. Upon a check being received in Sicily, Hamilcar laid hold of a boy, and offered him on the spot to Kronus; and at the same time drowned a number of priests to appease the deity of the sea. The Carthaginians, upon a great defeat of their army by Agathocles, imputed their miscarriages to the anger of this god, and seized at once 300 children of the nobility, and offered them for a sacrifice; 300 more yielded themselves voluntarily, and were put to death with the others. The Egyptians chose the most handsome persons to be sacrificed. The Albanians pitched upon the best man of the community, and made him pay for the wickedness of the rest. If a person had an only child, it was the more liable to be sacrificed, as being esteemed more acceptable to the deity, and more efficacious to the general good. Those who were sacrificed to Kronus were thrown into the arms of a molten idol, which stood in the midst of a large fire, and was red hot. The arms of it were stretched out, with the hands turned upwards, as it were to receive them; yet sloping downwards, so that they dropt thence into a glowing furnace below. To other gods they were otherwise slaughtered, often by the very hands of their parents. They embraced their children with great fondness, and encouraged them in the gentlest terms, that they might not be appalled at the sight of the hellish process; begging of them to submit with cheerfulness to this fearful operation. If there was any appearance of a tear rising, or a cry unawares escaping, the mother smothered it with her kisses, that there might not be any show of backwardness or constraint, but the whole be a free-will offering. These cruel endearments over, they stabbed them to the heart, or otherwise opened the sluices of life; and with the blood warm, as it ran, besmeared the altar and the grim visage of the idol. These were the customs which the Israelites learned of the people of Canaan, and for which they are upbraided by the Psalmist (cvi. 34—39). These cruel rites, practised in so many nations, made Plutarch doubt, Whether it would not have been better for the Galatæ, or for the Scythians to have had no tradition or conception of any superior beings, than to have formed to themselves notions of gods who delighted in the blood of men; of gods who esteemed human victims the most acceptable and perfect sacrifice. Would it not, says he, have been more eligible for the Carthaginians to have had the atheist Critias, or Diagoras their lawgiver, at the commencement of their polity, and to have been taught that there was neither god nor demon, than to have sacrificed in the man

ner they were wont to the god whom they adored? The mother, he adds, who sacrificed her child stood by, without any seeming sense of what she was losing, and without uttering a groan. If a sigh did escape she lost all the honor which she proposed to herself in the offering, and the child was notwithstanding slain. All the time of this ceremony, while the children were murdering, there was a noise of clarions and tabors sounding before the idol, that the cries and shrieks of the victims might not be heard.' 'Tell me now,' adds Plutarch, if the monsters of old, the Typhons, and the giants, were to expel the gods, and to rule the world in their stead; could they require a service more horrid than these infernal rites and sacrifices?'

SACRILEGE, n. s. Fr. sacrilege; Lat. SACRILEGIOUS, adj. sacrilegium. The SACRILEGIOUSLY, adv. crime of appropriating what is devoted to religion, or of violating or profaning things sacred: the adjective and adverb corresponding.

By what eclipse shall that sun be defaced, What mine hath erst thrown down so fair a tower, What sacrilege hath such a saint disgraced?

Sidney.

Then 'gan a cursed hand the quiet womb Of his great grandmother with steel to wound, And the hid treasures in her sacred tomb With sacrilege to dig.

To sacrilegious perjury should I should account it greater misery. When these evils befel him, his

Faerie Queene. be betrayed, I King Charles. conscience tells

him it was for sacrilegiously pillaging and invading

God's house.

South.

We need not go so many ages back to see the vengeance of God upon some families, raised upon the ruins of churches, and enriched with the spoils of sacrilege. Id. Blasphemy is a male liction, and a sacrilegious detraction from the Godhead. Ayliffe's Parergon. Still green with bays each ancient altar stands, Above the reach of sacrilegious hands.

SA'CRING, part. SA'CRIST, SACRISTAN,

Pope.

A participle of the French sacrer. The verb is not used in English. Consecrating; a sacrist or sacristan (Fr. sacristain) is one who has the care of consecrated things: sacristy the place where they are kept.

SAC'RISTY.

I'll startle you, Worse than the sacring bell. Shakspeare. Henry VIII. The sacring of the kings of France is the sign of their sovereign priesthood as well as kingdom, and in the right thereof they are capable of holding all vacant benefices. Temple.

Bold Amycus from the robbed vestry brings A sconce that hung on high, With tapers filled to light the sacristy. Dryden. A third apartment should be a kind of sacristy for altars, idols, and sacrificing instruments.

Addison.

A sacrist or treasurer are not dignitaries in the church of common right, but only by custom. Ayliffe's Parergon.

SACROBOSCO (Joannes de), or John Halifax, a celebrated mathematician of the thirteenth century, said by English biographers to have been born at Halifax in Yorkshire, but both VOL. XIX.

Scots and Irish writers claim him as their countryman. After receiving his education at Oxford, he entered into orders, and went to Paris, where he died in 1256. He wrote, 1. De Sphærâ Mundi; 2. De Anni Ratione; 3. De Algorismo.

SACRUM, or Os basilare, the sacred bone, so called from its being offered in sacrifice by the ancients, or perhaps from its supporting the organs of generation, which they considered as sacred. In young subjects it is composed of five or six pieces, united by cartilage; but in more advanced age it becomes one bone, in which, however, the marks of the former separation may still be easily distinguished. Its shape has been sometimes compared to an irregular triangle; and sometimes, and perhaps more properly, to a pyramid, flattened before and behind, with its basis placed towards the lumbar vertebræ, and its point terminating in the coccyx. See ANATOMY.

SAD, adj. Of this word, so frequent in SAD'DEN, v. a. the language, the etymology is SADLY, adv. not known, says Johnson. SADNESS, n. s. Goth. sat, grief.-Thomson. Sorrowful; full of grief: hence heavy; gloomy; bad; cohesive: to sadden is to make sad: and the adverb and noun substantive correspond. Be not as the hypocrites of a sad countenance.

Matthew.

Do you think I shall not love a sud Pamela so well as a joyful? Sidney. With that his hand, more sad than lump of lead, his own good sword, Morddure to cleave his head. Uplifting high, he weened with Morddure,

Faerie Queene.

My father has gone wild into his grave;
For in his tomb lie my affections;
And with his spirits sadly I survive,
To mock the expectations of the world.

Shakspeare. Henry IV. It ministreth unto men, and other creatures, all celestial influences; it dissipateth those sad thoughts and sorrows which the darkness both begetteth and maintaineth. Raleigh.

If it were an embassy of weight, choice was made of some sad person of known judgment and experience, and not of a young man, not weighed in state matters.

Bacon.

A sad wise valour is the brave complexion That leads the van, and swallows up the cities: The giggler is a milk-maid, whom inflection, Or a fired beacon, frighteth from his ditties.

and shadow of blue; and in its coarse pieces is of a sadder hue than the powder of Venice glass. Browne's Vulgar Errours.

I met him accidentally in London in sad coloured c.oathes, far from being costly.

Walton's Life of Bishop Sanderson. Scarce any tinging ingredient is of so general use as woad, or glastum; for though of itself it dye but a blue, yet it is used to prepare cloth for a green, and many of the sadder colours, when the dyers make them last without fading. Boyle.

He sadly suffers in their grief,
Out-weeps an hermit, and out-prays a saint.

Dryden.

SADDLE, n. s. & v. a. Sax. radl; Goth. SADDLE-BACKED, adj. seda; Dan. and SADDLE-MAKER, N. S. Belg. sadel; Wel. SADDLER. sadell. The seat which is put upon a horse: to cover with a saddle; to burden: saddle-backed is defined in the extract saddle-maker and saddler, a manufacturer of saddles.

I will saddle me an ass, that I may ride thereon. 2 Sam. His horse hipped, with an old moth-eaten saddle, and the stirrups of no kindred.

Shakspeare. Taming of the Shrew. Sixpence that I had To pay the saddler for my mistress' crupper, The saddler had it. Id. Comedy of Errours. The law made for apparel, and riding in saddles, after the English fashion, is penal only to English

men.

Davies.

Rebels, by yielding, do like him, or worse,
Who saddled his own back to shame his horse.
Cleaveland.
The utmost exactness in these belongs to farriers,
saddlers, and smiths.
Digby.
One hung a pole-ax at his saddle bow,
And one a heavy mace. Dryden's Knight's Tale.
Resolved for sea, the slaves thy baggage pack,
Each saddled with his burden on his back;
Nothing retards thy voyage.
Dryden.
Horses, saddle-backed, have their backs low, and a
raised head and neck.
Farrier's Dictionary.

No man, sure, e'er left his house,
And saddled Ball, with thoughts so wild,
To bring a midwife to his spouse,
Before he knew she was with child.

Prior.

The smith and the saddler's journeyman ought to partake of your master's generosity.

Swift's Directions to the Groom. SADDLE, in archaiology. In the earlier ages the Romans used neither saddle nor stirrups, and hence the Roman cavalry were subject to

sundry maladies in the hips and legs from the want of some support for their feet. Hippocrates observes that the Scythians, who were much on horseback, were incommoded by defluxions in the legs from the same cause. In less remote times, the Romans placed upon their horses a square pannel, or species of covering which enabled them to sit less hardly. This they termed ephippium.

The saddles now chiefly in use are:-The running saddle, which is a small one with round skirts. The Burford saddle, which has the seat and the skirts both plain. The pad saddle, of which there are two sorts, some made with burs before the seat, and others with bolsters under the thighs. The French pad saddle, of which the burs come wholly round the seat. The portmanteau saddle, that has a cantle behind the seat, to keep the portmanteau from the back of the rider. A war saddle, which has a cantle and a bolster behind and before; also a fair bolster. The pack saddle, a saddle upon which loads may be carried

The several parts of a saddle are too well known to require any minute description in this place.

SADDUCEES, a sect among the ancient Jews respecting whose origin there are various opinions. Epiphanius and others contend that they took their rise from Dositheus, a sectary of Samaria, and their name from the Hebrew word

, just, from the great justice and equity which they showed in their actions. In the Jewish Talmud we are told that the Sadducees derived their name from Sadoc, or Zadoc, and that the sect arose about 260 years before Christ, in the time of Antigonus of Socho, president of the Sanhedrim at Jerusalem, and teacher of the law. He had often in his lectures taught his scholars that they ought not to serve God as slaves do their masters, from the hope of a reward, but merely out of filial love for his own sake; from which Sadoc and Baithas inferred that there were no rewards after this life. They therefore separated from their master, and taught that there was no resurrection nor future state. This new

doctrine quickly spread, and gave rise to the sect of Sadducees, which in many respects resembled the Epicureans. Dr. Prideaux thinks that the Sadducees were at first no more than what the Karaites are now; that is, they would not receive the traditions of the elders, but stuck to the written word only; and, the Pharisees being great promoters of those traditions, these two sects became opponents. Afterwards the Sadducees imbibed other doctrines, they denied the resurrection of the dead, and the existence of angels, and of the spirits or souls of men departed. (Matt. xxii. 23, Acts xxiii. 8). They held that there is no spiritual being but God only; that as to man, this world is his all. They did not deny but that we had reasonable souls; but they maintained that these were mortal; and that what is said of the existence of angels, and of a future resurrection, is nothing but illusion. It is also said that they rejected the prophecies. The Sadducees observed the law themselves, and caused it to be observed by others with the utmost rigor. They admitted of