ima,
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 understan