Testamemtum inferorum

TESTAMEMTUM inferorum, the Covenant of the Grave, or that Sentence pronounced against us, that All must die: The Greek says,¹ The Covenant of the God of the Dead has not been shewn to you: Pluto has not informed you how long time he has appointed you to live. This Expression is borrowed from the Religion of the Pagans; but it is easy to affix a good Idea to it, by substituting the true God instead of the God Pluto.

Daniel says, that during the Persecution of Antiochus Epiphanes,c the Wicked would dissemble with the holy Covenant: Testamentum simulabunt fraudulenter; the Hebrew says, by his Caresses he will oblige the Prevaricators of the Covenant to dissemble, or disguise their Belief. And indeed many of the Jews renounced their Religion, others cowardly dissembled their Sentiments. And in the Maccabees;² Fratres mei sub Testamento æternæ vitæ effecti sunt, My Brethren are dead in the Hope of eternal Life. The Greek may be translated, They are dead for the Covenant that God gave them, which he has sworn to them, of everlasting Life.

The Orientals being fruitful in Fictions, have trumpt up the Testaments of Adam, of Noah, of Abraham, of Job, of Moses, and of Solomon, and of the Twelve Patriarchs, the Sons of Jacob. ‘Tis obvious how little Credit is to be given to these kind of things: But, however, we should supply the Reader with some just Reason for despising them. They tell us,³ that Adam, a little before his Death, called to him Seth, Enoch, Cainan, and Mahalaleel, and bid them take his Body after his Death, and bury it in the Middle of the Earth, that is to say, upon Mount Calvary near Jerusalem. A Mahometan Author says,⁴ that the first Father made his Will, and had it wrote and signed by the Angel Gabriel, and sixty thousand other Angels, and deposited it with the Patriarch Seth, his Son.

As to Noah’s Testament, ‘tis pretended that when he was nine hundred and thirtyfour Years of Age, he made a Distribution of the several Parts of the Earth to his three Sons. He gave to Ham the Blacks, to Japhet the Ruddy, and to Shem the Brown: That he order’d Shem to take Melchisedech along with him, and to carry the Coffin with the Body of Adam to such a Place as the Angel of the Lord should conduct them; which Shem did not fail to perform.

Lambec. Biblioth. Vin. Cod. 337.Lambecius speaks of a Greek Manuscript called The Testament of Abraham; but this is a modern Work, and altogether fabulous.

In the Catalogue of Apocryphal Books condemned by Pope Gelasius, we read of The Testament of Job: But the best Copies, instead of Job read Jacob.

St. Athanasius, in his Synopsis of Holy Scripture, and some other of the Ancients, mention The Testament of Moses, which was an Apocryphal Book composed probably by the Hereticks called Sethians. M. Gilbert Gaulmin quotes, in some Places of his Notes upon Psellus, a Greek Manuscript called The Testament of Solomon: But he lets us know it is a bad Work, composed by some modern Greek, who gave it the pompous Name of Solomon’s Will, to give it the more Credit.

The Testament of the Twelve Patriarchs, is an Apochryphal Work composed in Greek by some converted Jew, in the First or Second Age of the Church. Origen⁵ had seen this Work, and found some good Sense in it, tho’ the Jews did not admit it into their Canon. It was for a long time unknown to the learned Men of Europe, and even to the Greeks. Robert Grossetest, Bishop of Lincoln, having had Intelligence of it by means of Johannes de Basingstokes, Deacon of Legies, who had studied at Athens, sent for a Greek Copy into England, and translated it into Latin by the Assistance of Master Nicolas, a Grecian by Birth, and a Clergyman belonging to the Abbot of St. Albans, about the Year 1252. Afterwards it was published in Greek by Dr. Grabe, in his Spicilegium S. Patrum, and then again by M. Fabricius, in his Apocryphal Books of the Old Testament. The Author there gives several Particulars of the Life and Death of the Twelve Patriarchs, whom he makes to speak, to relate, and foretell, whatever he thinks proper. He speaks of the Destruction of Jerusalem, of the Coming of the Messiah, of the several Actions of his Life, and even of the Writings of the E-

3 vangelists, in a manner that can agree to none but a Christian, but very probably converted from Judaism, and still possessed with many Prejudices of his own Nation.

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