much better, who in his first book 'de Summo Bono,' reckoned the Jews first among those nations which believed God to be an incorporeal being, alleging even the testimonies of the prophets, and explaining those figurative expressions which seemed to warrant a contrary opinion."

This censure is not altogether groundless, but it should have been less severe; for Arnobius only means that we are not answerable for the idle fancies of the Jews; but there is no harm in the things that are common to us with them, if the mystical sense be understood. He could not deny, that according to the literal sense of the Scripture, God has hands and feet, a mouth and eyes. Therefore it was necessary for him to inform the heathens that the truth lies concealed under those figurative expressions. He showed himself to be a dexterous and able rhetorician by not insisting on that objection, and by only telling his adversaries in four or five lines, that the Christians do not ascribe to God any figure or organical composition. Had he attempted to enter upon a more exact discussion of the matter, as Numenius did, he would have enervated his work; for since he was writing an invective against the Pagans, it was not his business to lose any time in answering them. It was better for him to act all along the part of an assailant; an author ought to be upon the defensive as little as he can, when he writes books of this nature. Art. SADDUCEES.

SADEUR.

(His curious fictitious Voyages.)

JAMES SADEUR, author of a new voyage into Terra Australis, printed in the year 1692. His father's name was James Sadeur, and his mother's Guillemette Itin; they were both natives of Chatillon upon Bar, in the jurisdiction of Rethel in Champagne, and had gone with

a design to settle in America; but after nine or ten months' stay at Port-Royal, they took shipping the twenty-fifth of April, 1603, to return to France. The wife, fifteen days after they embarked, was delivered of the boy who is the subject of this article. Both the father and mother were cast away near cape Finisterre, where their ship ran aground: the child was saved as it were by a miracle, and given to an inhabitant of that coast; and then, having again escaped in another shipwreck, he went to serve a Portuguese lady, and studied with her son. He was taken by pirates, in the year 1623. He had almost perished in a third shipwreck, but he was saved by a ship that was going to the Indies; and suffered a fourth shipwreck which, by several accidents which nobody is obliged to believe, occasioned his landing in Terra Australis. The manner in which this came to pass, and how he overcame the wild beasts that were ready to devour him, and at last left that country after he had been there thirty two years, and arrived at Madagascar, is so strange that I do not think there are any fictions more ridiculous in either Ariosto or Amadis. Neither do I mention James Sadeur here as a person that ever existed, or his voyage to Terra Australis as a true history, but only because I spoke of him in the article of Adam, and that I may give a supplement to the chimerical fancies of Antoinette Bourignon.

Sadeur, who pretends to be an hermaphrodite, tells us that it was that very thing which preserved his life, in a country where every body has both sexes, and where all the men of our continent are treated as sea monsters, and have no quarter given them. "All the Australians," says he, "have both sexes; and whenever a child comes into the world having but one sex, they stifle it as a monster."

He does not clearly explain the manner how they generate; but says, "that all the time he was amongst them, he never could learn how generation is performed

in that country; and that they have so great an aversion for whatever concerns the first beginning of life, that a year or thereabouts after his arrival, two Australians hearing him say something about it, went away expressing as much horror as if he had committed some crime." He nevertheless gives us very plainly to understand," that children grow in their bowels as fruits do upon trees; that they live without having any libidinous inclinations one towards another, and cannot so much as hear of them without horror; that their love is neither carnal nor brutish; that they are wholly sufficient to themselves, and want nothing to make them happy and contented." In a word, the arguments he puts in an old Australian's mouth, suppose that each individual person is the sole and total cause of the children he brings into the world. He introduces him raising difficulties against the generation which depends upon two persons, one of which is the father, and the other the mother. The old man concludes," that man cannot be a perfect and complete being without both sexes." These ideas appear to have a singular conformity with those of Antoinette Bourignon, who says, "that sin has disfigured the work of God in men, and that instead of being men, as they should be, they are become monsters in nature divided into two imperfect sexes, unable to produce their like alone, as trees and plants are produced, which in that respect are more perfect than men or women, who cannot produce without the help of another, nor without pain and misery."

If you except the consequences of sin, the doctrine of that woman, and that of the Australian philosopher, are as like one another as two drops of water. I wonder neither of them perceived that their pretended superiority of plants above man, with respect to the faculty of generating, is a false supposition; for it is true indeed that each plant produces its grain, its fruit, and its seed, independent on another plant of a

different sex; but it is not true that it produces another plant in itself, and by itself. What has it then above man? Does not a man produce in himself, and without the concourse of the other sex, the seed, which is like the grain or kernel in plants, from which another individual proceeds? It is true, will some say; but that other individual will not proceed from the male seed without a conjunction with the other sex. I answer, do you think that the seed of plants does not want to be received into a womb that it may become a plant? Must it not be received into the earth? Is not this as great though not so pleasant a dependency upon another being as Antoinette Bourignon and James Sadeur find on the other side? It is certain that, according to their system, the perfect state of man would not be like that of plants in this respect; man would produce in himself, and by his own power alone, not something wherewith to make another man in another subject, but another man. A plant does not do that; it produces in itself something out of which the earth produces another plant. I remember to this purpose to have read the following verses.

J'ai veu vif sans fantsome

Un jeune moyne avoir

Membre de femme et d'homme

Et enfant concepvoir

Par luy seul en luy mesmes

Engendrer, enfanter

Comme font aultres femmes

Sans oultilz emprunter."

The words applied to the Porcupine, " Seque jaculo, sese pharetra, sese utitur arcu, he himself was his own bow, arrows, and quiver," might have been applied to it: but this story of Molinet ought not wholly to be credited. That monk was not both agent and patient at the same time. I do not know whether he

Les faictz et dictz de bonne memoire Jehan Molinet, fol. 229, verso Paris, 1540, in 8vo.

was punished; I have only read that he was put into the hands of justice, and confined till he was delivered. Read this passage of the "Chronique Scandaleuse de Louis XI. In the said year, 1478, it happened in Auvergne, that there was one of the friars in a convent of black monks belonging to Cardinal de Bourbon, who had both sexes, and made use of them in such a manner that he proved with child: whereupon he was seized, prosecuted, and confined till he should be delivered, that he might be dealt with afterwards as the judges should think fit." Is it not strange negligence to give no account of the consequences of this imprisonment?

To return to our traveller, it is clear that Sadeur intended to insinuate that his Australians were not descended from Adam, but from an androgyne, who did not fall as Adam did, from his state of innocence. This might be a pretty good device to impose upon the censors of books, and remove the difficulties of a licence, if one had a mind to try the success of a preadamitical system. If La Peyrere had made use of this device, he would have avoided a great deal of trouble. Cyrano Bergerac did not wholly neglect it in his travels to the sun and moon. Perhaps the author of the "History of the Sevarambians" has taken advantage of the same artifice.

He as

My conjectures in relation to the allegorical meaning of Sadeur are formed on much probability. cribes many things to them which suit only with the state of innocence; as that they are not ashamed of being naked, they all love one another with a sincere affection, they never quarrel, they know no distinction of property, they have all things in common with an admirable fidelity and disinterestedness; they bring forth without any pain, they have no unchaste inclination, they are strong and vigorous, their health is never affected by any sickness, and they make no great account of life in comparison with the eternal