kindred prohibited by God. In the beginning of the world, and again,
long after the deluge, marriages between near relations were allowed. In
the time of Abraham and Isaac, these marriages were permitted, and among
the Persians much later: it is even said to be esteemed neither criminal
nor ignominious among the remains of the old Persians at this day. Some
authors believe that marriages between near relations were permitted,
or, at least, tolerated, till the time of Moses, who first prohibited
them among the Hebrews; and that among other people they were allowed
even after him. Others hold the contrary; but it is hard to establish
either of these opinions, for want of historical documents. The degrees
of consanguinity within which marriage was prohibited are stated in Lev.
xviii, 6–18. Most civilized people have looked on incests as abominable
crimes. St. Paul, speaking of the incestuous man of Corinth, says, “It
is reported commonly, that there is fornication among you, and such
fornication as is not so much as named among the Gentiles, that one
should have his father’s wife,” 1 Cor. v, 1. In order to preserve
chastity in families, and between persons of different sexes, brought up
and living together in a state of unreserved intimacy, it is necessary,
by every method possible, to inculcate an abhorrence of incestuous
conjunctions; which abhorrence can only be upholden by the absolute
reprobation of all commerce of the sexes between near relations. Upon
this principle, the marriage, as well as other cohabitations, of
brothers and sisters, of lineal kindred, and of all who usually live in
the same family, may be said to be forbidden by the law of nature.
Restrictions which extend to remoter degrees of kindred than what this
reason makes it necessary to prohibit from intermarriage, are founded in
the authority of the positive law which ordains them, and can only be
justified by their tendency to diffuse wealth, to connect families, or
to promote some political advantage. The Levitical law, which is
received in this country, and from which the rule of the Roman law
differs very little, prohibits marriages between relations within three
degrees of kindred; computing the generations, not from, but through,
the common ancestor, and accounting affinity the same as consanguinity.
The issue, however, of such marriages are not bastardized, unless the
parents be divorced during their life time.
INCHANTMENTS. The law of God condemns inchantments and inchanters.
Several terms are used in Scripture to denote inchantments: 1. לחש,
which signifies _to mutter_, _to speak with a low voice_, like magicians
in their evocations and magical operations, Psalm lviii, 6. 2. לטים,
_secrets_, whence Moses speaks of the inchantments wrought by Pharaoh’s
magicians. 3. כשף, meaning those who practise juggling, legerdemain,
tricks, and witchery, deluding people’s eyes and senses, 2 Chron.
xxxiii, 6. 4. חבר, which signifies, properly, _to bind_, _assemble_,
_associate_, _reunite_: this occurs principally among those who charm
serpents, who tame them, and make them gentle and sociable, which before
were fierce, dangerous, and untractable, Deut. xviii, 11. We have
examples of each of these ways of inchanting. It was common for
magicians, sorcerers, and inchanters, to speak in a low voice, to
whisper: they are called _ventriloqui_, because they spake, as one would
suppose, from the bottom of their stomachs. They affected secrecy and
mysterious ways, to conceal the vanity, folly, or infamy of their
pernicious art. Their pretended magic often consisted in cunning tricks
only, in sleight of hand, or some natural secrets, unknown to the
ignorant. They affected obscurity and night, or would show their skill
only before the uninformed or mean persons, and feared nothing so much
as serious examinations, broad day-light, and the inspection of the
intelligent. Respecting the inchantments practised by Pharaoh’s
magicians, (see Exod. viii, 18, 19,) in order to imitate the miracles
which were wrought by Moses, it must be said either that they were mere
illusions, whereby they imposed on the spectators; or that, if they
performed such miracles, and produced real changes of their rods, and
the other things said to be performed by them, it must have been by a
supernatural power which God had permitted Satan to give them, but the
farther operation of which he afterward thought proper to prevent.
INDEPENDENTS, a denomination of Protestants in England and Holland,
originally called Brownists. They derive their name from their
maintaining that every particular congregation of Christians has,
according to the New Testament, a full power of ecclesiastical
jurisdiction over its members, independent of the authority of bishops,
synods, presbyteries, or any other ecclesiastical assemblies. This
denomination appeared in England in the year 1616. John Robinson, a
Norfolk divine, who, being banished from his native country for
non-conformity, afterward settled at Leyden, was considered as their
founder and father. He possessed sincere piety, and no inconsiderable
share of learning. Perceiving defects in the denomination of the
Brownists, to which he belonged, he employed his zeal and diligence in
correcting them and in new modelling the society. Though the
Independents considered their own form of ecclesiastical government as
of divine institution, and as originally introduced by the authority of
the Apostles, nay, by the Apostles themselves; yet they did not always
think it necessary to condemn other denominations, but often
acknowledged that true religion might flourish in those communities
which were under the jurisdiction of bishops, or the government of
presbyteries. They approved, also, of a regular and educated ministry;
nor is any person among them now permitted to speak in public before he
has submitted to a proper examination of his capacity and talents, and
has been approved of by the church to which he belonged. Their grounds
of separation from the established church are different from those of
other puritans. Many of the latter objected chiefly to certain rites,
ceremonies, vestments, or forms, or to the government of the church;
while yet they were disposed to arm the magistrate in support of the
truth, and regretted and complained that they could not on these
accounts conform to it. But Robinson and his companions not only
rejected the appointments of the church on these heads, but denied its
authority to enact them; contending, that every single congregation of
Christians was a church, and independent of all legislation, save that
of Christ; standing in need of no such provision or establishment as the
state can bestow, and incapable of soliciting or receiving it. Hence
they sought not to reform the church, but chose to dissent from it. They
admitted there were many godly men in its communion, and that it was
reformed from the grossest errors of the man of sin; but thought it
still wanted some things essential to a true church of Christ; in
particular, a power of choosing its own ministers, and a stricter
discipline among its members. The creed of the Independents is uniformly
Calvinistic, though with considerable shades of difference; and many in
Scotland and Ireland have symbolized with the Sandemanians, or the
Scottish Baptist denominations. The Congregationalist and Independent
have been generally considered as convertible and synonymous: many,
however, in the present day, prefer the former appellation, considering
it desirable, in many cases, to unite, for mutual advice and support,
more closely than the term _independent_ seems to warrant.
INDULGENCES. In the primitive church very severe penalties were
inflicted on those who had been guilty of any sins, whether public or
private; and, in particular, they were forbidden to partake, for a
certain time, of the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper, or to hold any
communion with the church. General rules were formed upon these
subjects; but as it was often found expedient to make a discrimination
in the degrees of punishment, according to the different circumstances
of the offenders, and especially when they showed marks of contrition
and repentance, power was given to bishops, by the council of Nice, to
relax or remit those punishments as they should see reason. Every favour
of this kind was called an indulgence or pardon. After the bishops had
enjoyed this privilege for some centuries, and had begun to abuse it,
the popes discovered that in their own hands it might be rendered a
powerful instrument to promote both their ambition and their avarice.
They could not but perceive that if they could persuade men they had the
power of granting pardon for sin, it would give them a complete
influence over their consciences; and if they could at the same time
prevail upon them to purchase these pardons for money, it must add
greatly to the wealth of the Roman see. In the eleventh century,
therefore, when the dominion of the popes was rising to its zenith, and
their power was almost irresistible, they took to themselves the
exclusive prerogative of dispensing indulgences, which they carried to a
most unwarrantable length. Instead of confining them, according to their
original institution, to the ordinary purposes of ecclesiastical
discipline, they extended them to the punishment of the wicked in the
world to come; instead of shortening the duration of earthly penance,
they pretended that they could deliver men from the pains of purgatory;
instead of allowing them gratuitously, and upon just grounds, to the
penitent offender, they sold them in the most open and corrupt manner to
the profligate and abandoned, who still continued in their vices. They
did not scruple to call these indulgences a plenary remission of all
sins, past, present, and future, and to offer them as a certain and
immediate passport from the troubles of this world to the eternal joys
of heaven. To give some sort of colour and support to this infamous
traffic, they confidently asserted that the superabundant merits of
Christ, and of his faithful servants, formed a fund of which the pope
was the sole manager; and that he could, at his own discretion, dispense
those merits, as the sure means of procuring pardon from God, in any
proportions, for any species of wickedness, and to any person he
pleased. The bare statement of this doctrine is a sufficient refutation
of it; and it is scarcely necessary to add, that it has no foundation
whatever in Scripture. It is an arrogant and impious usurpation of a
power which belongs to God alone; and it has an obvious tendency to
promote licentiousness and sin of every description, by holding out an
easy and certain method of absolution. The popes derived very large sums
from the sale of these indulgences; and it is well known that the gross
abuses practised in granting them were among the immediate and principal
causes of bringing about the reformation. They continue still to be sold
at Rome, and are to be purchased by any who are weak enough to buy them.
The sums required for indulgences were first published by Anthony Egane,
a Franciscan friar, in 1673; and the original pamphlet was republished
by Baron Maseres, in 1809, in his last volume of “Occasional Essays.”
INK. The ink of the ancients was not so fluid as ours. Demosthenes
reproaches Æschines with labouring in the grinding of ink, as painters
do in the grinding of their colours. The substance also found in an
inkstand at Herculaneum, looks like a thick oil or paint, with which the
manuscripts there have been written in a relievo visible in the letters,
when you hold a leaf to the light in a horizontal direction. Such
vitriolic ink as has been used on the old parchment manuscripts would
have corroded the delicate leaves of the papyrus, as it has done the
skins of the most ancient manuscripts of Virgil and Terence, in the
Vatican library; the letters are sunk into the parchment, and some have
eaten quite through it, in consequence of the corrosive acid of the
vitriolic ink, with which they were written. The inkhorn is also
mentioned in Scripture: “And one man among them was clothed with linen,
with a writer’s inkhorn by his side,” Ezek. ix, 2. The eastern mode and
apparatus for writing differs so materially from those with which we are
conversant, that it is necessary particularly to describe them.
D'Arvieux informs us that “the Arabs of the desert, when they want a
favour of their emir, get his secretary to write an order agreeable to
their desire, as if the favour were granted, this they carry to the
prince, who, after having read it, sets his seal to it with ink, if he
grants it; if not, he returns the petitioner his paper torn, and
dismisses him. These papers are without date, and have only the emir’s
flourish or cypher at the bottom, signifying the poor, the abject
Mohammed, son of Turabeye.” Pococke says, that “they make the impression
of their name with their seal, generally of cornelian, which they wear
on their finger, and which is blacked when they have occasion to seal
with it.” The custom of placing the inkhorn by the side, Olearius says,
continues in the east to this day. Dr. Shaw informs us, that, among the
Moors in Barbary, “the _hojas_, that is, the writers or secretaries,
suspend their inkhorns in their girdles; a custom as old as the Prophet
Ezekiel, ix, 2.” And in a note he adds, “that part of these inkhorns (if
an instrument of brass may be so called) which passes between the girdle
and the tunic, and holds their pens, is long and flat; but the vessel
for the ink which rests upon the girdle is square, with a lid to clasp
over it.” So Mr. Hanway: “Their writers carry their ink and pens about
them in a case, which they put under their sash.”
INN. The inns or caravanserais of the east, in which travellers are
accommodated, are not all alike, some being simply places of rest, by
the side of a fountain, if possible, and at a proper distance on the
road. Many of these places are nothing more than naked walls; others
have an attendant, who subsists either by some charitable donation, or
the benevolence of passengers; others are more considerable
establishments, where families reside, and take care of them, and
furnish the necessary provisions. “Caravanserais,” says Campbell, “were
originally intended for, and are now pretty generally applied to, the
accommodation of strangers and travellers, though, like every other good
institution, sometimes perverted to the purposes of private emolument,
or public job. They are built at proper distances through the roads of
the Turkish dominions, and afford to the indigent or weary traveller an
asylum from the inclemency of the weather, are in general built of the
most solid and durable materials, have commonly one story above the
ground floor, the lower of which is arched, and serves for warehouses to
store goods, for lodgings, and for stables, while the upper is used
merely for lodgings; beside which they are always accommodated with a
fountain, and have cooks’ shops and other conveniences to supply the
wants of lodgers. In Aleppo, the caravanserais are almost exclusively
occupied by merchants, to whom they are, like other houses, rented.” “In
all other Turkish provinces,” observes Antes, “particularly those in
Asia, which are often thinly inhabited, travelling is subject to
numberless inconveniences, since it is necessary not only to carry all
sorts of provisions along with one, but even the very utensils to dress
them in, beside a tent for shelter at night and in bad weather, as there
are no inns, except here and there a caravanserai, where nothing but
bare rooms, and those often very bad, and infested with all sorts of
vermin, can be procured.” “There are no inns anywhere,” says Volney,
“but the cities, and commonly the villages, have a large building called
a kan or kervanserai, which serves as an asylum for all travellers.
These houses of reception are always built without the precincts of
towns, and consist of four wings round a square court, which serves by
way of enclosure for the beasts of burden. The lodgings are cells, where
you find nothing but bare walls, dust, and sometimes scorpions. The
keeper of this kan gives the traveller the key and a mat, and he
provides himself the rest; he must therefore carry with him his bed, his
kitchen utensils, and even his provisions, for frequently not even bread
is to be found in the villages. On this account the orientals contrive
their equipage in the most simple and portable form. The baggage of a
man who wishes to be completely provided, consists in a carpet, a
mattress, a blanket, two sauce pans with lids contained within each
other, two dishes, two plates, and a coffee pot, all of copper, well
tinned, a small wooden box for salt and pepper, a round leathern table,
which he suspends from the saddle of his horse, small leathern bottles
or bags for oil, melted butter, water, and brandy, if the traveller be a
Christian, a tinder box, a cup of cocoa nut, some rice, dried raisins,
dates, Cyprus cheese, and, above all, coffee berries, with a roaster and
wooden mortar to pound them.” The Scriptures use two words to express a
caravanserai, in both instances translated inn: “There was no room for
them in the inn,” καταλύματι, Luke ii, 7; the place of untying, that is,
of beasts for rest. “And brought him to the inn,” ϖανδοχεῖον, Luke x,
34, whose keeper is called in the next verse ϖανδοχεὺς. This word
properly signifies “a receptacle open to all comers.” “The serai or
principal caravansary at Surat,” observes Forbes, “was much neglected.
Most of the eastern cities contain one, at least, for the reception of
strangers; smaller places, called choultries, are erected by charitable
persons, or munificent princes, in forests, plains, and deserts, for the
accommodation of travellers. Near them is generally a well, and a
cistern for the cattle; a brahmin, or fakeer, often resides there to
furnish the pilgrim with food, and the few necessaries he may stand in
need of. In the deserts of Persia and Arabia, these buildings are
invaluable; in those pathless plains, for many miles together, not a
tree, a bush, nor even a blade of grass, is to be seen; all is one
undulating mass of sand, like waves on the trackless ocean. In these
ruthless wastes, where no rural village or cheerful hamlet, no inn or
house of refreshment, is to be found, how noble is the charity that
rears the hospitable roof, that plants the shady grove, and conducts the
refreshing moisture into reservoirs!”
INSPIRATION, the conveying of certain extraordinary and supernatural
notices or thoughts into the soul; or it denotes any supernatural
influence of God upon the mind of a rational creature, whereby he is
formed to a degree of intellectual improvement, to which he could not
have attained in his present circumstances in a natural way. In the
first and highest sense, the prophets, evangelists, and Apostles are
said to have spoken and written by divine inspiration. This inspiration
of the Old Testament Scriptures is so expressly attested by our Lord and
his Apostles, that among those who receive them as a divine revelation
the only question relates to the inspiration of the New Testament. On
this subject it has been well observed:--
1. That the inspiration of the Apostles appears to have been necessary
for the purposes of their mission; and, therefore, if we admit that
Jesus came from God, and that he sent them forth to make disciples, we
shall acknowledge that some degree of inspiration is highly probable.
The first light in which the books of the New Testament lead us to
consider the Apostles, is, as the historians of Jesus. After having been
his companions during his ministry, they came forth to bear witness of
him; and as the benefit of his religion was not to be confined to the
age in which he or they lived, they left in the four Gospels a record of
what he did and taught. Two of the four were written by the Apostles
Matthew and John. St. Mark and St. Luke, whose names are prefixed to the
other two, were probably of the seventy whom our Lord sent out in his
life time; and we learn from the most ancient Christian historians, that
the Gospel of St. Mark was revised by St. Peter, and the Gospel of St.
Luke by St. Paul, and that both were afterward approved by St. John; so
that all the four may be considered as transmitted to the church with
the sanction of apostolical authority. Now, if we recollect the
condition of the Apostles, and the nature of their history, we shall
perceive that, even as historians, they stood in need of some measure of
inspiration. Plato might feel himself at liberty to feign many things of
his master Socrates, because it mattered little to the world whether the
instruction that was conveyed to them proceeded from the one philosopher
or from the other. But the servants of a divine teacher, who appeared as
his witnesses, and professed to be the historians of his life, were
bound by their office to give a true record. And their history was an
imposition upon the world, if they did not declare exactly and literally
what they had seen and heard. This was an office which required not only
a love of the truth, but a memory more retentive and more accurate than
it was possible for the Apostles to possess. To relate, at the distance
of twenty years, long moral discourses, which were not originally
written, and which were not attended with any striking circumstances
that might imprint them upon the mind; to preserve a variety of
parables, the beauty and significancy of which depended upon particular
expressions; to record long and minute prophecies, where the alteration
of a single phrase might have produced an inconsistency between the
event and the prediction; and to give a particular detail of the
intercourse which Jesus had with his friends and with his enemies;--all
this is a work so very much above the capacity of unlearned men, that,
had they attempted to execute it by their own natural powers, they must
have fallen into such absurdities and contradictions as would have
betrayed them to every discerning eye. It was therefore highly
expedient, and even necessary, for the faith of future ages, that,
beside those opportunities of information which the Apostles enjoyed,
and that tried integrity which they possessed, their understanding and
their memory should be assisted by a supernatural influence, which might
prevent them from mistaking the meaning of what they had heard, which
might restrain them from putting into the mouth of Jesus any words which
he did not utter, or omitting what was important, and which might thus
give us perfect security, that the Gospels are as faithful a copy as if
Jesus himself had left in writing those sayings and those actions which
he wished posterity to remember.