prince besieged him in Jerusalem, and forced him to surrender.
Nebuchadnezzar took him, with his chief officers, captive to Babylon,
with his mother, his wives, and the best workmen of Jerusalem, to the
number of ten thousand men. Among the captives were Mordecai, the uncle
of Esther, and Ezekiel the prophet. He took, also, all the vessels of
gold which Solomon made for the temple, and the king’s treasury, and he
set up Mattaniah, Jehoiachin’s uncle by his father’s side, whom he named
Zedekiah. This prince continued faithful to Nebuchadnezzar nine years:
being then weary of subjection, he revolted, and confederated with the
neighbouring princes. The king of Babylon came into Judea, reduced the
chief places of the country, and besieged Jerusalem: but Pharaoh-Hophra
coming out of Egypt to assist Zedekiah, Nebuchadnezzar overcame him in
battle, and forced him to retire into his own country. After this he
returned to the siege of Jerusalem, and was three hundred and ninety
days before the place before he could take it. But in the eleventh year
of Zedekiah, A. M. 3416, the city was taken. Zedekiah attempted to
escape, but was taken and brought to Nebuchadnezzar, who was then at
Riblah in Syria. The king of Babylon condemned him to die, caused his
children to be put to death in his presence, and then bored out his
eyes, loaded him with chains, and sent him to Babylon.
Three years after the Jewish war Nebuchadnezzar besieged the city of
Tyre, which siege held thirteen years. But during this interval, he made
war, also, on the Sidonians, Moabites, Ammonites, and Idumeans; and
these he treated in nearly the same manner as the Jews. Josephus says
these wars happened five years after the destruction of Jerusalem,
consequently in A. M. 3421. The city of Tyre was taken in A. M. 3432.
Ithobaal, who was then king, was put to death, and Baal succeeded him.
The Lord, as a reward to the army of Nebuchadnezzar, which had lain so
long before Tyre, gave up to them Egypt and its spoils. Nebuchadnezzar
made an easy conquest of it, because the Egyptians were divided by civil
wars among themselves: he enriched himself with booty, and returned in
triumph to Babylon, with a great number of captives. Being now at peace,
he applied himself to the adorning, aggrandizing, and enriching of
Babylon with magnificent buildings. To him some ascribe those famous
gardens, supported by arches, reckoned among the wonders of the world;
and also the walls of Babylon, though many give the honour of this work
to Semiramis.
About this time Nebuchadnezzar had a dream of a great tree, loaded with
fruit. Suddenly, an angel descending from heaven, commanded that the
tree should be cut down, but that the root should be preserved in the
earth, Dan. iv. The king sent for all the diviners in the country, but
none could explain his dream, till Daniel, by divine revelation, showed
that it represented his present greatness, his signal approaching
humiliation, and his restoration to reason and dignity. A year after, as
Nebuchadnezzar was walking on his palace at Babylon, he began to say, Is
not this great Babylon, which I have built for the house of the kingdom,
by the might of my power, and for the honour of my majesty?” and
scarcely had he pronounced these words, when he fell into a distemper or
distraction, which so altered his imagination that he fled into the
fields and assumed the manners of an ox. After having been seven years
in this state, God opened his eyes, his understanding was restored to
him, and he recovered his royal dignity.
Nebuchadnezzar died, A. M. 3442, after having reigned forty-three years.
Megasthenes, quoted by Eusebius, says, that this prince having ascended
to the top of his palace, was there seized with a fit of divine
enthusiasm, and cried out, O Babylonians, I declare to you a misfortune,
that neither our father Belus, nor Queen Baltis has been able to
prevent. A Persian mule shall one day come into this country, who,
supported by the power of your gods, shall bring you into slavery. He
shall be assisted by the Mede, the glory of the Assyrians.” This Persian
mule is Cyrus, whose mother was a Mede, and whose father was a Persian.
The Mede who assisted Cyrus was Cyaxares, or Darius the Mede. This story
at least shows that the Heathens had traditions of an extraordinary kind
respecting this monarch, and that the fate of Babylon had been the
subject of prophecy.
NEBUZAR-ADAN, a general of Nebuchadnezzar’s army, and the chief officer
of his household. He managed the siege of Jerusalem, and made himself
master of the city, while his sovereign was at Riblah in Syria, 2 Kings
xxv; Jer. xxxix; xl; lii.
NECESSITARIANS. The doctrine of necessity regards the origin of human
actions, and the specific mode of the divine government; and it seems to
be the immediate result of the materiality of man; for mechanism is the
undoubted consequence of materialism. Hence all materialists are of
course necessitarians; but it does not follow that all necessitarians
are or must be materialists. Whatever is done by a cause or power that
is irresistible, is by necessity; in which sense this term is opposed to
freedom. Man is, therefore, a necessary agent, if all his actions be so
determined by the causes preceding each action, that not one past action
could possibly not have come to pass, or have been otherwise than it
hath been; and not one future action can possibly not come to pass, or
be otherwise than it shall be. But man is a free agent, if he be able at
any time, in the circumstances in which he is placed, to do different
things; or, in other words, if he be not unavoidably determined in every
point of time by the circumstances he is in, and the causes he is under,
to do that one thing he does, and not possibly to do any other thing.
This abstruse subject has occasioned much controversy, and has been
debated by writers of the first eminence, from Hobbes and Clarke, to
Priestley and Gregory. The anti-necessitarians allege, that the doctrine
of necessity charges God as the author of sin; that it takes away the
freedom of the will; renders man unaccountable to his Maker; makes sin
to be no evil, and morality or virtue to be no good; and that it
precludes the use of means, and is of the most gloomy tendency. The
necessitarians, on the other hand, deny these to be legitimate
consequences of their doctrine, which they declare to be the most
consistent mode of explaining the divine government; and they observe,
that the Deity acts no more immorally in decreeing vicious actions, than
in permitting all those irregularities which he could so easily have
prevented. All necessity, say they, doth not take away freedom. The
actions of a man may be at one and the same time both free and
necessary. Thus, it was infallibly certain that Judas would betray
Christ, yet he did it voluntarily; Jesus Christ necessarily became man,
and died, yet he acted freely. A good man doth naturally and necessarily
love his children, yet voluntarily. They insist that necessity doth not
render actions less morally good; for, if necessary virtue be neither
moral nor praiseworthy, it will follow that God himself is not a moral
being, because he is a necessary one; and the obedience of Christ cannot
be good, because it was necessary. Farther, say they, necessity does not
preclude the use of means; for means are no less appointed than the end.
It was ordained that Christ should be delivered up to death; but he
could not have been betrayed without a betrayer, nor crucified without
crucifiers. That it is not a gloomy doctrine they allege, because
nothing can be more consolatory than to believe, that all things are
under the direction of an all-wise Being, that his kingdom ruleth over
all, and that he doeth all things well. They also urge, that to deny
necessity, is to deny the foreknowledge of God, and to wrest the sceptre
from the hand of the Creator, and to place that capricious and
undefinable principle, the self-determining power of man, upon the
throne of the universe. In these statements there is obviously a
confused use of terms in different meanings, so as to mislead the
unwary. For instance: _necessity_ is confounded with _certainty_; but an
action may be certain, though free; that is to say, certain to an
omniscient Being, who knows how a free agent will finally resolve; but
this certainty is, in fact, a quality of the prescient Being, not that
of the action, to which, however, men delusively transfer it. Again: God
is called a necessary Being, which, if it mean any thing, signifies, as
to his moral acts, that he can only act right. But then this is a wrong
application of the term necessity, which properly implies such a
constraint upon actions, exercised _ab extra_, as renders choice or will
impossible. But such necessity cannot exist as to the supreme Being.
Again: the obedience of Christ unto death was necessary, that is to say,
unless he had died guilty man could not have been forgiven; but this
could not make the act of the Jews who put him to death a necessary act,
that is to say, a forced and constrained one; nor did this necessity
affect the act of Christ himself, who acted voluntarily, and might have
left man without salvation. That the Jews acted _freely_, is evident
from their being held liable to punishment, although unconsciously they
accomplished the great designs of Heaven, which, however, was no excuse
for their crime. Finally: as to the allegation, that the doctrine of
free agency puts man’s self-determining power upon the throne of the
universe, that view proceeds upon notions unworthy of God, as though he
could not accomplish his plans without compelling and controlling all
things by a fixed fate; whereas it is both more glorious to him, and
certainly more in accordance with the Scriptures, to say that he has a
perfect foresight of the manner in which all creatures will act, and
that he, by a profound and infinite wisdom, subordinates every thing
without violence to the evolution and accomplishment of his own glorious
purposes.
The doctrine of necessity is nearly connected with that of
predestination, which, of late years, has assumed a form very different
from that which it formerly possessed; for, instead of being considered
as a point to be determined almost entirely by the sacred writings, it
has, in the hands of a number of able writers, in a great measure
resolved itself into a question of natural religion, under the head of
the philosophical liberty or necessity of the will; or, whether all
human actions are, or are not, necessarily determined by motives arising
from the character which God has impressed on our minds, and the train
of circumstances amidst which his providence has placed us? The
Calvinistic doctrine of predestination is, that God for his own glory,
hath foreordained whatsoever comes to pass.” The scheme of philosophical
necessity, as stated by the most celebrated necessitarian of the age,
is, that every thing is predetermined by the divine Being; that whatever
has been, must have been; and that whatever will be, must be; that all
events are preordained by infinite wisdom and unlimited goodness; that
the will, in all its determinations, is governed by the state of mind;
that the state of mind is, in every instance, determined by the Deity;
and that there is a continued chain of causes and effects, of motives
and actions, inseparably connected, and originating from the condition
in which we are brought into existence by the Author of our being.” On
the other hand, it is justly remarked, that “those who believe the being
and perfections of God, and a state of retribution, in which he will
reward and punish mankind according to the diversity of their actions,
will find it difficult to reconcile the justice of punishment with the
necessity of crimes punished. And they that believe all that the
Scripture says on the one hand, of the eternity of future punishments,
and on the other, of God’s compassion to sinners, and his solemn
assurance that he desires not their death, will find the difficulty
greatly increased.” It is doubtless an article of the Christian faith,
that God will reward or punish every man hereafter according to his
actions in this life. But we cannot maintain his justice in this
particular, if men’s actions be necessary either in their own nature, or
by the divine decrees. Activity and self-determining powers are the
foundation of all morality; and to prove that such powers belong to man,
it is urged that we ourselves are conscious of possessing them. We blame
and condemn ourselves when we do amiss; but guilt, and inward sense of
shame, and remorse of conscience, are feelings which are inconsistent
with the scheme of necessity. It is also agreed that some actions
deserve praise, and afford an inward satisfaction; but for this, there
would be no foundation, if we were invincibly determined in every
volition: so that approbation and blame are consequent on free actions
only. Nor is the matter at all relieved by bringing in a chain of
circumstances as motives necessarily to determine the will. This comes
to the same result in sound argument, as though there was an immediate
_coäction_ of omnipotent power compelling one kind of volitions only;
which is utterly irreconcilable to all just notions of the nature and
operations of will, and to all accountability. Necessity, in the sense
of irresistible control, and the doctrine of Scripture, cannot coëxist.
NECROMANCY, νεκρομαντεία, is the art of raising up the ghosts of
deceased persons, to get information from them concerning future events.
This practice, no doubt, the Israelites brought with them from Egypt,
which affected to be the mother of such occult sciences; and from thence
it spread into the neighbouring countries, and soon infected all the
east. The injunction of the law is very express against this vice; and
the punishment to be inflicted on the practisers of it was stoning to
death, Lev. xx, 27. What forms of enchantment were used in the practice
of necromancy we are at a loss to know, because we read of none that the
pythoness of Endor employed; however, that there were several rites,
spells, and invocations used upon these occasions, we may learn from
almost every ancient author, but from none more particularly than from
Lucan in his _Pharsalia_. Whether the art of conversing with the dead
was mere imposture, or grounded upon diabolical agency, is a question
which has been disputed in all ages.
NEHEMIAH professes himself the author of the book which bears his name,
in the very beginning of it, and he uniformly writes in the first
person. He was of the tribe of Judah, and was probably born at Babylon
during the captivity. He was so distinguished for his family and
attainments, as to be selected for the office of cup bearer to the king
of Persia, a situation of great honour and emolument. He was made
governor of Judea, upon his own application, by Artaxerxes Longimanus;
and his book, which in the Hebrew canon was joined to that of Ezra,
gives an account of his appointment and administration through a space
of about thirty-six years to A. M. 3595, at which time the Scripture
history closes; and, consequently, the historical books, from Joshua to
Nehemiah inclusive, contain the history of the Jewish people from the
death of Moses, A. M. 2553, to the reformation established by Nehemiah,
after the return from captivity, being a period of one thousand and
forty-two years.
NEOLOGY. This term, which signifies _new doctrine_, has been used to
designate a species of theology and Biblical criticism which has of late
years much prevailed among the Protestant divines of Germany, and the
professors of their universities. It is now, however, more frequently
termed rationalism, and is supposed to occupy a sort of middle place
between the orthodox system and pure deism. The German divines
themselves speak of naturalism, rationalism, and supernaturalism. The
term _naturalism_ arose first in the sixteenth century, and was spread
in the seventeenth. It was understood to be the system of those who
allowed no other knowledge of religion than the natural, which man could
shape out by his own strength, and, consequently, excluded all
supernatural revelation. As to the different forms of naturalism,
theologians say there are three: the first, which they call Pelagianism,
and which considers human dispositions and notions as perfectly pure,
and the religious knowledge derived from them as sufficiently explicit.
A grosser kind denies all particular revelation; and the grossest of all
considers the world as God. _Rationalism_ has been thus explained: Those
who are generally termed rationalists,” says Dr. Bretschneider, admit
universally in Christianity, a divine, benevolent, and positive
appointment for the good of mankind, and Jesus as a messenger of Divine
Providence, believing that the true and everlasting word of God is
contained in the Holy Scripture, and that by the same the welfare of
mankind will be obtained and extended. But they deny therein a
supernatural and miraculous working of God, and consider the object of
Christianity to be that of introducing into the world such a religion as
reason can comprehend; and they distinguish the essential from the
unessential, and what is local and temporary from that which is
universal and permanent in Christianity.” There is, however, a third
class of divines who in fact differ very little from this, though very
widely in profession. They affect to allow a revealing operation of God,
but establish on internal proofs rather than on miracles the divine
nature of Christianity. They allow that revelation _may_ contain much
out of the power of reason to explain, but say that it should assert
nothing contrary to reason, but rather what may be proved by it.
_Supernaturalism_ consists in general in the conviction that God has
revealed himself supernaturally and immediately. The notion of a miracle
cannot well be separated from such a revelation, whether it happens out
of, on, or in men. What is revealed may belong to the order of nature,
but an order higher and unknown to us, which we could never have known
without miracles, and cannot bring under the laws of nature.
The difference between the naturalists and the rationalists, as Mr. Rose
justly remarks, is not quite so wide either as it would appear to be at
first sight, or as one of them assuredly wishes it to appear. For if I
receive a system, be it of religion, of morals, or of politics, only so
far as it approves itself to my reason, whatever be the authority that
presents it to me, it is idle to say that I receive the system out of
any respect to that authority. I receive it _only_ because my reason
approves it; and I should, of course, do so if an authority of far
inferior value were to present the system to me. This is what that
division of rationalists, which professes to receive Christianity, and
at the same time to make reason the supreme arbiter in matters of faith,
has done. Their system, in a word, is this: They assume certain general
principles, which they maintain to be the necessary deductions of reason
from an extended and unprejudiced contemplation of the natural and moral
order of things, and to be in themselves immutable and universal.
Consequently, any thing which, on however good authority, may be
advanced in apparent opposition to them must either be rejected as
unworthy of rational belief, or, at least, explained away till it is
made to accord with the assumed principles; and the truth or falsehood
of all doctrines proposed is to be decided according to their agreement
or disagreement with those principles.