An Abridgment and Review of Each Chapter of the Bible and Testament; With Quotations from the Douay Bible and Some Eminent Writers (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1847. Excerpt: ... the lions' den; all the presidents and princes assemble and tell the king to live forever. if their word could have been of any avail, it would have made an important tale; and that they have consulted to establish a royal statute, that whosoever shall ask a petition of any god or man but the king shall be cast into the den of lions, and the king signed the writing and decree: the writer here makes kings as well as priests the lions of the day. and daniel afteiward being caught praying, the king commanded, and the others took daniel and cast him into the den of lions. thus this tale addeth to the numerous ones that have preceded it of the same meaning, and end and aim evidently to impress on the minds of mankind that kings and priests, with their officers, were endowed with great power and wealth, in order, beyond a doubt, that the same extravagant extortions might be exacted from the people as is represented to have been taken from their ancestors; and it is natural to suppose a writer of such extended imagination as the author of the bible must have possessed would have been bountifully provided for by almost any monarch in power at the time. the next part of the story is altogether in favor of those who live by preaching about an invisible spirit, which no material being can know of its existence; that is, that such a spirit preserved the praying daniel from the voracious lions, by the angel of god being sent into the den and shutting the lions' mouths. no man would be willing to trust to such imaginary help and take the risk. CHAPTER VII. The unimportant tale is here told that daniel spake; surely it could not be sacred or holy that a man should speak: and he said, he saw in his vision four great beasts come up from the sea. this surely could not be a...