[P. 142]. “Eccle” [Ecclus, 49, 16, 17].
[P. 145]. “Covered himself with a net.” An excellent example that this phrase meant disguising himself, or trying to conceal himself. It may seem odd, that “with a net” should mean this, because one naturally thinks of a single fold; but a fisherman conceals his head and body in folds of netting.
[P. 146]. “Finger in a hole.” I presume it is meant that Saul shut himself out of all means of knowing what really went on, as much as if he had closed up a hole in a shut door or window-shutter, through which alone he could see—or have light thrown upon—the subject.
[P. 147]. “She saith to herself” [but intentionally loud enough for Saul to hear].
[P. 150]. “Right ventriloquie.” This excellent investigation of the Bible story might be read with advantage by those who even now hold that Samuel really appeared by God’s allowance or command. Such a belief involves three impossibilities. First, that God having repeatedly declined to answer Saul by lawful means, now by an afterthought changed His mind. Secondly, that He who from the time of Moses had so condemned witchcraft, that Saul had put it down as far as he could, and that with blood, now favoured the action of a witch, and that in so notorious a case that it could not but be, as it was, known to all Israel. Thirdly, that the Deity must have put a lying spirit into the mouth of a true and God-blessed prophet, since the prophecy did not come true in more than one important point.
[P. 151]. “Aias and Sadaias.” Here he rightly distinguishes the two; but in 141, and in his list of authors consulted, he gives “Rabbi Sedaias Haias”. “Haias Hai”, or “Haja”, was a celebrated Babylonian Rabbi, born 969 A.D.; died 1038. Sedaias or Saadja flourished circa 900-40.
[P. 155]. “Called Pythonissa.” Not by that exact word, either in Sept., or Vulg., or Greek N.T. Vulg., 1 Sam. xxviii, 7, has “mulier pythonem habens”; and in Acts xvi, 16, the Greek, the Vulg., and Beza have similar wordings.
——— “Liber pater.” “Liber” is “Bacchus” in Scot himself; but Porphyrius—whom Th. Cooper and Calepine follow—says of “Liber pater”: “Eundem Solem apud superos: Liberum patrem in terris: Apollinem apud inferos.”
[P. 158]. “Then a cousening queane” = Than [believe that], etc. I note: 1. That the (.) before “Then” should probably be a (,), though occasionally we have (;) where only (,) is required. 2. That as in this book we rarely have “then” for “than”, I conjecture that this mode of spelling was not at the time universal, but only commencing.
[P. 159]. “Nemo scit.” Slightly altered from the question. 1 Cor. ii, 11, and not the Vulgate words, but apparently more those of Beza.