15. When Daniel would not pollute himself with the Diet of the Babylonians, he probably declined Pagan commensation, or to eat of Meats forbidden to the Jews, though common at their Tables, or so much as to taste of their Gentile Immolations, and Sacrifices abominable unto his Palate.
But when ’tis said that he made choice of the Diet of Pulse and Water, whether he strictly confined unto a leguminous Food, according to the Vulgar Translation, some doubt may be raised, from the original word Zeragnim, which signifies Seminalia, and is so set down in the Margin of Arias Montanus; and the Greek word Spermata, generally expressing Seeds, may signifie any edulious or cerealious Grains besides ὄσπρια or leguminous Seeds.
Yet if he strictly made choice of a leguminous Food, and Water instead of his portion from the King’s Table, he handsomely declined the Diet which might have been put upon him, and particularly that which was called the Potibasis of the King, which as Athenæus informeth implied the Bread of the King, made of Barley, and Wheat, and the Wine of Cyprus, which he drank in an oval Cup. And therefore distinctly from that he chose plain Fare of Water, and the gross Diet of Pulse, and that perhaps not made into Bread, but parched, and tempered with Water.
Now that herein (beside the special benediction of God) he made choice of no improper Diet to keep himself fair and plump and so to excuse the Eunuch his Keeper, Physicians will not deny, who acknowledge a very nutritive and impinguating faculty in Pulses, in leguminous Food, and in several sorts of Grains and Corns, is not like to be doubted by such who consider that this was probably a great part of the Food of our Forefathers before the Floud, the Diet also of Jacob: and that the Romans (called therefore Pultifagi) fed much on Pulse for six hundred years; that they had no Bakers for that time: and their Pistours were such as, before the use of Mills, beat out and cleansed their Corn. As also that the Athletick Diet was of Pulse, Alphiton, Maza, Barley and Water; whereby they were advantaged sometimes to an exquisite state of health, and such as was not without danger. And therefore though Daniel were no Eunuch, and of a more fatning and thriving temper, as some have phancied, yet was he by this kind of Diet, sufficiently maintained in a fair and carnous state of Body, and accordingly his Picture not improperly drawn, that is, not meagre and lean, like Jeremy’s, but plump and fair, answerable to the most authentick draught of the Vatican, and the late German Luther’s Bible.
The Cynicks in Athenæus make iterated Courses of Lentils, and prefer that Diet before the Luxury of Seleucus. The present Ægyptians, who are observed by Alpinus to be the fattest Nation, and Men to have breasts like Women, owe much, as he conceiveth, unto the Water of Nile, and their Diet of Rice, Pease, Lentils and white Cicers. The Pulse-eating Cynicks and Stoicks, are all very long livers in Laertius. And Daniel must not be accounted of few years, who, being carried away Captive in the Reign of Joachim, by King Nebuchadnezzar, lived, by Scripture account, unto the first year of Cyrus.
Jacob’s Rods. Gen. 30. 31.
16. And Jacob took Rods of green Poplar, and of the Hazel and the Chesnut Tree, and pilled white streaks in them, and made the white appear which was in the Rods, etc. Men multiply the Philosophy of Jacob, who, beside the benediction of God, and the powerfull effects of imagination, raised in the Goats and Sheep from pilled and party-coloured objects, conceive that he chose out these particular Plants above any other, because he understood they had a particular virtue unto the intended effects, according unto the conception of Georgius Venetus.[192]
Whereto you will hardly assent, at least till you be better satisfied and assured concerning the true species of the Plants intended in the Text, or find a clearer consent and uniformity in the Translation: For what we render Poplar, Hazel and Chesnut, the Greek translateth Virgam styracinam, nucinam, plataninam, which some also render a Pomegranate: and so observing this variety of interpretations concerning common and known Plants among us, you may more reasonably doubt, with what propriety or assurance others less known be sometimes rendred unto us.
Lilies of the Field. Matt. 6. 28.
17. Whether in the Sermon of the Mount, the Lilies of the Field did point at the proper Lilies, or whether those Flowers grew wild in the place where our Saviour preached, some doubt may be made: because Κρίνον the word in that place is accounted of the same signification with Λείριον, and that in Homer is taken for all manner of specious Flowers: so received by Eustachius, Hesychius, and the Scholiast upon Apollonius Rhodius, Καθόλου τὰ ἄνθη Λείρια λέγεται. And Κρίνον is also received in the same latitude, not signifying onely Lilies, but applied unto Daffodils, Hyacinths, Iris’s, and the Flowers of Colocynthis.