MESSIAH.
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This article is by M. Polier de Bottens, of an old French family, settled for two hundred years in Switzerland. He is first pastor of Lausanne, and his knowledge is equal to his piety. He composed this article for the great Encyclopædia, in which it was inserted. Only those passages were suppressed which the examiners thought might be abused by the Catholics, less learned and less pious than the author. It was received with applause by all the wise.
It was printed at the same time in another small dictionary, and was attributed in France to a man whom there was no reluctance to molest. The article was supposed to be impious, because it was supposed to be by a layman; and the work and its pretended author were violently attacked. The man thus accused contented himself with laughing at the mistake. He beheld with compassion this instance of the errors and injustices which men are every day committing in their judgments; for he had the wise and learned priest's manuscript, written by his own hand. It is still in his possession, and will be shown to whoever may choose to examine it. In it will be found the very erasures made by this layman himself, to prevent malignant interpretations.
Now we reprint this article in all the integrity of the original. We have contracted it only to prevent repeating what we have printed elsewhere; but we have not added a single word.
The best of this affair is, that one of the venerable author's brethren wrote the most ridiculous things in the world against this article of his reverend brother's, thinking that he was writing against a common enemy. This is like fighting in the dark, when one is attacked by one's own party.
It has a thousand times happened that controversialists have condemned passages in St. Augustine and St. Jerome, not knowing that they were by those fathers. They would anathematize a part of the New Testament if they had not heard by whom it was written. Thus it is that men too often judge.
Messiah, "Messias." This word comes from the Hebrew, and is synonymous with the Greek word "Christ." Both are terms consecrated in religion, which are now no longer given to any but the anointed by eminence—the Sovereign Deliverer whom the ancient Jewish people expected, for whose coming they still sigh, and whom the Christians find in the person of Jesus the Son of Mary, whom they consider as the anointed of the Lord, the Messiah promised to humanity. The Greeks also use the word "Elcimmeros", meaning the same thing as "Christos."