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BEL

BEL

BEHMENISTS, See Boehmenists.

BEJA, a lake and town of Portugal, in Alentejo .

BEJAR, a town of Estramadura in Spain famous for its baths.

BEJARIA, in botany, a genus of the dodecandria tnonogyniaclass and order. Natural order, Bieornes. Calyx seven-cleft;petals seven ; stamina fourteen ; berry seven-celled ; seeds many.There are two species found iu New Granada.

BEJAS1, or BE IAS1 TES,a liberal sect of Mohammedan Arabs.

BEIBEXLE Stem..®, a name given bv some astronomers tothe principal fixed stars in each constellation, otherwise calledCorda.

BEICIILINGEN, a town and territory of Germany, in Thu-ringia , in I'pper Saxony.

BEILA, a town of Italy , in Piedmont.

BE1LSTE1N, a town of Germane, 10 miles S. of DiUenburg.

BEING, in metaphysics, that winch exists, or that which canexist. The various kinds of beings have been referred into threedistinct classes, and considered as cither substances or inodes,finite or infinite, and natural, artificial, or moral. Natural beingsare all things existing in the universe, as formed and ordained byGod the Creator; such are angeL, men, trees, &c. Artificialbeings are made by the contrivance or operations of men, as houses,statues, &c. Moral beings are those which belong to the conductand government of intelligent creatures, considered as lying underobligations to particular actions.

BEIRA, a province of Portugal , bounded on the W. by theAtlantic ocean, on the S. by the Portuguese Estramadura ; on theS. E. bv the Spanish INtramadura; on the E. by the provinceof Tralos Montos, and Entre-niiubo-Douroe; and on the N. bythe river Douro .

BE1ZA, or BEIZATH, in Hebrew antiquity, 1. a word signi-fying an tgg ; 2. a certain measure among the Jews ; 3. a goldcoin, weighing 40 drachms, among the Persians .

BEL, [Sya, i- e. the Lord, Ileb. Cltald.\ or Bolus, the supremegod of the ancient Chaldeans, or Babylonians , lie was thefounder of the Babylonian empire ; and is supposed to lie theNimrod of Scripture, and the same with the Phoenician Baal.

BEL AND THE DRAGON, The History of; an apo-cryphal and uncanonical book . It was always rejected by theJewish church, and is extant neither in the Hebrew nor theChaldee language, nor is there any proof that it ever w as so.St. Jerom gives it no better title than the Fable of Bel and theDragon.

BELATUC ADRUS, the name of an ancient British idol, re-corded in old inscriptions ; and supposed by Selden and Vossius,to be the same with Belenus.

BELCASTRO , anciently called Petilia, an episcopal cky ofItaly in the farther Calabria, and kingdom of Naples , live milesS. of St. Severins.

BELCH IT L, a town of Spain, in the kingdom of Arragon .Lon. 0 . 30. W. Lat. 4-L If). N.

BELCHOE, or BEI-COE, a town of Ireland, in Fermanagh ,18 miles S. E. of Ballyshannon.

BELEMNITES, or BKLENITES, [from fitt.iij.in, an arrow,]vulgarly called thunder-bolts, or tlmnder-stoues. They are com-posed of several crusts of stone encircling each other, of a conicallorm, and various sizes ; usually a little hollow, and somewhattransparent, formed of several stria- radiating from the axis to thesurface of the stone ; and when burnt, or rubbed against one ano-ther, or scraped with a knife, yield an odour like rasped horn.Their size is various, from of an inch to 8 inches; ami theircolour and shape differ. They are supposed to he originallyeither a part ot some sea production ; or a stone formed in thecavity of some worm-shell, which being of a tender and brittlenature, has perished, after giving its form to the stone. Tln-vare very frequently found in many pans of England ; and thecountry-people have a notion, that they are alw ays to be met withafter a storm. They-are otten inclosed in, or adhere to, otherstones ; and are most frequent amongst gravel, or in clay. Theyabound in Gloucestershire; and are found near Dedingldn in Ox-fordshire , whore they sometimes contain the silver marcasite.

BELEMNOLDEV, or BELENNOIDES, in anatomy, [froma dart, and nio,-, form,] the shooting forth of tue bom;called aliformis, which is the 6 th in the basis of the skull.

HELENA'S, in mythology, a name which the Gauls gave tothe sun, which they also called Mithra; ami, as some suppose,the same wit lithe Baal of Scripture, and the Bolus of the A.-yi ians.VOL i.—so. 20.

BELEZERO, a province and town of Russia , situated on theS. E. shore of the White sea .

BELFAST, a flourishing sea-port town of Ireland , in the countyof Antrim , at the mouth ot the Lagan, nine miles S. V\ . of Carrie k-fergus, and 80 from Dublin . Lon. 5. 50. W. I.at. 54. 35. N.

BELFORD, a towii in Northumberland , 12 mdes from Alp-wick.

BELFRY, \_Bc[Tro: 7 , in French , is a tower; which was per-haps the true word, till those, who knew not its original, coi-rupted it to belfry, because bells were in it,] the place wherethe bells are rung.

Belfry , Belfredus, is used by military writers of the mid-dle age for a sort of tower erected by besiegers to overlook and.command the place besieged.

BEI.G.E, a people of ancient Britain , who inhabited thosewestern parts of it, now called Hampshire, Wiltshire, and Somer-setshire .

Belg ®, Ihe ancient inhabitants of Gallia Belgica, stiled byCa-sar the bravest of the Gauls , being untainted bv luxury.

BELGICA GALLIA, or BELGfC GAUL, one of Ca-sar’ithree divisions of Gaul , contained between the ocean to the N,the Seine and the Marne to the W. the Rhine to the E. but onthe S. at different times within different limits.

BELGOROD, a fortified town of European Turkey , inBessarabia, on the Black Sea , 80 miles S. E. of Bender.

Belgorod, a province and town of Russia .

BELGRADE, a city of European Turkey, the capital of Ser-via, 60 miles S. of Temeswaer. Lon. 21 . 2 .’ E. Lat. 45. 10 . N.

BELGRADO, a town of Friuli , in the Venetian territories inItaly . Lon. 13. 5. E. Lat. 46. 0 . N.

BELIEF, in a general and natural sense, signifies a persuasionor strong assent of the mind to any proposition ; but, in a morerestrained and technical sense, it imports that kind of assentwhich is founded on the authority or testimony of some per-sons attesting the truth of any matter proposed. See Faith .

BELIEVER, in divinity, one who believes in Jesus Christ ,or who has the faith which the gospel requires. See Faith .

BELINUS, in fabulous history, one of the ancient kings ofBritain , said to have been the founder of Billingsgate.

BELIO, in ancient geography, a river ot Lusitania, calledotherwise Limxas, Limeas, Litmus, and Lethe or the River ofOblivion : the boundary of the expedition of Decimus Brutus .

BELISAR1US, general of the emperor Justinian 's army, whooverthrew the Persians iu the East, the Vandals in Africa , awl theGoths in Italy . But after all his great exploits, he was falselyaccused of a conspiracy against the emperor. The real conspiratorshad been detected and seized, with daggers hidden under theirgarments. One of them died by his own hand, and the otherwas dragged from the sanctuary. Pressed by lemorse, or templedby the hopes of safety, he accused two officers of the household of'Belisarius ; and torture forced them to declare that they hadacted according to the secret instructions of their patron. Pos-terity will not hastily belieye, that a hero who in the vigour oflife had disdained the fairest oilers of ambition and revenge,should stoop to the murder of his prince, whom he could not longexpect to survive, llis followers were impatient to fly ; butflight must have been supported by rebellion, and he had livedenough for nature and for glory. Belisarius appeared before thecouncil with less fear than indignation : after 40 years service,the emperor had prejudged his guilt ; and injustice was sanctifiedby the presence and authority of the patriarch. The life ofBtli'-arius was spared : but his fortunes were sequestered ; and,from December to July, lie was guarded as a prisoner in his ownpalace. At length his innocence was acknowledged : his freedom,and honours were restored ; and death, which might he hastenedby resentment and grief, removed him from the world abouteight months after his deliverance. That he was deprived of hiseyes, and reduced by envy to beg his bread, is a fiction of latertimes; which has obtained credit, or rather favour, as a slrano-eexample of the vicissitudes 01 fortune.—The source of this idle,table urn 1 be derived from a miscellaneous work of the 12 th cen-tury, the Chiliads of John Tzctzes, a monk.

1JFLL, [ 6 c/, Saxon; supposed, by Skinner, (o come frompelvis, Lat.. a basin,] a vessel, or hollow body of cast nu-tai,formed to make a noise by the act of a clapper, hammer, or someother instrument siyiking against it. The. metal is usually com-

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