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to make Spinoza professor of philosophy at Heidelberg ; but thishe declined. lie died of a consumption at the Hague on the 21stFeb. 1677, aged 45. His life was a perpetual contradiction to hisopinions, He was temperate, liberal, ant! remarkably disinterested ;he was social, affable, and friendly. His conversation was agree-able and instructive, and never deviated from the strictest pro-priety. In the “ Tractates Theologico-Politicus,” he treats ofprophecy and prophets; and of the call of the Hebrews, whom lieaffirms to have been distinguished from other nations only by theadmirable form of their government. He is likewise Of opinion,or pretends to be so, that God may, in a supernatural way, havegiven political institutes toother nations as well as to the Hebrews.For, according to him, every nation was blessed with the light ofprophecy. That light indeed, were we to admit his notions of it,was of very little value. He labours to prove, that the prophetswere distinguished from other men only by their piety and virtue;and that their writings are valuable to ns only for the excellentrules they contain respecting piety and virtue. lie then en-deavours to prove that no miracle, in the proper sense of the word,can have been at any time performed ; because every thing hap-pens by a necessity of nature, the result of the divine decrees,which are from eternity necessary themselves. He acknow-ledges, that in the scriptures, which he professes to admit as truehistory, miracles are often mentioned; bat he says that they wereonly singular events which the sacred historians imagined to bemiraculous. He affirms, in contradiction to the clearest internalevidence, that the Pentateuch and all the other historical books,must have been written by one man ; and that mail) he thinks,was Ezra. His principal objection to the authenticity of the Pen-tateuch is, that Moses is made to speak of himself in the third per-son, the very same childish objection since repeated by ThomasPaine , whose ignorance may somewhat excuse him, but Spinosasurely could read the Commentaries of Cffisar, in the original,who speaks of himself modestly in the third person throughout allbis writings. He also objects to tile expression of the Canaanites being then in the land. These senseless cavils, worthy only ofmw of those modern freethinkers whose learning, in the opinion ofbishop Warburlon, is not sufficient to carry them even to the con-fines of rational doubt, are not worthy of notice. In the midstthis dogmatical scepticism, he bears such a testimony to the lastphapters of Lite book of Daniel, , as we should not have looked forb< the writings either of a Jew or of a Deist . After detailing thev arious hypotheses respecting the author and the intention of thebook of Job; in which, he says, Mounts is called Satan, he pro-ceeds in these words: “ Transect ad Danielis librum ; hie sinemibio ex cap, 8. ipsius Danielis scripts continet. Undenam au-fora priora septem capita descripta fuerint, nescio,” thus admittingPie famous prophecy of the seventy weeks. r l hat so paradoxical^ writer, who had been originally a Jew , and was now almost ab’eist, should have treated the New Testament with as little ce-re-‘iiony as the Old, will not surprise the intelligent reader. He be-Sms his remarks, however, with affirming, that no man can perusehe Christian Scriptures , and not acknowledge the apostles to' d ve been prophets; but he thinks that their mode of prophesyingJ as al together different from that which prevailed under the Mo-j-h’c dispensation ; and that the gift, whatever it was, forsook them■e instant that they left oil preaching, as their writings have to him

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I'veen the Christian and Jewish prophecy is the more wonderful,ti*' 1 ,*' ^ founds it principally on the dissimilarity of style visible ini, nt i n B s °i the Old and New Testaments,atl ■ ^^X1$M, or SPINOSISM, the doctrine of Spinoza , or'eism and pantheism proposed after the manner of Spinoza . Thealr 'l b r biciple of spinozism, is that there is nothing properly andu 50 fotely existing besides matter and the modifications of matter;

which are even comprehended thought, abstract andTh" i, ‘ l '.‘leas, comparisons, relations, combinations of relations, &c.’p| chief articles in Spinoza ’s system are reducible to these:stan ,• le is but one substance in nature, and that this only sub-are Ce ,. 1S e . ilc b- 1< 'b with an infinite number of attributes, among whjcliare f X |!‘ SI011 alK * cogitation ; that all the bodies in the universefhuGn' | lcut, fo lls of this substance considered as it is extended ; and,;< *nsid i S0ll ' s men are modifications of the same substancefi'et b as ‘-TTfative : that God is a necessary and infinitely per-Vr .. e " , S, and is the cause of all things that exist, but not a diiierent

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being from them : that there is but one being and one nature,and that this nature produces within itself, by an immanent act,all those which we call creatures; and that this being is at the sametime both agent and patient, efficient cause and subject, but thathe produces nothing but modifications of himself. Thus is theDeity made the sole agent as well as patient in ail evil, both phy-sical and moral; a doctrine fraught with more impieties than allthe heathen poets have published concerning their Jupiter, Venus,Bacchus, &c, It is observed, that what seems to have led Spinoza to this system, was the difficulty of conceiving cither that matteris eternal and different from God , or that it could be producedfrom nothing, or that an infinite and free being could have madea world such as this is. A matter that exists necessarily, and whichnevertheless is void of activity, and subject to the power of anotherprinciple, is an object that startles our understanding, as thereseems no agreement between the three conditions. It is also held,that a matter created out of nothing, seems to be no less incon-ceivable, whatever efforts we make to form an idea of the act ofthe will that can change what before was thought nothing into realsubstance. Besides, its being contrary to that known maxim ofphilosophers, ex nihilo nihil sit. In fine, that an infinitely good,holy, free being should rather choose to have them wicked andeternally miserable, is no less incomprehensible ; and the rather asit seems difficult to reconcile the freedom of man with tiie qualityof a being made out of nothing. These, it is observed, appear to.have been the difficulties which led Sp'moza to search for a newsystem, wherein God should not be distinct from matter, andwherein he should act necessarily, and to the extent of all hispower, not out of himself (ad extia) but within himself. But it iscertain, that if this system rescues us from some seeming difticul*jl ties, it involves us in the greatest absurdities imaginable,j: SPINTHERE, in mineralogy, one of the earthy fossils, of a

jl greenish colour: it occurs crystallized, in irregular, double, four-sided pyramids, which are obliquely.truncated. The crystals aresmall, and the fracture foliated. It melts very easily before theblow-pipe.

SP1NTURNIX, in fabulous history, a bird, or rather a quad-ruped with wings, which was said sometimes to attend the sacrifices.

SPIO, in natural history, a genus of the Vermes Mollusca classand order: body projecting from a tube, jointed, and furnishedwith dorsal fibres ; peduncles, or feet, rough with bristles, andplaced towards the back ; feelers two, long, simple ; two eyes,-oblong. There are two species,

SPIRACULA, in entomology, holes or pores on each side ofevery segment of the abdomen, through which insects breathe.

Sl’IR.EA, the Sfir/ea Frutex; in botany, a genus of plantsbelonging to the class icosandria, and order pentagvnia ; naturalorder, Pomaceaa Calyx live-cleft ; petals live ; capsule many-seeded. There are 22 species.

SPIRAh, in geometry, a curve-line of the circular kind,which, in its progress, recedes from its centre. A spiral, accord-ing to Archimedes , its inventor, is thus generated ■ if a right line,as AB, (Plate CIA 111, tig. 2,) having one end fixed at B, beequally moved round, so as with the other end A to describe theperiphery of a circle ; and, at the same time, a point be con-ceived to move forward equally from B towards A, in the rightline BA, so as that the point’describes that line, while the linegenerates the circle: then will the point, with its two motions,describe the curve-line, B, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, &c. which is called thehelix or spiral-line ; and the plain space, contained betweenthe spiral-line, and the right-line BA, iscalled the spiral-space.If also you conceive the point B to move twice as slow as the lineAB, so as that it shall get but half-way along the line BA, whenthat line shall have formed the circle ; and if then you imaginea new revolution to he made of the line carrying the point, sothat they shall end their motion at last together, there will beformed a double spiral-hue, and the two spiral-spaces, as in thefigure. From the genesis of this curve, the following corollariesmay be easily drawn : 1. The lines B 12, B 11, B 10, See. mak-ing’equal angles with the first and second spiral (as also B 12, P> 10,B8, Arc.) are in arithmetical proportion. 2. The lines B7, B 10*&c. drawn any how to the first spiral, are to one another as the',arches of the circle intercepted betwixt BA and those lines. 3.Any lines drawn from B to the second spiral, as B IS, B 22, &c.are to each other as the aforesaid arches, together with the whole7 T periphery