118 



yplieres. " Quid auteni per ilia Cherubinos et vevsalilem gladium 

 " igneum subindicetur ? Quid si hie totius c<Eli circumferentia 

 " cog-itari vult?" Mr. Faber has laboured to demonstrate, and 

 with much success,* that the Cherubim of Paradise were placed 

 in a tabernacle ; which, he says, is the force of the original He- 

 brew words : that " the flaming sword which turned every way,"* 

 more properly " a bright blaze of bickering fire," was analogous 

 to the Shechinah ; and the Targums, he asserts, suppose, " that 

 " the glory dwelt between the two cherubim at the gate of Eden, 

 " just as it rested upon the two cherubim of the temple." The 

 entire subject is worthy of much consideration ; and the more it 

 is reflected on, the more manifest it will appear, that in the cover- 

 ing cherub of the holy mountain Eden, the Cherubim of the taber- 

 nacle of mount Zion, and the exalted Cherubim of the spliere, is 

 a triple connexion of allusion, to man before the fall, to man under 

 the law, and to man under the effects of the Christian dispensation];. 

 The Seraphim occur but once in the Old Testament§, and they 

 are acknowledged to be the same as are described in the Apoca- 

 lypse (|. Although commentators differ as to the antitype of these 

 emblems, they all agree in considering them as bearing reference 



* V. 1. ISO, &c. 



J . To bring these Cherubim and those of the ark to a yet closer alliance, it was the tra- 

 dition of the Targums, that the two former were each si compound, in like manner as the, 

 two latter ; and to each compound, both of the Gardea and of the Tabernacle, there was said 

 to have been a Shechinah. 



i Is. 6.2. 



II Among others, see Sir Isaac Newton, ubi sup. 



