NAYLER NEAL. 



165 



having deserted the island, on account of the con- 

 tinual drought, the Carians are said to have taken 

 possession of it, shortly after the Trojan war, under a 

 leader named Naxos. Pisistratus reduced the island 

 to dependence on Athens. After the death of Pisistra- 

 tus, Naxos regained its freedom, and was extremely 

 flourishing, but, soon after, shared the fate of most 

 of the islands of the archipelago, and fell under 

 Persian domination. But, when Xerxes attempted 

 to subdue Greece itself, the Naxians took this oppor- 

 i unity of recovering their freedom in the battle of 

 .^alamis and Platcea. During the Mithridatic war, 

 t!ie island was subjected to the Romans. The trium- 

 vir Antony then placed it under the protection of the 

 Rhodians, but withdrew it, on account of their abuse 

 of their power. It remained in a state of freedom 

 till the time of Vespasian, who reduced it to a Roman 

 province. It afterwards shared the fate of the Roman 

 empire of the East, and fell, with the remaining 

 islands of the archipelago, into the hands of the 

 Turks, who retained possession of it until it was 

 attached to the new Greek state. 



NAYLER, JAMES, an English Quaker of the 

 seventeenth century, remarkable for his enthusiasm 

 and sufferings, was the son of an industrious small 

 fanner, near Wakefield, Yorkshire, where he was 

 born in 1616. He had a good natural capacity, and 

 was taught to read and write. At the age of twenty- 

 two, he married, and removed to Wakefield, where 

 he remained until the breaking out of the civil war, 

 in 1641. He then entered the parliamentary army, 

 in which he served eight years. Returning home, he 

 remained there until 1651, when the preaching of 

 George Fox made him a convert to Quakerism. In 

 the beginning of the following year, he imagined 

 that he heard a voice calling upon him to renounce 

 his father's house, and become an itinerant preacher. 

 He attended to this fancied inspiration, and soon dis- 

 tinguished himself among those of kindred sentiments, 

 both in London and other places, until, in 1656, he was 

 committed to Exeter jail, for propagating his opinions. 

 At this time, his own enthusiasm, and the extrava- 

 gant admiration of some female followers, seem to 

 have produced an incipient derangement, which in- 

 duced Fox, and the more formal body of Quakers, to 

 disown him. On his release from imprisonment, he 

 repaired to Bristol, where his followers formed a pro- 

 cession, and led him into that city in a manner which 

 they intended to resemble the entrance of Christ into 

 Jerusalem. For this, Nayler, and several of his par- 

 tisans, were committed to prison and afterwards sent 

 to London. He was declared guilty of blasphemy by 

 parliament, and sentenced to a double whipping at 

 different times, branding, boring of the tongue with 

 a hot iron, and imprisonment and hard labour during 

 pleasure. This sentence was illegal, the house of 

 commons not being possessed of any power beyond 

 that of imprisoning during the session. It was, how- 

 ever, fully inflicted upon the unhappy man, who in- 

 genuously acknowledged the extravagance of his con- 

 duct ; and, having afforded satisfactory evidence of his 

 contrition, upon his enlargement, was again received 

 into the communion of the Friends. He died in 1660, 

 in the forty-fourth year of his age. Nayler uttered, 

 on his death bed, sentiments of resignation, which 

 exhibit an intensity of feeling, and a beauty of ex- 

 pression, that show him to have possessed no com- 

 mon mind. His writings were published in a single 

 volume. 



NAZARENES ; a name sometimes given to the 

 first Christians by their adversaries, and, even to this 

 day, there exist, in Eastern Asia, some Christian 

 congregations under this name. The sect of Naza- 

 renes, which originated as early as the second century, 

 in Palestine, believed it was necessary to unite the 



Jewish ceremonial law with the precepts of Jesus, 

 and refer to a Hebrew Gospel of Matthew. The 

 Ebionites (the poor) went still further in the obser- 

 vance of the Mosaic law, rejected, at the same time, 

 the Epistles of St Paul, and doubted the divinity of 

 Christ, whom they considered but a perfect man. 

 Like the Nazarenes, with whom they have a common 

 country and time of origin, but are by no means to be 

 confounded, they had a Hebrew original Gospel. 

 Both sects were unimportant, and seem to have 

 ceased in the fourth century. 



NAZARETH, or NASRA ; a town in Syria (Pales- 

 tine), in the pachalic of Acre; fifty miles North of 

 Jerusalem ; lat. 32 42' N.; population, about 2000, 

 mostly Christians. It has an old castle, a Greek 

 church, a Catholic convent, with twelve or fourteen 

 friars. It consists of a collection of houses scattered 

 irregularly near the foot of a hill. It is memor- 

 able for having been the residence of our Saviour 

 and his family during the first thirty years of his 

 life. It was once the see of an archbishop, removed 

 to Monte Verde, in Italy. Nazareth held the third 

 rank among the metropolitan cities dependent on the 

 patriarch of Jerusalem. The Hebrews continued to 

 inhabit it in the time of the Romans, till the reign of 

 Constantine ; and after that epoch, it passed alter- 

 nately from the Christians to the Saracens. Here 

 are many places reputed holy, to which pilgrims are 

 conducted. The church attached to the convent is 

 handsome, and is erected over a cave, which is 

 asserted to have been the residence of the Virgin 

 Mary. When the plague rages here, the sick come 

 eagerly to rub themselves against the church hang- 

 ings and pillar, believing thus to obtain a certain 

 cure. The monks show, also, the workshop of 

 Joseph, and the precipice where Christ is said to have 

 saved himself from the fury of the multitude; also, 

 as the most venerated object, the table of Christ, 

 being the stone on which it is pretended that he 

 ate before and after his resurrection. In a valley 

 near it is a spring, denominated by the early pilgrims 

 the "fountain of the Virgin Mary.'' 



NAZARITES, among the Jews; persons who de- 

 voted themselves to the peculiar service of Jehovah, 

 for a certain time or for life. During their vow, they 

 did not cut their hair, or drink any strong drink, or 

 approach a dead body. It was foretold of Samson, 

 that he should be a Nazarite unto God from the 

 womb. So Hannah vowed her first born son (Samuel) 

 to Jehovah all the days of his life, with the promise 

 that no razor should come near his head. The law 

 of the Nazarites (from the Hebrew nazar, to separate) 

 is contained in Numbers, vi. 1 21. 



NEAL, DANIEL, an English dissenting divine, and 

 historian of the Puritans, was born in London, Dec. 

 14, 1678. In 1697, lie entered as a student in a 

 seminary conducted by Mr Roe, a dissenting minister, 

 after which he studied at the university of Utrecht. 

 On his return to London, in 1703, he began to offi 

 ciate as a preacher, and, in 1706, succeeded doctor 

 Singleton as minister of a congregation in Aldersgate 

 street. Although assiduous as a minister, he found 

 leisure for literary labours, and, in 1720, published his 

 H istory of New England (2 vols. 8vo) ; and, soon 

 after, a Narrative of the Method of Inoculating for 

 the Small-Pox in New England. In 1732, he sent 

 into the world the first volume of his History of the 

 Puritans (8vo), the second, third, and fourth appear- 

 ing in 1733, 1736, and 1738. This work called forth 

 a Vindication of the Doctrine, Discipline, and Wor- 

 ship, of the Church of England (8vo), from doctor 

 Maddox, bishop of St Asapli, to which Neal publish- 

 ed a reply, entitled a Review of the principal Facts 

 objected to, &c. His remaining volumes were re- 

 viewed by doctor Grey, to which an answer appeared 



