st out evil spirits. The name of the devil is likewise
used in their magical devices. The five Hebrew letters of which that
name[8] is composed, exactly constitute the number 364, one less than
the days of the whole year. They pretended that, owing to the wonderful
virtue of the number comprised in the name of Satan, he is prevented
from accusing them for an equal number of days: hence the stratagem
before alluded to, for depriving the devil of the power of doing them
any harm on the only day on which that power is granted to him.

In allusion to the cabalists, Pliny says, "There is another sect of
magicians of which Moses and Latopea, Jews, were the first authors." It
was the prevailing opinion among the Hebrews, that the Cabala was
delivered by God to Moses, and thence through a succession of ages, even
to the times of Ezra, preserved by tradition only, without the help of
writing, in the same manner as the doctrine of Pythagoras was delivered
by Archippus and Lysiades, who kept schools at Thebes in Greece, where
the scholars learned all their master's precepts by heart, and employed
their memories instead of books. So certain Jews, despising letters,
placed all their learning in memory, observation, and verbal tradition;
whence it was called by them Cabala, that is, a receiving from one to
another by the ear an art said to be very ancient and only known to the
christians in later times.

The Jews divided the Cabala into three parts; the first containing the
knowledge of _Bresith_, which they call also cosmology, the object of
which is to teach and explain the force and efficacy of things created,
natural or celestial; expounding also the laws and mysteries of the
Bible according to philosophical reasons, which on that account differs
little from natural magic, a science in which King Solomon is said to
have excelled. We find, therefore, in the sacred histories of the Jews,
that he was wont to discourse from the cedar of the forests of Lebanon
to the low hyssop of the valley; as also of cattle, birds, reptiles, and
fish, all which contain within themselves a kind of magical virtue.
Moses also, in his expositions upon the Pentateuch, and most of the
Talmudists, have followed the rules of the same art.

The other division of the Cabala contains the knowledge of things more
sublime, as of divine and angelical powers, the contemplation of sacred
names and characters; being a certain kind of symbolical theology, in
which