Page:Travels to Discover the Source of the Nile - In the Years 1768, 1769, 1770, 1771, 1772, and 1773 volume 1.djvu/621

Rh and immediately two roasted partridges came flying, and rested upon his plate, to be devoured. These stories are circumstantially told and vouched by unexceptionable people, and were a grievous stumbling-block to the Jesuits, who could not pretend their own miracles were either better established, or more worthy of belief.

are other books of less size and consequence, particularly the Organon Denghel, or the Virgin Mary's Musical Instrument, composed by Abba George about the year 1440, much valued for the purity of its language, though he himself was an Armenian. The last of this Ethiopic library is the book of Enoch *. Upon hearing this book first mentioned, many literati in Europe had a wonderful desire to see it, thinking that, no doubt, many secrets and unknown histories might be drawn from it. Upon this some impostor, getting an Ethiopic book into his hands, wrote for the title, The Prophecies of Enoch, upon the front page of it. M. Pierisc † no sooner heard of it than he purchased it of the impostor for a considerable sum of money: being placed afterwards in Cardinal Mazarine's library, where Mr Ludolf had access to it, he found it was a Gnostic book upon mysteries in heaven and earth, but which mentioned not a word of Enoch, or his prophecy, from beginning to end; and, from this disappointment, he takes upon him to deny the existence of any such book any where else. This, however, is a mistake; for, as a public return for the many obligations I had received from every rank of that most

VOL. I.

† Gassend in vita Pierisc, lib. 5.
 * Vid. Origen contra Celsum, lib. 5. Tertull.de Idolol. c. 4. .Drus in suo Enoch. Bangius in Cœlo Orientis Exercit. I. quæst. 5. and 6.