The Knights Templars .

under sure guard ; their property , moveable and immoveable , inventoried , and commisssioners appointed to manage and account therefor . These orders were sent sealed , and those to whom they were addressed were prohibited , under pain of

death , from opening them till the night of the 12 th of October . Death was likewise to be the doom of any one who should not execute them . The 13 th of October was the appointed day for the arrest .

Letters were sent to the kings of the Romans , of Naples , England , Castille , Arragon , Navarre , and Portugal , to the princes of Italy , and the Count of Flanders . None were sent to the northern sovereigns , as the Templars had no

posessions in their dominions . These letters were in the terms we have related , with this addition , that the proceedings against the Knights were stated to have been undertaken with the consent of the Pope and the nobles of France . This was an

infamous lie , for neither the one nor the other were parties to this secret council . Had the barons been so , the project would have probably cost the king his crown and his life . The Pope would never have countenanced such a proceeding , and

the nobles would never have doomed their own relations to death . The falsehood was expressed as follows : — " The King being charged with the

maintenance of the faith , after having conferred with the Pope , the Prelates , and the barons of the kingdom , at the instance of the Inquisitor of the Faith , from the informations already laid , from violent suspicions , from probable conjectures , from

legitimate presumptions , conceived against the enemies of heaven and earth ; and because the matter was important , and it was expedient to prove the just like gold in a furnace , by a vigorous examination , therefore he had decreed that the

members of the Order of the Temple , who were his subjects , shonld be arrested and detained to be judged by the Church , and that all their real and personal property should be seized and placed in his custody . " Instructions thereafter followed ,

regarding the manner of arrest , and also to the examination of the Knights , and the employment of the torture to force them to confess . Before

proceeding to do this , however , the Templars were to be informed that the Pope and the King were convinced , by irreproachable evidence , of the errors and abominations which accompanied their vows and profession . The king's pardon and favour were to be promised to those who should confess

The Knights Templars .

what was charged against them , to be true ; but those who refused , were to be informed that a cruel death was their doom . ( To be continued . )

The Talmud.

THE TALMUD .

The following abstract of an interesting paper " On the Talmud " read at the Royal Institution of Great Britain some time ago , by Mr . EHANUEL DEUTSCH , will not doubt be perused with pleasure by many our learned brethren , who perhaps have

not had an opportunity of previously seeing it . The speaker introduced his subject by alluding to the different and generally unfavourable judgments formed about the Talmud . Talmudical iuvestigators , he said , were like those explorers sent by Moses into the Holy Land , the majority of whom returned with tales of iron walls and

monstrous giants , while the few came back carrying a huge bunch of grapes . Many were the poetical similes suggested by that strange work ; but , treated strictly as a book , the nearest approach to it was Hansard . Like Hansard , it is a law-book :

a collection of Parliamentary debates , of bills , motions , and resolutions . Only that while the former shows how the proposition gradually grows into an Act , in the Talmud the Act is the startingpoint . ' The discussions in the Talmud merely

seek to evolve the reasons for it out of Scripture , of which itself is a development and an outgrowth , while at the same time supplementary paragraphs are constantly evolved out of its own legal text . These bills or acts are called Misnah—both collectively and individually j the discussions ,

Oemara ; both together , Talmud . But if Hansard . contains the Debates of the Lords and Commons , the Talmud contains much more . All those manifold assemblies wherein a people's mental , social , and religious life are

considered and devoloped , are here represented . Parliament , Convocation , Law-courts , Academies , Colleges , the Temple , and the Synagogue—nay , even the Lobby and the Common Room have left their realistic trace upon it . The authors of this

book , who number by hundreds upon hundreds , were always the most prominent men of the people in their generation , and thus designedly and undesignedly show the fulness of this jjeople's life and progress at every turn . The Talmud , in this wise , contains—apart from the social , moral , criminal , international , human and divine Law—an