Note 184 — Quest. LXXXVIII.

We often read in Heathen-writers, of Æacus, Minus and Rhadamanthus, as appointed to pass a judgment on every one at death, fix them in their respective places of residence, and determine their rewards and punishments. These are generally supposed to have lived about Moses’s time, and are commended for the exercise of justice, and making laws, some of which they are supposed to have received from heaven; and as the reward hereof, have the honour, of being judges of men at death, conferred upon them. Some have been ready to conclude that the account which the Heathen give of these three famous law-givers and judges, is nothing else but a corruption of a tradition which they had received concerning Moses, the great law-giver to the Israelites, set forth by different names, with several things fabulous added thereunto. They who have a mind to see a very learned and critical disquisition on this subject, may consult Huet Demonst. Evang. Prop. iv. § 9-13. And as for the variety of punishments which these judges inflicted, the lakes and rivers of fire to which they are condemned, see Plato’s account thereof, translated by Eusebius, in Præp. Evang. Lib. xi. Cap. xxxvii. who thinks that some things mentioned by him, bear a resemblance to the punishment of sin, which we read of in scripture, which he supposes he received by tradition, from some that were acquainted with divine revelation, as he did many other things which he speaks of in his writings.