much better may we affirm it of the motions of animal nature within us, in those years of health and vivacity, when the tide of life keeps at its full height, nor alters its course for petty obstructions. The soul is not like an intelligence listening to his sphere; her harmony springs within her own being; and is but the comprising of all the inferior powers to give her pleasure, while she, by a soft enchantment, is tied down to her throne of sense, where she receives their homages. 'Tis true, indeed, to a brave mind, the grosser gratifications arising from the body, are not much. But youth has something, which even such minds must needs enjoy and cultivate, and can scarce support their heroism without, and that is, a fine state of our whole machine, suitable for all the delicacy and dignity both of thought and moral deportment.

"These blooming graces, these tender shoots of pure nature I was going to describe, but alas! the saturnine bias of my soul carries one another way. I must tell you, (what I am better acquainted with) how a chilling frost, called time and truth, experience and the circle of human life, will shortly kill or wither all these beauties, and with them our very brightest expectations in this world. For, will the loftiness of your speculations, the generosity of your spirit, the strength and lustre of your personal and social character be the same, when your blood ceases to flow as it now does, when the imagination is cold, and the wheels of nature move with harshness and pain? Will again the subordinate perfections to these, the gaiety and sweetness of temper, the significancy of aspect, the enforcement of wit, the inexplicable rays of soul that recommends all you do, abide with you, when the body begins to deceive you? But what am I doing? Have I begun to carry the charge of vanity even against those higher goods of life, knowledge, and friendship; which are the refuge of the best and the veneration of all men? Friendship is a sacred enclosure in life, where the bravest souls meet together, to

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defy and repine upon the common lot. Disgust at this vain and sullen world, and the overflowings of a strong serene mind, lead them to this union. But how will it answer? To say nothing of our friends, will not the sinking of our own hearts below the generous tenor of friendship, blast the fruits of it to us? Did we use so little affectation, in making a friend, that we need none to keep him? Must not we be always upon the stretch in some minute cautions and industries, in order to content that tender affection we would have in our friend? Can we make our love to him visible, amidst the reserve and abstraction of a pensive mind? In our sanguine hours do we not assume too much, and in our melancholy, think ourselves despised? Naturally, the end and pleasure of friendship is, to have an admirer: will our friendship then lose nothing, when humility comes to search it? Knowledge is so great a good in the eyes of man, that it can rival friendship, and most other enjoyments at once. Some have sequestered themselves from all society in order to pursue it. But whosoever you be that are to be made happy by knowledge, reflect first on your changes of opinion. It was some casual encounter in life, or some turn of complexion, that bid you delight in such or such opinions. And they will both change together; you need but run the circle of all your several tempers, to see every notion, every view of things that now warms and transports you, cooled and reduced. This revolution in his sentiments, a man comes at last even to expect; is a fool to himself, and depends upon none of them. Reflect next upon the shortness of your discoveries. Some points of great importance to us, we despair of deciding. How little is the mind satisfied in the common road; yet how it trembles in leaving it; there seems to be a certain critical period or boundary set to every man's understanding, to which when it comes, it is struck back and recoils upon itself. As a bird, that has fled to the utmost of its strength, must drop down upon

whatever ground is under it; so the mind henceforth will not be able to strike out any new thoughts but must subsist on the stock of former conclusions, and stand to them however defective. Reflect, lastly, on the impertinence of your thinking. Life is something else than thought, why then do we turn life into it? He that does so, shall feel the pain of breaking in upon nature; the mind will devour and consume itself for want of outward employment. It will also enlarge its capacity of prevarication and applying false colours to things. Little does the warm theorist think, that he is not to be perfected by any of his fine schemes, but by a coolness to them all. The utmost end he can attain by theory, is to revere and be resigned to God; and that a poor mechanic does as well, perhaps better than he."-GAMBOLD, p. 226.

"IT

[Drum Ecclesiastics.]

may not be amiss" says SOUTH, "to take occasion to utter a great truth, as both worthy to be now considered, and never to be forgot. Namely, that if we reflect upon the late times of confusion, which passed upon the ministry, we shall find, that the grand design of the fanatic crew was to persuade the world, that a standing settled ministry, was wholly useless. This, I say, was the main point which they then drove at. And the great engine to effect this was by engaging men of several callings (and those the meaner still the better) to hold forth, and harangue the multitude, sometimes in the streets, sometimes in churches, sometimes in barns, and sometimes from pulpits, and sometimes from tubs and in a word, wheresoever, and howsoever, they could clock the senseless and unthinking babble about them. And with this practice well followed, they (and their friends the Jesuits) concluded, that in some time, it would be no hard matter to persuade the people, that if men of other professions were able to teach and preach the word,

| then to what purpose should there be a company of men brought up to it and maintained in it at the charge of a public allowance? Especially when at the same time, the truly godly so greedily gaped and grasped at it for their self-denying selves. So that preaching, we see, was their prime engine. But now what was it, which encouraged these men to set up for a work, which (if duly managed) was so difficult in itself, and which they were never bred to? Why, no doubt it was, that low, cheap, illiterate way, then commonly used, and cried up for the only gospel soul-searching way, (as the word then went), and which the craftier sort of them saw well enough, that with a little exercise, and much confidence, they might in a short time come to equal, if not exceed; as it cannot be denied, but that some few of them (with the help of a few friends in masquerade) accordingly did. But on the contrary, had preaching been made, and reckoned a matter of solid and true learning, of theological knowledge and long and severe study, (as the nature of it required it to be) assuredly, no preaching cobler amongst them all, would ever have ventured so far beyond his last, as to undertake it. And consequently this their most powerful engine for supplanting the church and clergy, had never been attempted, not perhaps so much as thought on and therefore, of most singular benefit, no question, would it be to the public, if those, who have authority to second their advice, would counsel the ignorant and the forward, to consider what divinity is, and what they themselves are, and so to put up their preaching tools, their Medulla's notebooks, their melleficiums, concordances, and all, and betake themselves to some useful trade, which nature had most particularly fitted them for."-SOUTH'S Sermons, vol. 4, p. 54.

[An Orthodox Man without Religion.]

"A MAN may be orthodox in every point; he may not only espouse right opinions, but

zealously defend them against all opposers: he may think justly concerning the incarnation of our Lord, concerning the ever blessed Trinity, and every other doctrine, contained in the oracles of God: he may assent to all the three Creeds; that called the Apostles, the Nicene, and the Athanasian and yet it is possible he may have no religion at all, no more than a Jew, Turk, or Pagan. He may be almost as orthodoxas the devil; though indeed, not altogether. For every man errs in something; whereas we cannot well conceive him to hold any erroneous opinion, and may, all the while, be as great a stranger as he to the religion of the heart."-SOUTH, vol. 7, p. 92.

[Christian Intercession.]

1676, April 14. “THE Church met at the pastor's house at Tallentyre, where some hours were spent in prayer for the Churches of Christ in New England, upon the account of the nation setting upon them. Lord hear the petitions made for them, and be thou their protector and defender. Amen.

June 9. "The Church had a day of prayer for the afflicted people of God in New England, warred upon by the Indians. Sept. 22. "A day of thanksgiving was kept according to appointment. The same day there was an account given of God's appearing for his poor people in New England according to their request, June 9th before. Blessed be the Lord, who is a God hearing prayer. Lord compleat this deliverance of thy people in that part of the earth." Amen.-MSS. Extracts from a Record of the Church gathered in and about Cockermouth.

[Naval Chaplain.]

"PERCEVAL STOCKDALE through Garrick's interest was appointed chaplain to the Resolution 74, Capt. Sir Chaloner Ogle

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in 1775. The duty of a clergyman,' says he, 'was very seldom required of me. One day, however, when I met my naval commander in a street of Portsmouth, and payed my respects to him, he proposed that I should do duty on the ensuing Sunday, on board. I replied, it was my wish to receive such a command more frequently. At all events, replied he, I think it is right that these things should be done sometimes, as long as Christianity is on foot."'"Memoirs, vol. 1, p. 457.

[St. Patrick and the Spirit.]

"ST. PATRICK used to hear the Spirit praying in his own inside. Hear him in what are said to be his own words: Aliâ

nocte, nescio, Deus scit, in me, an juxta me, verbis peritissimis audiebam quosdam ex spiritu psallentes intra me, et nesciebam qui essent quos ego audivi et non potui intelligere, nisi ad postremum orationis sic affatus est; lavi. Et iterum audivi in me ipsum orantem ; Et sic evigiqui dedit pro te animam suam. et erat quasi intra corpus meum, et audivi super me, hoc est, super interiorem hominem, et ibi fortiter orabat cum gemitibus. Et inter hæc stupebam, et admirabar, et cogitabam, quis esset qui oraret in me? sed ad postremum orationis dixit, se esse Spiritum; et recordatus sum Apostoli dicentes, Spiritus adfessio S. PATRICII de Vitâ et Conversatione juvat infirmitatem orationis nostræ."-Con

suâ. 535.

Acta Sanctorum, Martii, tom. 2, p.

[Fides Catholica.]

BELLARMINE in his 4th book and 5th chapter De Pontifice Romano, has this monstrous passage, "that if the Pope should through error or mistake command vices and prohibit virtues, the Church would be bound in conscience to believe vice to be good and virtue evil." I shall give you the whole passage in his own words to a tittle:

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Bonam, omne vitium esse Malum. Si autem erraret Papa, præcipiendo vitia vel prohibendo virtutes, teneretur Ecclesia credere vitia esse Bona, et virtutes Malas nisi vellet contra conscientiam peccare. Good God! that any thing that wears the name of a Christian, or but of a man, should venture to run such a villanous, impudent and blasphemous assertion in the face of the world, as this! Did Christ himself ever assume such a power, as to alter the morality of actions, and to transform vice into virtue, and virtue into vice by his bare word? Certainly never did a grosser paradox, or a wickeder sentence drop from the mouth or pen of any mortal man, since reason or religion had any being in the world. And I must confess I have often with great amazement wondered how it could possibly come from a person of so great a reputation both for learning and virtue too, as the world allows Bellarmine to have been. But when men give themselves over to the defence of wicked interests and false propositions, it is just with God to smite the greatest abilities with the greatest infatuations." -SOUTH'S Sermons, vol. 2, p. 441.

[Sir Thomas More and Study.]

SIR THOMAS MORE describing the person with whom he held his Dialogues, "touchyng the pestylent secte of Luther and Tyndale, by the tone bygone in Saxony, and by the tother laboryd to be brought in to England," says, "enquyring of hym to what faculte he had most gyven his study, I understode hym to have gyven dylygence to the Latyn tonge: as for other facultyes he sought not of. For he told me meryly that Logycke he rekened but bablynge, musyke to serve for syngers. Arythmetryche mete for marchauntes, Geometry for masons, Astronomy good for no man; and as for Phylosophy, the most vanyte of all; and that it and Logycke had lost all good dyvynyte with the subteltyes of theyr questyons and

all uppon reason, which rather gyveth blyndnesse than any lyght. For man, he sayd, had noo lyght, but of holy scrypture. And therefore, he sayd, that besyde the Latyn tonge, he had ben (whiche I moche commende) studyouse in holy scrypture, whiche was, he sayd, lernynge ynough for a crysten man, with whiche the appostles helde themselfe contente."-ff. 5. Rastell's edition.

[Anticks in the Pulpit.]

"WELL, who's for Aldermanbury? You would think a phoenix preached there, but the birds will flock after an owl as fast: and a foot-ball in cold weather is as much followed as Calama by all his rampant dogday zealots. But 'tis worth the crouding to hear the baboon expound like the ape taught to play on the cittern. You would think the church as well as religion, were inversed, and the anticks which were used to be without were removed into the pulpit. Yet these apish tricks must be the motions of the spirit, his whimsie-meagrim must be an ecstasie, and Dr. G. his palsey make him the father of the sanctified shakers. Thus, among Turks, dizziness is a divine trance; changlings and idiots are the chiefest saints; and 'tis the greatest sign of revelation to be out of one's wits.

"Instead of a dumb-shew, enter the sermon dawbers. O what a gracious sight is a silver ink-horn. How blessed a gift is it to write short hand! what necessary implements for a saint are cotton wool and blotting paper. These dablers turn the church into a scrivener's shop. A country fellow last term mistook it for the Six Clerks Office. The parson looks like an offender upon the scaffold, and they penning his confession, or a spirit conjured up by their uncouth characters. By his cloak you would take him for the prologue to a play; but his sermon, by the length of it, should be a taylor's bill; and what treats it of but such buckram, fustion stuff? What a desperate

green-sickness is the land fallen into, thus to doat on coals and dirt, and such rubbish divinity! must the French cook our sermons too! and are frogs, fungos, and toadstools the chiefest dish in a spiritual collation? Strange Israelites! that cannot distinguish betwixt mildew and manna. Certainly in the brightest sunshine of the Gospel clouds are the best guides; and woodcocks are the only birds of Paradise. I wonder how the ignorant rabbies should differ so much, since most of their libraries consist only of a concordance. The wise men's star doubtless was an ignis fatuus in a church-yard; and it was some such will o' th' whisp steered prophetical saltmarsh, when riding post to heaven, he lost his way in so much of revelation as not to be understood; like the musick of the spheres, which never was heard."-The Loyal Satirist, or Hudibras in Prose. ScCOTT's Somers' Tracts, vol. 7, p. 68.

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pass their hands over them. When the Spaniards laughed at this, they stopt their allowance of food, and an old Indian said to Cabeza de Vaca, that he spake like one who lacked understanding when he said that such mode of curing were no avail. Stones, said he, and other things which we find in the field have a virtue in them; my way of healing is to lay a hot stone upon the stomach and surely there is in man greater power and virtue than in things insensible. This argument, and the cogent measure of witholding food induced him to try what the sign of the Cross would do, with a Pater Noster and an Ave Maria."-HERRERA, vol. 4, p. 5.

[Question of Canonical Ordination.] FATHER CRESSY observes here that "some Protestant controvertists do unreasonably collect from hence that the Britons before St. Gregory's time did not in their ordinations conform themselves to the Roman Church, and endeavours to prove that they did conform from this very legend. But to prove this he affirms that the defects in St. Kentigern's ordination when he afterwards called them to mind, caused great unquietness and remorse in him, (p. 247.) And he overlooks a question which the Bollandists ask in a note, si toties Romam profectus est St. Kentigernus, cur demum de sua ordinatione interpellavit S. Gregorium?”

[Purchase of Masses.]

"WHILE Cortes was absent on his expedition against Christoval de Oli, his death was reported by men who assumed the government at Mexico; they ordered ceremonies and masses for his soul, and paid for them with his effect. When he returned, Juan de Caceres the rich, bought all these acts of devotion for his own account. Com

pró los bienes y missas que avian hecho por el alma de Cortes, que fuessen por la de Caceres."-BERNAL DIAZ, p. 221.