the Roman, will not admit of any priests, unless they are married.

That monks are not very ancient ; that the history of each order is known, and the time of its foundation; that it is also known at what time many feasts were appointed, Lent was commanded, ceremonies established, and the authority of the Popes increased. We medallists know, for instance, that in ancient times the triple crown was not placed upon their heads. The medal of Pope Adrian, as you know, gives him only the title of bishop; and in the Mosaics at Rome, at St. Suzanne, and elsewhere, Pope Leo has not even the head covered; but this is not of great importance, and so let us say, that one might also have learned :

That the Communion was instituted by our Lord in both kinds, as the Greek church has always retained it, and as Gelasius the Second, a Pope, has ordered on pain of excommunication; so that, consequently, the withdrawal of the cup is new in the Latin church. In fact, the Communion in one kind did not begin to be generally received, says Gregory of Valence, till a little before the council of Constance, that is to say, toward the end of the fourteenth century; and according to the opinion of Scot, it was only received for an article of faith at the Lateran council. Where then is your antiquity? One might doubt whether the opinion of transubstantiation was older, since no word that expresses it, is found in the ancient Greek or Latin Lexicons, notwithstanding the copiousness of these languages. I have not been able to find any trace of it in that of Suidas, who was a Christian, and who gives words employed both by Christians and Pagans; and I believe that one would seek for it vainly in the ancient fathers, and in the canons of ancient councils.

As vainly would one seek for Purgatory, or any equivalent expression; and if it was anywhere to be found, it would be particularly in the epitaphs of the early Christians. You, sir, are very learned in antiquity, and I should be glad to learn from you, how it comes, that in the ancient epitaphs, one never reads before the seventh or the eighth century, the form of pray for him, and

of requiescat in pace, which one reads so often in modern epitaphs; but that one reads only, obiit in pace, depositus est in pace, quiescit in pace, obiit in somnum pacis, acceptus est apud Deum, with the addition of the day of their death he died in peace, he rests in peace, he sleeps the sleep of peace, he is gone to God; because for my own part, I thence infer, that they considered the faithful to have entered into the sleep of peace, that is into Heaven, from the time of their death. Neither have I ever been able to find any (though I have a great many of the six first centuries), that make mention of the remedy of souls, which modern epitaphs so often desire for the dead. Lastly,

or of

I have never observed in all the ancient bas-reliefs that I have seen, any representations of purgatory, priests saying mass upon an altar, with the hearers on their knees, though the principal mysteries of the church are to be seen thereon.

May not all this, sir, induce a suspicion, at least to an antiquary, that that there are many novelties in the church which thinks itself so ancient; for, when antiquity is in question, it is not an antiquity of four or five centuries that is meant, but the primitive and pure antiquity. After all, you can only claim antiquity in those essential points in which you agree with us, and in the greater part of your ceremonies, which are copied from those of the Pagans, as Du Chosel, an antiquary of this city, has acknowledged, though he was of your own communion.

Allow me then to add what one of our ministers has said on this subject. You have antiquity, you say; I own it in one sense, and we are new in some degree. The whole western church was a diseased body. We are healed by the grace of God; in that respect we are new: you have remained diseased; in that respect you have antiquity; which is the more disadvantageous to you, as inveterate diseases tend toward death. We are new in our reformed character it is true, as a body is new when it is healed; but we are ancient in our character of orthodox Christians the Reformation is an accident to the church, which has nothing to do with its essence. The essential is the true faith and the legitimate wor

ship; it is on this that our salvation depends. "Where were you," it is asked us, "before Calvin?" We were, we say, in a society like that in which the true Israelites were at the time of Jesus Christ; we were in a position where it was dangerous to stop.

Pardon me a word further, which I do not utter for the sake of making an odious comparison of you with the Arians, the enemies of the divinity of Jesus Christ. May God preserve me from such a thought! I do not mean to annoy you, but only to explain myself better. You know that, when the Roman empire saw itself almost entirely Arian, the Arians arrogated to themselves the name of Catholics, and considered it an injury to be called Arians; and that on the other hand, they treated the orthodox as schismatics and heretics, calling them Athanasians, Eustachians, and Luciferians, after the name of the orthodox bishops, who had displayed their energy in defending the truth. Would it have been right to say to them, 'You are altogether new: where were you before Athanasius, before Eustachius, before Lucifer of Caillari?' as one says to us, 'Where were you before Luther, before Calvin, before Zwingle?'

In the main, whatever eclipse there may have been in the Romish church with regard to faith, there have been always teachers and whole peoples who have protested against her errors, as have been, for example, the Iconoclasts, the council of Frankfort, the Berengarians, Bertram, and those of his opinion, the Vaudois, the Albigenses, and the Hussites. It answers no purpose for parrying this thrust, to say that they were heretics; since it is neither God nor the Holy Scripture that has coudemned them, but the Romish church, who was both judge and party, and who is not infallible, though she herself may say so. Thus one may say, that there have always been some Protestants, as well in public in these communities, which were the purest part of the church, as in private, even in the bosom of the church of Rome.

Will any one adduce, for the antiquity of your doctrines, the books which have been inserted in your collection of the Fathers, which are either evidently supposititious or very doubtful ?

For instance, the mass of St. James, St. Peter, and St. Mark, the Catholic epistle of St. Barnabas, &c.; for, if these books are really apostolic, how comes it that they are not annexed to the others of the New Testament? The epistles of St. Ignatius,* the works of St. Dionysius the Areopagite, which are quoted by the same author for the invocation of Saints, purgatory, and the monastic life, although he owns in another place, that it is very uncertain whether this book is by St. Dionysius ?

But, to turn to something less serious; I do not doubt, sir, that as you are curious in medals, you will read with pleasure of a singular instance of the prejudice which the ablest persons among you have concerning the antiquity of their religion. You know that Father Veron found the mass in Holy Scripture, though your translators since that time have not fallen into his opinion. What I am going to tell you is still more surprising; it is, that M. de Peyresk, that great genius, for whom the learned have an extreme veneration, professed to have found the mass on a medal; his manuscripts have come into my possession, and so I can substantiate it; the very medal of which he speaks, is not so rare as one might imagine, and there are few of the curious who have not seen it; he believed, then, that the medal of Constantine, which has a kind of altar on its reverse, and a circular figure upon it with this inscription, Beata tranquillitas, was a representation of the Holy Sacrament of the altar, and that this circular figure was the sacred host.

He makes a dissertation of four or five pages upon it, and proves his opinion by reasons which he thinks incontrovertible; but it happens unfortunately, that a petty antiquary, who is in nowise prepossessed with the antiquity of the use of the host in the eucharist, and who, if you please, shall be the person now addressing you, will have this circular figure to be nothing else than the globe of the

Perhaps he means the interpolated Ignatius. "Spurious epistles," says Mr. Chevallier, "were ascribed to him, probably as early as the middle of the seventh century."

world placed on a pedestal, to mark its happiness and tranquillity under the reign of Constantine; this is easily perceived when the impression is clear, which did not happen perhaps to M. de Peyresk; for the zodiac and the planets upon it, are distinctly discernible on this globe, which leaves no doubt of its being the globe of the world!

Thus, sir, I finish with protesting to you, that by the grace of God, I have my conscience quite at ease, praying God daily to make known the truth to those who are ignorant of it, or have only a partial knowledge of it, whoever they may be; and that it may please Him to inspire us all with love toward Himself, and toward one's neighbour, with which one cannot perish, and without which one cannot possess Him who is both love and charity. It remains for me to thank you very humbly for the kindness you have for our printers, and my thanks would have formed the whole of my letter, if I had not thought myself obliged to reply to the cordial solicitations with which you have favoured me, by as sincere an opening of my heart as you could wish, beseeching you to take in good part the freedom which I have used, and to believe me inviolably,

Yours, &c.

Sir,

JACOB SPON. Doctor in Medicine, incorporated at Lyon.

Great Totham Hall, MR. URBAN, Oct. 4. IT appears to be but little known that the art of Aërostation, which, by the way, must still be considered in its nonage, it not having as yet been rendered subservient to any useful purposes, is a discovery of some much remoter period than is generally supposed. We read, it is true, of an attempt which was made by Dædalus and his son Icarus to soar in the regions of ether by means of artificial wings, in which the former is said to have succeeded; but this is commonly reckoned among the fables of the ancients.

For the discovery of the, at any rate, interesting art of Aërostation, the world, I believe, has always considered itself indebted to the two brothers,

Stephen and John Montgolfier, natives of Annonay, in France, who, in the year 1782, were invited by the Academy of Sciences at Paris, to repeat their experiments at the expense of that body, when, as well as on the subsequent occasion before the King and the Royal Family at Versailles, they were crowned with complete success. But as, in all things, we should be inclined to "render unto Cæsar the things that are Cæsar's," it seems to be no more than justice that it should be recollected that some years previous, namely in 1767, a scientific English gentleman, Mr. Black, was the first who (after Mr. Cavendish, in 1766, ascertained the weight and other properties of inflammable air), threw out the suggestion in one of his lectures, that if a bladder, sufficiently strong and thin, were filled with inflammable air, it would form a mass lighter than the same bulk of atmospheric air, and consequently rise in it; so that it seems not at all improbable, I think, that the brothers, Montgolfier, were but the perfectors of the embryo scheme of Dr. Black. But what will be said by the scientific world, when it is asserted that neither the Montgolfiers nor Dr. Black appear to be entitled to the merit of discovering of aërostatic art. "There is nothing new under the sun," says Solomon; a declaration, I believe, which most of us are inclined to consider somewhat apocryphal. While pursuing my antiquarian researches the other day, in a rare poetical work, entitled "The Ship-wracke of Jonas," translated from Du Bartas, by Sylvester, 4to, 1592, I was much struck on meeting with the following couplet:

"Against one shipe that skips from stars to grounde,

From wave to wave (like WINDY BALLOONES bounde.)"

In this single couplet, therefore, we appear to be presented with "confirmation strong as proofs of Holy Writ," that, instead of balloons being, as is generally supposed, an invention of no more than some sixty years standing, they were known at least two centuries previous!

Balloons were certainly in existence long before 1782, if not in Eng

land, at all events on the Continent. What can the most sceptical say to the following?

Thomas Macfarlane, esq. of Gressnal, when in Germany, on his way home with those specimens of the Ruta Baga, which he had the happi

ness to introduce to the notice of the British agriculturist, in 1797, and for which he was voted an honorary member of the Norfolk and other Agricultural Societies, had the singular felicity of being introduced to the celebrated mathematician, M. Von Mendlesheim, at Stettin, on the Oder, who showed him a drawing, &c. of a balloon, in a scarce work, published by John Christopher Sturm, bearing

date 1701 !

MR. URBAN, Cork, Sept. 28. THE manner in which the numismatic writers of the present day have classed the coins of Philips II. and IlI. of Macedon, particularly those in silver, has always appeared to me very unsatisfactory. The arrangement adopted by the earlier writers, in assigning all those with the horseman on the reverse to Philip II. and those with Jupiter sitting to Philip III. may certainly appear liable to some objections; but a close examination of these coins, their types, symbols, andweights, having brought nearly complete conviction to my own mind that this arrangement was correct, I deem it right to lay before you and your learned readers the proofs from which I have derived this opinion.

Before, however, I proceed to adduce those proofs, it will not perhaps be amiss to notice the principal types of the coins of Philips II. and III. in gold, silver, and brass, and the rules now generally used in classing them.

Of the gold coins, those bearing the head of Apollo on the obverse are assigned to Philip II., and those with the heads of Minerva and Hercules to Philip III.; and, although some difference of opinion seems to exist as to

the classification of some of the very small coins bearing the heads of Hercules and Apollo, the general mode of arrangement is, I believe, the one just noticed, and to that I am perfectly willing to subscribe. the head of Jupiter on one side, and a Of the silver, the large coins bearing horseman on the other, are universally allowed to belong to Philip II., whilst the small ones, bearing a young head with diadem on the obverse, and a horseman on the reverse, are, by the numismatic writers of the present day, supposed to belong to Philip III.

Those bearing the head of Hercules, reverse, Jupiter sitting, are all assigned to Philip III., although a few French writers have given the drachms of that type to Philip II.

The brass coins (bearing on the obverse the heads of Apollo and Hercules, a young head with diadem, and the Macedonian shield, and on the reverse, the different types of a horseman, club, and thunderbolt,) are all now given to Philip III. and IV.; and it is asserted by some, that no brass coins exist which can with any probability be assigned to Philip II.

All these rules I am willing to admit as correct, except those which assign to Philip III. the small coins both silver and brass, bearing on the obverse the young head with diadem, or the young laurelled head of Apollo, and on the reverse, a horseman; and I think I shall be able to satisfy the reader that these coins ought to be restored to the prince to whom the writers of the last century have generally assigned them, namely Philip II.

Let us first consider the small silver coins with the horseman on the reverse, and their weights, types, and symbols.

The weight of these coins is generally from 35 to 43 grains, which, allowing the full weight to be 44, answers to the weight of the tetarobolus, or piece of 4 oboli; and, as the full weight of the large coins of Philip II. was 220 grains, or 20 oboli, and those of Philip III. 264, or 24 oboli, it would be exactly one-fifth of the former, or one-sixth of the latter; but as the tetradrachm of 264 grains, and its half, quarter, and eighth, seem to have been the coins almostly exclusively used by Alexander the Great and his succes

sors, whilst many of his predecessors used very different standards, these coins from their weights would seem rather to belong to Philip II. than to Philip III. Another argument may be deduced from their size, for small silver coins are found of almost all the Kings of Macedon, of whom any coins are known; and if these are not allowed to Philip II. there will remain to him no small coins, although he reigned 24 years, and his large coins are more numerous than those of any King of Macedon, except Alexander the Great; a circumstance extremely improbable: whilst, if we assign them to Philip III. the small coins of that prince will be nearly as numerous as those of Alexander, although the former reigned only about six years and a half, and bis large coins are not very

common.

Let us now consider the types of these coins. The obverse bears generally a young head with diadem; a few of them, however, exhibit the laurelled head of Apollo. In Mr. Leybourn's collection, is one of the latter class, weighing 36 grains, the obverse of which is in fine preservation: it was brought from the Mediterranean together with several of those with the diadem, and its reverse bears the strongest resemblance to the latter. A comparison of those two types with those of the other coins of Macedonian princes will be found to afford strong evidence in support of my argument; for the head with diadem is found on a great number of the Macedonian coins before Philip II. but very seldom on those of Alexander, and never on those of Philip III. with the reverse of Jupiter sitting, the only ones which can with certainty be assigned to him; whilst those with the laurelled head of Apollo are still more likely to belong to Philip II. whose gold coins generally—I believe I may say always-bear the head of that deity, and the strong resemblance both in weight and type, of the reverse which 1 have just noticed, renders the justice of this arrangement still more obvious.

The reverses of these coins always exhibit a horseman, a type found on all the large coins of Philip II. and often on the earlier Macedonian coins, but which very seldom occurs on those of Alexander, and never I believe on GENT. MAG. VOL. II.

any known coins of his successors, except those of Cassander.

The last point to which I shall draw the reader's attention, is the resemblance of the symbols on these coins to those on the gold and large silver coins of Philip II. Those of most common occurrence are, a trident, thunderbolt, star, corn-wreath, and A in a wreath, every one of which we find on the gold and large silver coins of Philip II.; but I have not met with one of them on the gold or large silver coins of Philip III.; whilst several of the silver coins of the latter, with Jupiter sitting, exhibit the symbols of a snake, torch, &c., which are also found on the gold coins of that prince. An objection has been raised, that the head with diadem, from its youth, appears more likely to belong to Philip III. than to his father; but as the latter began to reign at twenty-three, they may, if coined in the early part of his reign, well represent a young man of that age, and on some the head appears older than on others. The truncated form of the letter П, [ cannot suppose to constitute any distinction, as that form of the letter is found on the known coins of both Philip II. and III. and the coins of both those princes generally bear that letter more or less truncated.

As the brass coins of Philip with the young head, with diadem on the obverse, and a horseman on the reverse, bear a strong resemblance to the small silver coins I have just noticed, both in types and symbols, it will I believe be readily admitted that they belong to the same prince. Yours, &c.

JOHN LINDSAY.

STAINED GLASS IN LUDLOW CHURCH, CO. SALOP.

MR. URBAN, Shrewsbury, Oct. 2. THE Church of Ludlow* is undoubtedly one of the finest ecclesiastical buildings in the county of Salop, and perhaps the most stately parochial edifice in England, the architecture being in the style of the latter part of the fifteenth century; though it is less florid than is usual in buildings of that period.

The whole of the windows in this

* Engraved in Gent. Mag. 1812, vol. LXXXII. ii. 209.

4 E