Notes
Many of these notes are footnotes in the original. Those added by the transcriber are marked (TN).
1. Botargo: A paste made of mullet roe, more commonly nowadays known by its Greek name taramasalata. (TN)
2. To the plain and satisfactory method of seeking for the faith in the sacred books, there are many adversaries and many objections raised. There are, says a great man, a very numerous body of Christians who knew no other guides but the living guides of the present church; and acknowledge no other faith, for the faith once delivered to the saints, but that which is new delivered to them by their present rulers, as such.
To establish this point, the greater part of these lay down the infallibility of the present church, and of every man of the past ages, through whose mouth, or by whose hands, the present traditions of faith have descended to them. And this, indeed, would be a very good method, if that single proof of infallibility could be proved. But this is a point so gross, and so utterly void of all proof, that a great body of the Christian would have broke loose from the power of this monster, and declared for the New Testament itself, as the only guide or rule of faith; the only deliverer of the faith to us of later ages.
When this comes however to be put in practice, too many of the same persons who set the scriptures up as the only guide, turn round on a sudden, and let us know, that they mean by it, not these sacred original writings themselves, but the interpretations, or sense, put upon them by our spiritual superiors, to which we are bound to submit, and put under an obligation to find that to be the truth which is taught by these leaders.
But to this we reply with reason, that though we ought to pay a regard of serious attention to these whose business it is to find out and dispense the truth, and show the respect of a due examination of what they affirm; yet we must not yield the submission due only to infallibility. It is our glory not to submit to the voice of any man. We must reserve that regard, for God, and for Christ, in matters of faith once delivered to the saints.
Others, again, of the reformed, tell us, that the surer way of knowing what was delivered above eighteen hundred years age, is to take the original faith from the Councils and Fathers, grave and good men, who met and wrote for the settling of the faith. And to this we answer, that these wise and good men cannot give so good an account of the faith contained in the original books as the books themselves which contain it.
To give an example to the purpose. If we would know the doctrine of the Church of England at the reformation, it is not the writings of particular divines, many years after that period, that we must consult; or any assembly of them; but the authentic acts and declarations, and sermons, made and recorded at the time; for many of the doctrines thought essential at the reformation, have been since changed by gradual alterations; by explainers using their own style and manner of expression, and introducing their own scheme of philosophy, and judgment in commenting, into the scheme of doctrine to be explained. This produces great variation from what was once settled. What was once esteemed fundamental is thereby altered. Let this be applied to the first Christian writers, after the Apostles were departed, and as their language and philosophy were various, and they differed from one another, great variations must creep into the doctrines delivered by them. It follows then, that nothing but what is recorded in the first original books themselves can be firm and stable to us in points of faith. In the original books only we can find the faith, without that confusion and darkness, which human explications and additions have brought in by way of light.
3. The captivity here spoken of began at Nehuzaradan's taking and burning the city and temple of Jerusalem, and sending Zedekiah, the last king, in chains, to Nebuchadnezzar, who ordered his children to be butchered before his face, his eyes to be put out, and then thrown into a dungeon, where he died. This happened before our Lord, 588 years; after the flood, 1766; of the world, 3416.
4. Shinaar comprehends the plains of Chaldea or Babylonia in Asia; and the 'men of Shinaar' were the first colony that Noah sent out from Ararat, the mountains of Armenia, where the Ark rested after the flood, to settle in the grand plains of Babylonia, twelve-hundred miles from Ararat. This was in the clays of Peleg, two hundred and forty years after the flood, when the eight had increased to sixty thousand; which made a remove of part of them necessary.
5. The extraordinary longevity of the ante-diluvians is accounted utterly incredible by many moderns; but it did not appear so unnatural to the early ages of Paganism. Let no one, says Josephus, upon comparing the lives of the ancients with our lives, and with the few years which we now live, think that what we have said of them is false. I have for witness to what I have said, all those who have written antiquities, both among the Greeks and Barbarians. For even Manetho, who wrote the Egyptian History; and Berosus, who collected the Chaldean Monuments; and Mochus and Hostius; and besides these, Hieronymus the Egyptian, and those who composed the Phoenician history, agree to what I here say. Hesiod also, and Hecutæus, and Hallanicus, and Acusilaus; and besides these, Ephorus and Nicolaus of Damascus, relate that the ancients lived a thousand years.
The ancient Latin authors likewise confirm the sacred history in this branch: and Varro, in particular, made an enquiry, What the reason was that the ancients lived a thousand yearsé
[The author had here promised "a continuation of this note in the Appendix," but it may be proper to notice, that the first volume of this work was printed in 1756, and the second, to which the Appendix was to have been added, did not make its appearance till 1766, and then without the promised addition. What the Appendix was intended to comprise will be found more fully noticed in the introductory portion to this volume. The materiel connected with the dispersion at Babel, was derived by the author, from Blomberg's Life of Edmund Dickinson, M.D. 1739. 8vo. of which subsequent notice will be made. ED.]
6. The Temple of Tranquillity, described by Volusenus in his dream: Florence Wilson, who wrote in Latin as Florentius Volusenus, was a Scottish scholar of the 16th Century. His work De animi Tranquillatate ("Of the Tranquil Mind") describes a dream-vision in which Democritus shows the dreamer a temple dedicated to the principles "Know yourself" and "Know your God." (TN)
7. This and the next two Latin quotation are from Volusenus, De animi tranquillitate. (TN)
8. I had once a sweet little country house in the neighbourhood of those ladies, and used to be often at their gardens and grottos. Mrs. CRAFTON had the finest shells, but her grot was dull and regular, and had no appearance of nature in the formation. She was a pious, plain, refined lady, but had not a fancy equal to the operation required in a shell-house.
The excellent, the polite, the well-bred, the good and unfortunate Mrs. O'HARA had a glorious fancy. She was a genius, and had an imagination that formed a grotto wild and charming as Calypso's. Her fancy did likewise form the garden, in which the grotto stood, near the margin of a flood, into a paradise of delights. Many a pleasing, solitary hour, have I passed in this charming place; and at last saw all in ruins; the garden in disorder, and every fine shell torn from the grotto. Such are the changes and chances of this first state; changes wisely designed by Providence as warnings not to set up our rest here: that we may turn our hearts from this world, and with all our might labour for that life which shall never perish.
What ruined Mrs. O'HARA's grotto deprived me of my little green and shady retreat. CHARLES O'HARA, this lady's husband, a strange man, from whom I rented my pretty farm, and to whom I had paid a fine to lower the rent, had mortgaged it, unknown to me, to the famous DAMER, and that powerful man swallowed all. All I had there was seized for arrears of interest due of Mr. O'HARA, and as I was ever liable to distrainment, I took my leave of Fingal.
9. Statira A Persian princess. After Alexander the Great's conquest of Persia, she became one of his wives. (TN)
10. Erycina: One of the titles of the Roman Goddess Venus. (TN)
11. The words men of are not in the Greek.
12. To this stammering or uncouth pronunciation of barbarous dialects the prophet Ezekiel refers, chap. 36. v. 3. "Ye are made to come upon the lip of the tongues:" that is, ye are become a bye-word even in the heathen gabble, among the babbling nations where ye are in captivity. Holloway, the author of Letter and Spirit, says, the word barbarous, used in so many languages, (with only their respective different determinations) for persons of strange or foreign tongues, is a monument of the great confusion at Babel; this word being a corruption of the reduplicate Chaldee word Balbel, by changing the l in each place into r. Some say, the word in the other languages is derived from the Arabic Barbar, to "murmur like some beast." Scaliger defines it, Pronunciatio vitiosa et insuavis, literasque male exprimens, blæsorum balborumque more: ["A distorted and unpleasant pronunciation, badly expressed in writing, in a lisping and stammering fashion"] and which was hitting upon the truth as to part of the original manner of the confusion. Indeed Blæsus [lisp] and Balbus [stammer], in Latin, are both derived in like manner from Bal and Balbel. The Welsh have preserved a noble word for this barbarism of confused language in their compounded term Baldwridd; which is a plain compound of the Hebrew Bal, and Dabar, without any other deflection from the original Hebrew, than that of changing the b in the latter member of the word Dabar into the Welsh w, a letter of the same organ. Moreover, from their said Baldwridd, and Das, we again derive our Balderdash; which therefore signifies strictly, a heap of confused or barbarous words, like those of the gabble of dialects, originally gendered at Babel. See Letter and Spirit, ch. 11. It is very remarkable, that this learned gentleman says he had been long of Hutchinson's mind, as to a confusion of confessions, and not of tongues; but on weighing the matter, is now of another opinion. Ibid. p. 115. Therefore, Hutchinson not infallible, but out for once, and as Dr. Sharp well observes, this may be an earnest of deserting Hutchinson in other points of his new hypothesis. See Dr. Sharp's Two Discourses on the Hebrew Tongue and Character against Holloway. His Two Discourses on Elohim, and Defence. And his Three Discourses on Cherubim. The Hutchinsonians lay the stress of their hypothesis on the Biblical Hebrew, being the language of Adam in Paradise; and if this be taken from them, they are left in a poor way indeed.
13. Fautor: A follower or supporter. (TN)
14. The great Samuel Bochart, born at Rouen, in 1599, was the minister of the reformed church in the town of Caen, in Normandy. His principal works are his Phaleg and Canaan; works that show an amazing erudition, and ought to be well read by every gentleman; you should likewise have his Hierozoæcon, or History of Animals mentioned in the Sacred Books. It is a good supplement to his Scripture Geography. His sermons and dissertations are also very valuable. Bochart died suddenly in the Academy at Caen, on Monday, 16th May, 1667, in the sixty-eighth year of his age. Brieux wrote the following fine epitaph on him:-
"Scilicet hæc cuique est data sors æquissima, talis
Ut sit mors, qualis vita peracta fuit.
Musarum in gremio teneris qui rixit ab annis.
Musarum in gremio debuit ille mori."
"One dies as one lives; so Providence
Of Mortals decides the Fate as she wishes
Bochart spent his childhood among the Muses
And was to meet Death in their arms."
15. As this song is a short imitation of the nineteenth Ode of the first book of Horace, it is worth your while, Reader, to see how the Rev. P. Francis has done the whole. I will here set down a few lines:
"Urit me Glyceræ nitor
Splendentis pario marmore purius:
Urit grata protervitas,
Et vultus nimium lubricus aspici."
Which lines are imitated in the first verse of the above song, and a part of the second; and the ingenious Mr. Francis renders them in the following manner-
"Again for Glycera I burn,
And all my long forgotten flames return.
As Parian marble pure and bright,
The shining maid my bosom warms;
Her face too dazzling for the sight,
Her sweet coquetting—how it charms!"
The following:
"In me tota ruens Venus
Cyprum deseruit—"
of which the third verse of the song is an imitation, Mr. Francis translates thus:
"Whole Venus rushing through my veins,
No longer in her favourite Cyprus reigns."
And the lines
"Hic vivum mihi cespitem,
hic Verbenas, pueri, ponite thuraque
Bimi cum patera meri:
Mactata veniet lænior hostia:"
Which are imitated in the fourth verse of the song, Mr. Francis translates as follows,
"Here let the living altar rise,
Adorned with every herb and flower;
Here flame the incense to the skies,
And purest wines libation pour;
Due honours to the Goddess paid,
Soft sinks to willing love the yielding maid."
You see in this the difference between a translation and an imitation.
16. The reader will find this apology in the Appendix to this life, [see Note 5, ante]. By scripture and argument, without any regard to the notions of the fathers, I there endeavour to prove, that God the Father, the beginning and cause of all things, is One Being, infinite in such a manner, that his infinity is an infinity of fullness as well as immensity; and must be not only without limits, but also without diversity, defect or interruption: and of consequence his Unity so true and real, that it will admit of no diversity or distinction of persons:—that as to the Lord Jesus Christ, he was the servant chosen of this tremendous God, to redeem mankind; but his holy soul so far in perfection above Adam or any of his posterity, and possessed so much a greater share of the indwelling of the divine life and nature than any other creature, that he might, compared to us, with a just figure of speech, be called God.
17. The Conniving-House, as the gentlemen of Trinity called it in my time, and long after; was a little public house, kept by Jack M'Lean, about a quarter of a mile beyond Ringsend, on the top of the beach, within a few yards of the sea. Here we used to have the finest fish at all times, and in the season, green peas and all the most excellent vegetables. The ale here was always extraordinary, and everything the best; which, with its delightful situation, rendered it a charming place of a summer's evening. Many a happy evening have I passed in this pretty thatched house with the famous LARREY GROGAN, who played on the bag-pipes extremely well; dear JACK LATTIN, matchless on the fiddle, and the most agreeable of companions; that ever charming young fellow, JACK WALL, the son of counsellor Maurice Wall; the most worthy, the most ingenious, the most engaging of men; and many other delightful fellows, who went in the days of their youth to the shades of eternity. When I think of them and their evening songs "We will go to Johnny M'Lean's to try if his ale be good or not, etc." and that years and infirmities begin to oppress me—What is life!
18. Minerva of Sanctius: Franciscus Sanctius Brocensis(1523-1600)was a Spanish scholar and philologiost. His Minerva sive de causis linguæ Latinæ (Salamanca: Renaut, 1587), a Latin grammar in four books or sections (study of the parts of speech, the noun, the verb, and the figures) which, subjecting the study of language to reason, is one of the very first epistemological grammars and made him a European celebrity for several generations.
Hickes's Northern Thesaurus: George Hickes (1642-1715), an English scholar whose book Linguarum veterum septentrionalium thesaurus grammatico-criticus et archæologicus ("A grammatical, critical and archaeological treasury of the old northern languages") was a work of comparative philology which comprehended Anglo-Saxon, Frankish, Gothic and Icelandic, in addition to material on numismatics, history and archaeology. (TN)
19. The School-house of the famous Dr. Sheridan, in Capel Street, Dublin, where many of the younger branches of the most distinguished families in Ireland, at that period, received the first rudiments of their education; was formerly King James II.'s Mint-house. The only view of it extant, is a vignette in Samuel Whyte's Poems, printed by Subscription at Dublin, in 1793. 8vo. p. 44. ED.
20. Scelerate: An atrocious scoundrel. (TN)
21. For according to his mercy, &c.: Titus, 3:5. (TN)
22. The Lord died for our sins, &c.: Romans 4. (TN)
23. I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, &c.: Romans 1:16. (TN)
24. I will pray the. Father, &c.: John 14:16. (TN)
25. If thou doest well, Cain &c: Genesis 4:7. (TN)
26. For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, &c.: 2 Corinthians 5:10. (TN)
27. And God saw, that the wickednesses of man was great in the earth &c: Genesis 6:5. (TN)
28. The earth also was corrupt before God, &c: Genesis 6:11. (TN)
29. Heart is deceitful above all things, &c: Jeremiah 17:9. (TN)
30. There is none righteous, no not one &c.: Romans 3:10-17.
31. Repent, and be baptized every one of you, &c: Acts 2:38-9 (TN)
32. The God of our fathers raised up Jesus whom he slew &c.: Acts 5:30-2. (TN)
33. Then they (the Gentiles) were filled with the Holy Ghost &c: Acts 4:31 (TN)
34. If any man have not the spirit of Christ &c: Romans 8:9-16. (TN)
35. What man knoweth the spirit of man &c.: 1 Corinthians 2:11-12; 1 John 2:20-1, 26-27, 1 John 3:24. (TN)
36. And the Lord smelled a sweet savour, &c.: Genesis, 8:21 (TN)
37. Neither will I again smite, &c: Genesis, 8:21-22 (TN)
38. Ex ea re tum privatim tum publice lignea virilia thyrsis alligates per eam solennitatem gestabant: fuit enim Phallus vocatum membrum virile." Schædius, de Diis Germanis, edidit Keyslero, 1728, 8vo. p. 130. ["Accordingly, both in private and in public, they used a dedicated wooden penis for this ceremony: Phallus was the name given to the virile member."]
39. Heraclides Syracusius libro de vetustis et sancitis moribus scribit apud Syracusios in perfectis Thermophoriis, ex sesamo et melle fingi pudenda muliebria, quæ per ludos et spectacula circumferebantur, et vocabantur Mylli. Athenai Deipnos. l. 14. p. 647. ["Heraclides of Syracuse writes in his book about the ancient and sacred customs of the Syracusans, that in honour of the Goddess Demeter Thermophorus they moulded from sesame and honey an image of a woman's private parts which was carried around at games and spectacles, and was called Mylli."]
40. This is taken notice of by the prophet Jeremiah. "The women also with cords about them, sitting in the ways, burn bran for perfume; but if any of them, drawn by some that passeth by, lie with her, she reproacheth her fellow, that she was not thought as worthy as herself, nor her cord broken."—Baruch, ch. 6. v. 43.
Herodotus, who lived almost two centuries after, in explanation of this passage of the prophet Baruch, tells us, "Every woman at Babylon, was obliged, once in her life, to sit down openly in the temple of Venus, in order to prostitute herself to some stranger: they enter into the temple, and sit down crowned with garlands, some continually going out, and others coming in: The galleries where they sit are built in a straight line, and open on every side, that all strangers may have a free passage to choose such women as they like best. Those women who excel in beauty and shape are soon dismissed: but the deformed are sometimes necessitated to wait three or four years; before they can satisfy the law. The men declared their choice by throwing money into the lap of the woman they most admired, which she was by no means to refuse, but instantly retire with the man that accosted her, and fulfil the law. Women of rank, for none were dispensed with; might sit in covered chariots for the purpose, whilst their servants waited at a distance till they had done." See Herodotus, translated by Isaac Littlebury, 1700, 8vo. vol. 1. p. 125.
Strabo also furnishes an account to the same purpose, lib. 16. p. 745; and Justin observes the reason for this custom, was ne sola impudria videretur, i.e. lest she (Venus) alone should appear lascivious.—Lib. 18. cap. 5.
As to the breaking of the woman's cord, Dr. Hyde says, their lower garments were tied with small and weak cords made of rushes, "qui ad congrediendum erant frangendi."["Which must be broken for the encounter"] Purchas confirms this notion; having seen the thing practised in his travels in the east. Pilgr. book 1. ch. 12. p. 65. But Grotius on Baruch says, the meaning was, the women had cords given them, as a token that they were under the vow of prostitution, which when they had performed, the cord was properly said to be broken; for every vow may be called vinculum, or a cord. As I take it, the case was both as Hyde and Grotius relate it. I was in company with a physician, who had spent many years of his life in the East, and he assured me, he had seen both circumstances practised in the kingdom of Cranganor [The modern name is Kodungallur in Kerala].
As to the woman's burning incense or bran for a perfume, it was the custom before coition, by way of charm and incentive. When a Babylonian and his wife had a mind to correspond, they always first lit up the fuming pan, imagining it improved the passion. So in the Pharmaceutria of Theocritus, p. 33. we see Simætha is using her incantation, "nunc furfures sacrificabo,"["Now I will sacrifice bran"] πίτῡρον [Pituron, bran] the word made use of in Jeremiah's Epistle. And as if all this had not been lust enough in their religion, it was farther declared in their ritual, that those were best qualified for the sacerdotal function, who were born of mothers who conceived them of their own sons.
In respect of human sacrifices, if you would have a full account of them, consult the following authors, and you will find that the Canaanites were far from being the only Pagans who were guilty of this unnatural barbarity. Selden de Diis Syris. Segort. 1. c.6. and all the authors he quotes. Grotius on Deut. 18. Isaac Vossius de Orig. Idol. l.2. c.5. Dion. Vossius on Maimon. de Idol. c.6. Lud. Vives Notes on St. Aug. de Civit. Dei. l.7. c.19. Ouzelius et Elmenhorstius Notes on Min. Felix. Spenceri de Legibus Hebraorum. l.2. c.13. And Fabricius Bibliographia. c.9.
41. But to him that worketh not, &c: Romans, 4:5. (TN)
42. Bishop Sherlock well observes, that "two covenants were given to Abraham, one a temporal covenant, to take place in the land of Canaan—the other, a covenant of better hope, to be performed in a better country." Discourse on Prophesy, p. 134.
43. Shechinah: "The visible manifestation of the Divine Majesty, esp. when resting between the cherubim over the mercy-seat or in the temple of Solomon; a glory or refulgent light symbolizing the Divine Presence." (OED)
44. Even as a partridge, &c.: Jeremiah 17:11. (TN)
45. There was none righteous, no not one, &c.: Romans, 3:10-18. (TN)
46. If ye abide in me, and my words abide in you, &c.: John 15:7 (TN)
48. No man can come unto me, &c: John 6:48. (TN)
49. Sub pedibus ventos et rauca tonitrua calcat: "He crushes (us) under the foot of the wind and the noisy thunder." Claudian, Panegyric on the Consulship of Flavius Manlius Theodorus.
50. Syzygy: The points where a celestial body is nearest to, or furthest from, another body: For the moon and the sun (as here), they are at the full and new moon. (TN)
51. Ab extra: "From outside" (TN)
52. That even spontaneous motion is performed by the divine power, is proved in the first part of a most excellent book, entitled, An Enquiry into the Nature of the Human Soul, [by John Baxter, the third and best edition was printed in two volumes, 8vo, in 1745; a third followed in 1750.] I shall only observe here that motion is spontaneous, as it is begun and ended by the living being itself, without physical necessity: but it is above the power and knowledge of the spontaneous being, as it is performed mechanically: the motive power is immediately impressed by the Creator, who is the only mover, as well as the first mover. How adorable is this condescension! the Creator exerts his power in consequence of the spontaneity of his living creatures! But is not this low work for the supreme Lord of heaven and earth, says the mechanical reasoneré No. Lowness of work is not applicable to the Creator of all things. He is as much the Creator of the meanest insect, as of the highest intelligence. It is his perpetual power, exerted in cohesion, that keeps all the parts of matter in the bodies of living creatures together. Philosophy cannot be hurt by admitting his power. His omnipotence is displayed to our senses in the most despicable weed of the field as well as in the bright rolling orbs of heaven. In calling such things low work, we forget what infinite power implies, and what infinite goodness prompts.
53. Should it be asked, why was such an intricate structure of such materials employed, or such a laborious method contrived, by the organization of dead matter, if it no way serves to produce motion, but rather consumes the force impressedé the answer is, that this consuming mechanism is no inconvenience in nature, if we consider who renews the motive power. We are forced to the frugal of our little power: but this is not applicable to the Deity. The governing power of the Deity is creating power. Beings made up of matter and spirit require such a supplying power, and in the various work God instructs his rational beings, and displays his omnipotence in wisdom and action.
54. Eldine-Hole in Derbyshire is a mile south of Mamtorr, and four miles east of Buxton. It is a perpendicular gulf or chasm, which I tried to fathom more than once, and sound it by my line, and by the measure of sound at the rate of sixteen feet one twelfth in one second, the measure Dr. Halley allows near the earth for the descent of heavy bodies; to be one thousand two hundred and sixty-six feet, or four hundred and twenty-two yards down to the water; but how deep the water is cannot be known. I suppose it reaches to the abyss. This chasm is forty yards long above ground, and ten over at its broadest part: but from the day there is a sloping descent of forty yards to the mouth of the horrible pit, and this is only four yards long and one and a half broad. Two villains who were executed at Derby not long ago, confessed at the gallows, that they threw a poor traveller into this dreadful gulf, after they had robbed him.
55. Indesinently: Continuously (TN)
56. In the second volume of Familiar Letters between the characters in David Simple, the reader will find an excellent story in relation to wishing, which the ingenious female writer calls 'a Fragment of a Fairy Tale,' in the conclusion of which there is the following sensible observation: "The good Fairy came often to visit me, and confirmed me in my resolution, never again to be so unreasonable, as to desire to have all my wishes completed; for she convinced me, that the short-sighted eyes of mortals were not formed to see, whether the event of any of their own wishes would produce most happiness or misery: and that our greatest felicity, often arises from the very disappointment of those desires, the gratification of which, at the first view, seems to be necessary to our welfare."é Familiar Letters, ut supra , 1747. 8vo. vol. ii. p. 225, 272.
57. Tales of the fairies: by the Countess D'Anois, published in English translation 1729 & republished several times. (TN)
58. ælian's description: "In the hollow of the cliff there was a cave very deep fortified at the entrance with a great precipice; along it crept ivy, and twined about the young trees, upon which it climbed. Saffron also grew about the place in a young thick grove, with which also sprung up the hyacinths, and many other flowers of various colours, which not only feasted the eye, but the odours which they exhaled round about into the air, did afford a banquet also to the smell. Likewise there were many laurels, which being ever verdant were very delightful to the sight; vines also growing thick and full of bunches before the cave, attested the industry of Atalanta, springs ever running clear and cool to the touch and taste flowed there abundantly". ælian, Various Histories, Book 13, Chap. I. Tr. Thomas Stanley,(1665) (TN)
59. That in Homer, where Calypso lived: "Round about the cave grew a luxuriant wood, alder and poplar and sweet-smelling cypress, wherein birds long of wing were wont to nest, owls and falcons and sea-crows with chattering tongues, who ply their business on the sea. And right there about the hollow cave ran trailing a garden vine, in pride of its prime, richly laden with clusters. And fountains four in a row were flowing with bright water hard by one another, turned one this way, one that. And round about soft meadows of violets and parsley were blooming." Homer, Odyssey, Book 5, Tr. T. A. Murray. (TN)
60. When a plague afflicted the Massilienses, they fed a poor man deliciously, and adorned him with sacred vestments; then led him through the city, and sacrificed him, by throwing him headlong down from a steep rock, after the people had poured their execrations upon him, and prayed that all the calamities of their city might fall upon him. Such practice shows that Christ being offered for the sins of the whole world, was in conformity to the ideas of mankind. The Jews had their devoted animal, and the Gentiles had their sacrificed poor man, and other ways.
61. The renewing of the Holy Ghost, &c.: Acts 2:38-9. (TN)
62. To walk with a perfect heart &c.: Psalms 101:2-3 (TN)
63. Blessing and honour, &c: Rev. 5:13 (TN)
64. Grand operation: The alchemical transmutation of base metal into gold. (TN)
65. Spagyrist: An alchemist. (TN)
66. There is a third way to make gold, to wit, by separation, for every metal contains some quantity of gold; but the quantity is so small that it bears no proportion to the expense of getting it out: this last way the spagyrists never attempt; and as for the two other methods, maturation, and transmuting by the grand elixir, the happy hour will never come, though so many ingenious men have often thought it drawing nigh. To console them for the loss of their fortunes they have had some comfortable moments of reflection, that they have been within some minutes of success, when crack! all is gone and vanished on a sudden, and they have nothing before them but cinders and broken crucibles. It is very strange then, that a man of Dr. Dickenson's great veracity and skill in chemistry, should affirm the thing was actually done in his presence by an adept; and the more so, as his friend, the Honourable Robert Boyle, told him the thing was an impossibility. Dickenson's words are, "Nec potui sane quantacunque mihi fuerit opinio de ista re, quin aliquoties animi penderem donec illustris ea demonstratio quam vestra excellentia, biennio iam elapso, coram exhibuit, omnem ansam dubitandi mihi præcidisset." And again "Placuit dominationi vestra: claro experimento ante oculos facto animum meum ad opus accendere atque; etiam quæstionem mearum solutiones, quantum licerat, promittere." See Epistola ad Theod. Mundanum Philosophum Adeptum, de Quintessentia Philosophorum, de Vera Physiologia, Oxon. 1636. This is very surprising; and the more so, as the greatest watchings and closest application, in searching after the stone, are all in vain, unless the stars shed a propitious influence on the labours of the spagyrist: the work must be begun and advance in proper planetary hours, and depends as much on judicial astrology, as on fire, camphor, salt, labour and patience: but judicial astrology is no science. It is a mere farce. I must conclude then, that the hands of Mundanus the adept, were too quick for the doctor's eyes, and he deceived him by legerdemain: that all the books on the subject are fraudulent descriptions to deceive the credulous; and what Mundanus told Dickenson of Sir George Ripley, canon of Bridlington, in Yorkshire, in the reign of Edward the Fourth, and of Raymund Lully, was mere invention. He affirmed that Ripley sent the knights of Rhodes an hundred thousand pounds to support them in their wars against the Turks: and that Lully assisted Edward I. king of England, with six millions of gold, towards carrying on the Crusade. This piece of secret history he assures us he found in an ancient manuscript of indisputable authority, quod inculpatæ fidei registris innotescit ("which makes his bad faith obvious"): A manuscript that no one ever saw except Mundanus himslf; penes me ("in my opinion") indeed, it was to be found only in his own head.
Ripley is in great repute among the adepts to this day, and his famous unintelligible and mysterious book is called A Compound of Alchemy containing Twelve Gates. He inscribed the manuscript to Edward IV. but the editor dedicated it to Q. Elizabeth, affirming that it contained the right method of making the philosopher's stone and aurum potable ("drinkable gold", an imaginary cure-all sought by alchemists). Lully was a very learned man for the latter end of the thirteenth century, and wrote several books in Latin; Generates Artium Libri; Libri Logicales, Philosophici et Metaphisici; Variarum Artium Libri; Libri Spirituales Prædicabiles, and the Vade Mecum Lullii; which treats more particularly on the Philosopher's Stone.
67. Life of Edmund Dickenson, M.D. Physician in Ordinary to Charles II., and James II. by William Nicolas Blomberg, 1739, 8vo. p. 135. From this work, the whole that has here been advanced respecting Alchemy, is extracted, pp. 87-139.
Enigmatistinubivagi: Vagabond swindlers. (TN)
68. As to the aurum potabile mentioned by Ripley, which was then and long after esteemed a panacea, or universal medicine, it is now a question if there can be a tincture of gold; for if it be only a division of the lests, or minims of gold, by the spicula of aqua regia, [gold recrystallized from a solution in a mixture of nitric and hydrochloric acids (TN] and these minims thrown into oil of rosemary where they swim, it is no radical tincture of gold, and the sole virtue lies in the oil of rosemary. The oil may be evaporated; the gold dust remains; and that by melting is reduced to a lump of gold again. This I have experimented. But the alchemists say, gold may be reduced into a gum of substance like honey, without any corrosive, and that gum steeped in spirit of wine acquires a ruby colour. An ounce of this is to be mixed with sixteen ounces of another liquor, and we have aurum potabile; sovereign in all distempers. This seems to me to be a second part of the romance. The making of this golden gum is a secret we can no more come at than the philosopher's stone. The adepts however assert it, and assure us, that Moses could make aurum potabile, as is evident from his pulverising the golden calf, and giving it to the children of Israel to drink. This great man, who wrote 540 years before Homer: 200 before Sanchoniatho [Sanchuniathon, an ancient Phoenician writer (TN)]; and 350 before the Trojan war, was, as they inform us, an adept.
[The story of "pulverising the golden calf," a rabbinical impertinence, which Calmet in his Commentaire Literal sur l'Exode, ch. xxxii. ver. 20. owns himself ashamed to mention, as well as the probability, that Moses was an adept, has met with a full investigation in the Life of Edmund Dickenson, noticed ut supra, pp. 162-171.] ED.
69. AZORA BURCOT died in 1732, six years after I left them, but ANTONIA FLETCHER was [1756] living in the same happy situation; and by advising the young women to marry some young men of those mountains, has made an alteration in the community for the better, and increased the number of her people. The settlement is now like to continue, and they find many advantages from having men among them. The rising generation thereby acquired, now proves a blessing to the first colony, whom years have rendered much weaker and dependent than when I first saw them. AZORA, a little before she died, did intend to get in a recruit of female children for the support of the society: but ANTONIA judged it was much better, to let the young girls of the community get honest youths for their spouses; for, by this means, they can never want young people to assist and comfort them, and to increase and perpetuate their happy republic. For these reasons, she sent for some young men to several neighbouring villages in Richmondshire [An area of north-western Yorkshire and eastern Westmoreland (TN)], to make several things wanting, and to dig, and work in the gardens, for so much by the year certain; and as they were smitten with the clean, civil girls of Burcot-Hamlet, several marriages soon ensued, and infants were produced before the twelve months had expired. More than half of the twenty women that married, had twins the first year, and all of them had strong, healthy children. The ten extraordinary girls I mentioned, got very good husbands, and as ANTONIA was particularly kind to them on their marrying, and gave to all the wedded folks great encouragement in profitable gardens and houses, grain and cattle, they and their spouses became rather more dutiful and useful to their mistress and ruler than otherwise, and in gratitude, and for the sake of their children, did their best to please Mrs. FLETCHER, and increase the common felicity. In this condition I found them on my second arrival at Burcot-Hamlet. They were a flourishing village, and a most happy people. My second visit was in 1739, fourteen years after the first; and I saw them a third time in 1752. They were then all well, and enjoyed every, comfort of life that can proceed from good and useful manners. Mrs. FLETCHER, though now in years, has no sign of age in her constitution, and still leads a most active and pious life. She is a subaltern providence to them, and with the tenderest care, makes it the labour of her every day to secure and advance the temporal and eternal interest of the people: but their souls is her main care. She performs to them divine service twice every day, as good AZORA was wont to do. She reads the best sermons to the aged, and constantly catechises the young ones. She is a blessed woman.
By the way, reader, I must observe to you, that in travelling over that part of Richmondshire, which is called Stanemore, I found several small villages, that are not mentioned in Camden, or the Britannia Antigua et Nova, or in England's Gazetteer; and though not so pretty and happy as Burcot in the northern ends of the fells of Westmoreland; yet in tolerable condition, and remarkable on account of several things and people; though they live entirely on what their spot affords, and have little communication with their countrymen beyond the mountains that separate the inhabitants of Stanemore from the rest of England. I took notice, in particular, that although those poor remote people had not faculties adapted to large measures of knowledge, nor have ministers to teach them, or churches to pray in; yet they were not alienated from the taste and feelings of humanity, nor strangers to the momentous principles of true Christianity. They had the Bible, and could read it. They instructed their children in virtue and religion, and lived themselves as the intelligent subjects of an Almighty Governor; in a firm belief that God will distinguish the virtue and the offence of mankind hereafter, by suitable tokens of his favour, or displeasure All this I saw in several villages of Stanemore mountains. I lived for some time among the poor people: and I mention their case here, that you may have the less reason to imagine there is anything incredible in my account of the extraordinary state of Burcot-Hamlet.
As to the Stanemore-part of Richmondshire, Camden, and the authors of the other Britannia, and the tour-men, &c. never so much as saw this country at a distance, I am very sure. The very little they say of it, is false and ridiculous. Camden places Bows before Greta-bridge. He says, in this desolate and solitary, this mountainous and vast tract called Stanemore, there is but one inn in the middle of it for the entertainment of travellers, whereas, in truth, there is no inn at all in what is properly called Stanemore: the inn Camden speaks of, is the Bell I mentioned before, where I breakfasted with Miss MELMOTH; and lies on the left side of a fine turnpike road from Bows to Brugh, in Westmorland, the high-way to Carlisle; but though this road is a part of Stanemore, running in a direct line from Greta-bridge through Bows to Brugh, eighteen miles of delightful ground, both on account of the excellence of the way, and the fine views of mountains and vales on either hand, for twelve miles, from a beautiful ruin of a Roman castle at the end of the town,* yet this is but the southern beginning of Stanemore. That vast tract of mountains, glens, and valleys, forest, rock, and water, the most wonderful land in the world, for forty miles to the end of the country, if it was possible to go straight on, lies on the right hand of this road, as you ride to Brugh under Stanemore; or, on your left, as you come from Westmorland to Catarracton or Caterrick.
Here, by the way, let me tell you, Reader, lives RALPH HAWKWELL, who keeps an excellent house, where you may get choice things, after a ride of twenty two miles, if you come from Boroughbridge to go to the north; or of fifteen miles, if from Greta-bridge, for the south; provided you have the rem; [money (TN)] and if you have not, though you were an apostle of a man, RALPH would have very little regard for you. Indeed, everywhere in the north, where the best of things are to be had, I have always found travelling there as expensive as near London. Many I know give a different account, but the reason is, either they never were there; or they travel in a pilgrim-like manner. You must take care, then, to have money enough, if ever you undertake the northern expedition I have frequently gone upon: and as it is not safe carrying much cash with you, for there are rogues in that part of the world, as well as in this; they rob even on Stanemore road; and in riding over the great moor that lies between Brugh and Appleby, there is a little ale-house to be seen at a good distance, on the right hand, at the entrance of a wood, at the bottom of a range of vast fells, where highwaymen sometimes resort; I was pursued by two of them, not long ago, and to the excellence of my horse, owed the saving of my purse, and perhaps my life: they were well mounted, but I kept an hundred yards ahead of them for several miles, while, as fast as they could stretch away, they chased me till near the town of Brugh. I was all alone, my fellow having received a mischief, and being obliged to stay a day behind; and the rogues did swear and hoot most horribly, and fired three shots at me; but my horse was as good as ever spanked it along, and I cut him up, and pricked him over the turf, like the wind away. I say, then, as it is not safe travelling with all the money necessary for such a long journey, the best way is, when cash runs low, to lie by to rest for a week, and put your notes in order, in some town, and by one of the dealers, or manufacturers of the place, draw on your friend, or goldsmith in London, for what you want, and by the return of the post, you will be paid the money where you are. In this manner I did, when I was last at Richmond, in the North Riding of Yorkshire. Being in want of money, I asked a gentleman with whom I chanced to dine, how I could supply myself with £20 by draft on one in the capital; and he directed me to his neighbour, who let me have what I had occasion for at moderate exchange, as soon as he heard from his friend in London. I might have had any money I named in this way; and so, in other places of trade.
I hope, reader, you will excuse this little digression, because it is meant well; and for the same reason, I imagine you will pardon me for advising you, in the next place, should the fates ever bring you to Catarractonium, in order to proceed to the northern extremity of our country; to go four miles out of your way to see Richmond town, before you set out for Greta-bridge, to JOSEPH MARSHALL'S; the best house of the two inns there. The delightful, romantic situation of Richmond, and the fine curiosities about the town, will afford you an agreeable entertainment for a couple of days; and if you like going at night to a club of very worthy, sensible men of this town, who are very civil to strangers, you may pass the evening in a very pleasing way; or if you have a taste for dancing, and prefer the conversation of a fine girl to a pipe and more serious discourse, there is a small polite assembly of as pretty women as ever gladdened the heart of man. My method, while there, was to smoke one night with the club; and the next I devoted to the ladies. We made up ten couple, and had the hemp-dressers one night, which is, you know, if you are a dancing reader, the most difficult, and laborious of all the country dances; and nowhere have I seen the ground more actively beat, or, in juster measure. Life and truth and charms were in perfection in those Richmond girls. I was there in 1729, 1737, and again in 1752, and the sensible club, and bright assembly, were still in being; but no more than three did I see, of men or women, in 37, that were there in 29; and in 52, they were all strangers to me. Some were married away; some had removed; and others were translated to the shades of eternity. This was to me a moral lesson. When I looked round the assembly room the last time I was there, and found every glorious girl of my acquaintance was gone, and that years had rendered me almost unfit to join with the ladies then present, in the dancings of the night, a philosophical sadness came powerfully upon my mind, and I could not help sighing in the midst of harmony, and a blaze of charms. This life, I saw was a fleeting scene indeed.
And now, reader, as to Stanemore-country, if it should ever come into your head, to wander over this wild and romantic part of our world, at the hazard of your neck, and the danger of being starved, your route is, when you have passed the turnpike on Stanemore, in your way to Brugh, to turn off to the right, beyond the public-house, and ascend a fine rising valley you will see between two mountains, till you come to the top of the first hills: then proceed, if you can, in the course I have described, and wherever it is in your power, tend to the north-east, for that is the way out. This is one way into the heart of Stanemore in Richmondshire, and will bring you, by the way, among the dreadful northern fells of Westmorland; a frightful country, and a fatiguing march.
Another way to the Stanemore Alps, is behind JACK RAILTON'S, the Quaker's house at Bows. Hire a guide from him, and his man will bring you as he did me once through a very surprising way of deep bottoms to a public house at Eggleston, on the border of Richmond-Stanemore. There rest that night, and early the next morning, proceed due north, when you can, with another guide, and you will come to mountains upon mountains, rapid rivers, and headlong torrents, that form amazing and tremendous scenes. Or, as this way is neither comfortable, nor very safe, it is a better road to the confines, or beginning of Stanemore, to ride from Greta-bridge to Bernard Castle, and from Bernard Castle to Eggleston, about sixteen miles, as I judge, for it is not measured, and then set out for the mountains from Eggleston, as before directed. I have been told there is another way into Stanemore, through Bishop-Rick; but as I am a stranger to it, I can only say what I have heard, that it is worse than the bottoms I went through from the Quaker's house. This is enough, reader, to show you how to get into Stanemore, if you have the curiosity and heart to visit that very wild and wonderful land.
* By the way, I suspect from Bishop Horsley's account of the Roman castle or station, that he never was on the spot, but had his relation from the surveyor he sent out to find the length of this Roman wall, and take other dimensions and notes for his Britannia Remana; I mean Mr. Cay, who published the late map of Northumberland, which Bishop Horsley employed him to make. He does not describe the fort and situation, and the adjacent country, as if he had been there himself: nor can I think he ever rode from this castle to Brugh or Burgh under Stanemore, or from Brugh, the Roman Veteround;, to Brovocum, now Brougham-Castle, a great and curious Roman ruin. The finest things relating to them, he has omitted, and many antiquities that are to be found in off-sets by the way: I question, likewise, if ever he saw with his own eyes, the eastern and western terminations of the Roman wall. If he was at Newcastle, and really did ride over Lonsdale marsh to Tunnocelum, a marsh where I had like to have lost my life; it is surprising that a man of his understanding, and taste for antiquities, should give no better account of these places. For my part, I could not see what he saw: nor did he see what I saw at the end of the town of Boulness.
70. Accension: Ignition (TN)
71. [The Irish history given here is very inaccurate - (TN)] Such knights were honourable creations made by the Irish kings. We have an account of them in the Psalter of Tara, before the reigns of Conaire the Great, A.M. 3970, ante Christum 34; Cormac Ulfada, A.D. 230; and the glorious Brian Boru, A.D. 1027: the three greatest monarchs that ever Ireland had. Fitzgerald, the first knight of Glin, was so made by the immortal Brian Boru, who fell in the bloody fight between him and Maolmorda king of Leinster, who had joined with the Danes, A.D. 1239. The king of Ireland and the king of Leinster slew each other; and with Brian Boru set the glory of Ireland. The states from this time began to decay; and Roderic O'Connor, who came to the crown, A.D. 1168, was the last king of Ireland. Our Henry II., got the kingdom A.D. 1172, by two means; one of which was a grant the Pope made of it to him; who was allowed by the natives to be supreme Lord of the island in temporals, and the nobility had by commission resigned it to him, after the death of Brien Boru. The other mean, and what effectually did the work, was the king of Leinster's joining with Strangwell, who was at the head of the English forces, and had married that king's daughter. An old chronicle says she was the most beautiful woman upon earth of her time, and very learned: but inferior nevertheless in beauty and learning to the six princesses we read of in the Psalter of Tara, who were fair beyond all mortals that ever lived, and wonderful in the extent of their knowledge; to wité
The princess Mac Diarmuid.
The princess Mac Reagien.
The princess Mac Faolain.
The princess Mae Kennedy.
The princess O'Heyn.
The princess O'Flaherty.
These six were Druidesses, says the Psalter of Tara.
By the way, reader, let me tell you, that from this same Psalter of Tara, I wrote out one of the finest and most improving love stories that ever I read. It is called The Adventure of Terlagh Mac Shain and the beautiful Gara O`Mulduin; which happened in the reign of Cormac Ulfada, king of Ireland, in the year of salvation 213, that Fionn Maccumhail, commonly called Finn Maccul, the mighty champion, beat the Picts, and brought off among other prisoners, the beautiful Ciarnuit, daughter to the king of the Picts, 'whom Cormac Ulfada took for his concubine. This story is likewise more shortly told in The Red Book of Mac Eogane, a very valuable old Irish manuscript: and from both those books I will give my reader the best part of this adventure as soon as I can see a proper place to bring it in.
72. This Cormac Cuillenan wrote the famous Psalter of Cashel, a very extraordinary and valuable book, which he composed from ancient poems of the bards, who thus wrote their history, and from venerable records, as this king and prelate declares in his will. The clause is this "My psalter, which preserves the ancient records and monuments of my native country, which are transcribed with great fidelity, I leave to Ronal Cashel, to be preserved to after-times and ages yet to come." There is another remarkable clause in this great man's will, to wit, "My soul for mercy I commit to heaven; my body leave to dust and rottenness." There is not a word of any saint in it; and of consequence, there was no saint-worship then in Ireland.
Cormac wrote his will the day before he fought the bloody battle of Maghailbe with the king of Leinster, and therein fell. It begins in this manner:
"Summoned away by death, which I perceive
Approaches; for by prophetic skill,
I find that short will be my life and reign:
I solemnly appoint that my affairs
Shall thus be settled after I am dead;
And thus I constitute my latest will:
My royal robe embroidered o'er with gold,
And sparkling with the rays of costly jewels;
Well suited to a state of majesty,
I do bequeath &c.é
My coat of mail of bright and polished steel
Will well become the martial king of Ulster,
To whom I give it; and my golden chain
Shall the most pious Muchuda enjoy
As a reward, &c.é
My golden vestment for most sacred use,
And my royal wardrobe I hereby give
To &c.-"
Now from this antique piece verbally translated, I think it is evident, that the kings of the four provinces of Ireland were not such poor and ignorant chiefs as they are generally imagined to be; and of consequence, that one of the four to whom the other three did homage, and who was therefore called the king of Ireland, was always a potent prince, and could do great matters, when they were all united. This consideration, I fancy, and the address let me add of Anselm, archbishop of Canterbury, and of Lanfranc, archbishop of the same see, "to Mortogh O'Brien king of Ireland, and Terlagh O'Brien king of Ireland, Moriardacho Glorioso and Terdeluacho Magnifico. To the most magnificent Terlagh O'Brien, king of Ireland, our benediction," &c. as you may read them at large in Usher's Primordia* ought to give some credit to O'Flaherty's Ogygia, Keating's History, and Mac Curtins' Annals; which those writers really took from very ancient records, and principally from the very valuable manuscripts, called the Psalters of Cashel and Tara.
* These letters were written by the English archhishops to the Irish kings, Turlogh and Murtogh, in the years 1098 and 1110.
What the Psalter of Cashel was I have told you, reader; and as to the Psalter of Tara, the history of it is this.é
On a tract of land called Tara, that was taken from the province of Leinster, and added to the county of Meath, stood the largest of the four vast palaces of the kings of Ireland, and at that grand fabric there was a triennial meeting of the states of the kingdom, called the royal assembly of Tara. There they enacted laws, examined the ancient chronicles and records, and purged them from all false and spurious relations, settled genealogies, and considered noble exploits. All the things that received the assembly's approbation were registered, and transcribed into the royal records, and they called this journal the Psalter of Tara.
73. Anchises' son: æneas; see the æneid;, Book VI, for his descent into the underworld.
74. Pismires: Ants (TN)
75. Scelerates: Scoundrels (TN)
76. The expression, 'partaker of the divine nature by impressions from it,' may, perhaps, be thought by some readers, to approach to vision; and to contradict my own opinion before delivered, in relation to this subject: let me observe then, that by impression, I here mean no more, than bright beams of light cast upon the soul by the present Deity; as he sits all power, all knowledge, in the heart, and dispenses such rays of wisdom to the pious petitioner, as are sufficient to procure a lasting sense of spiritual heavenly things. God is not only in heaven. He dwelleth indeed in the heaven of heavens after the most glorious manlier, as the High and Lofty One, and by some splenndid appearance, manifests a presence to the senses of the blessed spirits:* but as he is an infinite Spirit, diffused through all things filling as well as containing them, seeing and knowing all, even the most secret things; for, His eyes, to speak after a popular manner, are ten thousand times brighter than the sun, beholding all the ways of men and considering the most secret paths; knowing all things ere ever they were created, and looking upon all things after they were perfected: it follows, that since nothing can exclude the presence of this infinite Spirit; then, in Him we live, move, and have our being: He is not far from any of us; but although he is above all, yet he is through all, and in us all; within us, as well as without us; and therefore, in the hearts of the faithful, he must be considered, as an immense, intellectual, pure light, ready to enlighten and enliven them, and to: shed forth the bright beams of his love upon them. I imagine this illustrates the thing. To me it seems reason.
* As to the expression just now used, to wit, that this infinite Spirit manifests himself to the senses of his blessed subjects—it may be asked how this can be—can the eye behold what is infinite and invisibleé
The answer is this, that although God's essence be invisible, yet there is a glory, the train and attendance of his essence, which exhibits a bodily and sensible vision of God. He decketh himself with light as with a garment. This is the dwelling' of his essence. He dwelleth in light that is unapproachable.
We must distinguish then between the essential and the majestatic presence of God. The majestatic presence is the discovery of his essential presence in a determinate place by a magnificent luminous appearance and this the apostle calls the excellent glory, megaloprepous doxes.. This glory appeared on Mount Sinai six days together. It rested and dwelt in the sanctuary. It filled the house. Moses saw its back parts, that is, a small measure and scantling of it, in proportion to the weaknesss of his mortal eyes: but, in the other world, when mortals shall have put on immortality, and our bodies shall be invested with the new powers of spirituality and incorruption, then face to face, we shall be able to see the whole lustre of divine Majesty, as familiarly as one man beholdeth the face of another**.
There are two ways then, as an excellent man observes, of seeing God, to wit, by intelligence, and, in some manner, by sense: but we must not imagine that these two make up the beatific vision. There is a cause of more importance to beatitude. The sight and contemplation of the divine glories is our act; but the act of God is the communication of them. This makes the saints perfectly blessed. By the communication of the divine glories, we come to be, not bare spectators, but partakers of the divine nature.
As we are more obliged, says the writer I have mentioned to the sun, who is the cheer and vigour of nature, and the very life of all animal and vegetable beings: for his influences than for his sight, so are the heavenly inhabitants much more obliged to God for their receptions from him as the fountain of life and wisdom, than for the sight and contemplation of him as the subject of perfection. This illustrates the matter, and we may say, there is a third way of seeing God, to wit, in the enjoyment of him; the beamings of his favour, and the effusions of his love, passing through the whole man, and producing an intimate sensation of him both in body and soul, and filling both with an unconceivable and endless delectation. This is seeing God as he is.
** As grateful objects of sense make up a great part of human delectation; may we not suppose, that this glory of God, accommodated to our senses, will produce a more ravishing and transcendent delight, than all the objects in nature are capable of producing.
77. Conclusum est contra Manicheos: "The Manicheans cannot get over this argument." i.e this is conclusively proven.
78. Dr Shaw, in his Travels, shows that the cave near Cape Bonn was the grot which Virgil describes in the following manner:
"Defessi æneada, qua proxima, litora cursu
Contendunt petere, et Lybia vertuntur ad oras.
Est in secessu longo locus: insula portum
Efficit objectu laterum, quibus omnis ab alto
Frangitur inque sinus scindit sese unda reductos.
Hinc atque hinc vastæ rupes, geminique minantur
In cœlum scopuli. Quorum sub vertice late
æquora tuta silent. Tum sylvis scena coruscis
Desuper, horrentique atrum nemus imminet umbra.
Fronte sub adversa scopulis pendentihus antrum
Intus aquæ dulces, vivoque sedilia saxo;
Nympharurn domos."
D
The weary Trojans ply their shattered oars
To nearest land, and make the Lybian shores.
Within a long recess there lies a bay,
An island shades it from the rolling sea,
And forms a port secure for ships to ride,
Broke by the jutting land on either side:
In double streams the briny waters glide.
Betwixt two rows of rocks, a sylvan scene
Appears above, and groves for ever green.
A grot is formed beneath, with mossy seats
To rest the Nereids, and exclude the heats:
Down through the crannies of the living walls
The crystal streams descend in murmuring falls.
P
The Trojans, wearied with the storms, explore
The nearest land, and reach the Lybian shore.
Far in a deep recess, her jutting sides
An isle projects, to break the rolling tides
And forms a port, where, curling from the sea
The waves steal back, and wind into a bay.
On either side, sublime in air, arise
Two towering rocks, whose summits brave the skies;
Low at their feet the sleeping ocean lies:
Crowned with a gloomy shade of waving woods,
Their awful brows hang nodding o'er the floods.
Opposed to these, a secret grotto stands,
The haunt of Nereids, framed by nature's hands;
Where polished seats appear of living stone,
And limpid rills, that tinkle as they run.
S
There lies a harbour far within the land,
Commodious formed by an opposing isle:
Which breaking as a mound the furious waves,
They run divided, calmer then unite.
On each side rocks, and two with steepy height
Aspiring touch the clouds, safe at whose feet
The waters far and near pacific sleep.
Distant from these a sylvan scene, beyond,
To bound the prospect, woods with horrent shade.
Opening to view, beneath the hanging rocks
A cave; within, a fountain pure; and seats
Formed from the living stone; the cool recess
Of nymphs.
This grot within a mountain over-shaded with trees, and lying open to the sea, with a cliff on each side, and not far from Carthage, answers so well to the Nympharum domus of Virgil*, that I think we need not doubt of its being the cave into which the gallant aelig;neas led the gracious queen: but that it ever was a quarry, and that pillars were made by the workmen to support the roof, as Dr. Shaw says, does not seem to be the case. The whole grot, which goes in thirty-six fathoms under the hill, its arches, and pillars were undoubtedly by the hand of nature; like many others I have seen. So it appeared to me. I could not see the least sign of a labouring hand in this cave.
* The kingdom of Tunis in the west of Barbary in Africa, was once the celebrated republic of Carthage. The city of Carthage was about four miles from the spot the city of Tunis now stands on. Many ruins of it are still remaining. This glorious city, was twenty-three miles round, and built near an hundred years before Rome, was taken and utterly razed by young Africanus, that is, Scipio aelig;milianus, before Christ 146 years. It had disputed with Rome for the empire of the world, for the space of 118 years. The most beautiful village in the world, called Marsa, now stands in the western point of ancient Carthage, and from thence it is a fine walk to Dido's Cave under Cape Bon.
79. St. Donat's Cave, by the vulgar called Reynard's Church, in Glamorganshire, is one hundred and sixty feet in length, the breadth forty-three, and the height thirty-four. Every spring tide fills it with water, and has smoothed it to perfection. At the upper end of it, there is a grand seat, arched into the stone, and near it a falling-spring of fresh water drops into a cistern it has made. The rushing tides have made good seats in the sides of the rock, and from them you have a view of the channel, which is seven leagues. Every ship that sails to and from Bristol, is seen, and the mountains of Somersetshire bound the prospect that way. The cliff over the cave is almost double the height of the grot, and to the very edge of the precipice, the cattle come to graze, to avoid the insects, who will not approach the sea-breezes. The whole is a charming scene.
80. I have already observed that Camden, and every other describer of England, had not the least notion of Stanemore, that is, the north fells of Westmorland, and the northern mountains of Richmondshire: and as to the people who live on the borders of Stanemore, I could not find so much as one man in Richmond, Greta-bridge, Bowes, and Brugh, that had been any length of way up the mountains. When I asked RAILTON, the Quaker, a very knowing man, who keeps the George at Bowes, what sort of a country Stanemore wasé He answered, It is, after a few miles riding more wild and mountainy than the highlands of Scotland, and impassable: nay, my landlord at Eggleston, some miles within Stanemore, knew nothing of the mountains upon mountains that are far beyond his house.
81. Sigillum Solomonis: Solomon's seal (Polygonatum multiflorum), a plant of the Asparagacæ family. (TN)
82. Though the image of a flea may be magnified to eight feet, by removing farther off the white paper screen, on which the picture of the object is thrown very beautifully from the object posited in a single pocket microscope that is fastened to a tube to the solar microscope; yet the image or picture is more distinct and exact, when not enlarged to more than three feet, on the opposite side of the darkened room. By the way, reader, the solar microscope is the most entertaining of all the microscopes, and by it without any skill in drawing, you may easily make an exact picture of any animal or object you can put into the fastened pocket microscope. The object is so intensely illuminated by the sun beams collected by a convex lens, that are thrown on it by a looking-glass, that its picture is most perfectly and plainly represented on the white screen. You may have a mite, or one of the imperceptible animals of rotten wood, so truly and greatly magnified, as easily to sketch out the exact image of it in all its wonderful parts, with a pencil or pin and in this amusing work, and in transferring the objects from the solar to the double reflecting microscope, the catoptric microscope, and the microscope for opaque objects, how usefully and delightfully might a young man of fortune employ many hours that are miserably sauntered away, or consumed in senseless and illicit delights!
83. Catoptric: Relating to mirrors (TN)
84. Christophe Plantin (ca 1520 - 1589) was a printer of Antwerp. His volumes are noted for their accuracy and fine production standards. (TN)
85. Many instances can be produced of Charles the First's exerting a power contrary to the interest of the protestant religion; and a capital one is, this king's express and strict orders, signed with his own hand, to Captain John Pennington, to deliver, which he did, in obedience thereto, a squadron of the naval forces of England, consisting of eight men of war, into the hands and absolute power of the French king; and Charles directed, that in case of disobedience in the English captains to that order, Pennington was to sink them. These naval forces enabled the Gaulish king to break and suppress the power of the Rochelle protestants: this was an unjustifiable step indeed in Charles' reign: and if to this we add a thousand acts of this said sovereign Lord, which were the cause of all the disagreements, differences and contentions between his majesty and his people, that happened in his reign, and the sources of public calamity, it is certainly most amazing, to see the memory of this prince treated equally, if not superior to the most celebrated martyrs! torrents of tears have I seen pour from the eyes of our mourning theologers on the 30th of January. I remember one time, when Dr. Warren preached the commemoration sermon at St. Margaret's Westminster, that he wept and sobbed so bitterly and calamitously, that he could hardly get out the following concluding words of his fine discourse, the Roy—Royal Ma—Martyr—the—holy Martyr—the—the—blessed Martyr.
Nor can I forget [Dr. Delany] the learned author of The Life of David. This gentleman preached before the late Duke of Devonshire in Christ-Church, on Monday, January 30, 1737, from these words, 'Take away the dross from the silver, and there shall come forth a vessel for the finer.—Take away the wicked from before the king, and his throne shall be established in righteousness' Prov. ch. 25.
In this fine sermon, the Dr. gave us the picture of a Man as like Charles I. as Phalaris was to the apostle St. John: he then deprecated the murder, which are his own words, and in the most piteous manner, with tears informed us, that "God gave us this prince in his mercy, and took him away in his indignation: A prince," said the doctor, "who was a true lover of his people, compassionate of their errors and misfortunes and religiously tender of their well-being. He equally understood and practised religion in its purity; and he died defending it. King Charles the First of blessed memory!" Here the preacher wept, and then proceeded to abuse the opposers of this royal contender for absolute prerogatives; as absolute as those the eastern or civil law potentates claim; and then, to make and apply observations and inferences to the persons and characters of the present times, he told the Lord-Lieutenant, and the House of Lords, among other admirable things, that "they should remember how the lay lords had consented to deprive the bishops of their seats in parliament, and rob the spiritual lords of their rights and privilges; which drew down a just judgement upon themselves; for they, the said lay lords, were soon after voted useless: have a care then, lay lords, how you act for the future against the spiritual lords. Maintain, for the time to come, a strict and inviolable regard to the rights, privileges, and properties of the spiritual lords."
This advice, by the way, appeared to me very singular, and I think, on the contrary, that it would be well for our church, if our bishops were obliged to leave the court, the parliament, and their politics, and then spend their lives in labouring in the vineyard of Christ, in their several dioceses. What have priests to do with baronies and acts of state; men that ought above all other men to be content with food and raiment, and to withdraw themselves from the world, that by their continued conversation with God, and attention only to the sacred prescriptions of the gospel, they might appear replenished with that divine power and virtue, which by prayer, and all the exercises of piety and penitence, they had implored; and by their examples and instructions, brighten and inflame the people with the love of God, and improve the good in goodness, and correct and reform the wicked. This would be acting like bishops indeed. The holiness of our prelates lives, and their fervour in teaching mankind the truths of Jesus Christ, would soon advance the cause of their master. They would bring the people to conform to the will of the Lord, and cause the learned to purify the defilements of genius; that pride and vanity, that curiosity and self-love which are incompatible with an accomplished purity of heart. But as to 'Charles the First, of blessed memory,' certain I am, that whatever Dean Delany may think of him, this prince did really contend for the cardinal maxims of the civil law, and died, not for true religion, as this doctor says, but to advance the civil laws above the constitution and laws of Britain, and thereby acquire an absolute dominion. Quod principi placuit legis habet vigorem["That which pleases the ruler has the force of law"]. It appears from matters of fact, that his pleasure was to be the law. In him was to reside the sole power of imposing taxes on the people. This power, and other powers contrary to the fundamental form of this government; this king of blessed memory assumed and challenged as rights, under the name of his undoubted prerogatives, and grasped the pretence so hard, as never to part with it, till he wanted strength to hold it. THIS IS THE MARTYR!!! His reign was a provoking violation of parliamentary rights, and a cruel oppression of his subjects.
Instead then of the fine laboured reasons offered by Dr. Delany to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, to account for the way of Providence in the tragical death of this king, he might have said, That whereas this prince had departed from the known laws of the land to an arbitrary power, and not only the pressures and sufferings of the people, under this method of governing, were innumerable; but the fundamental form and original constitution of Britain, on which the protestant religion and the liberty of Europe depend; was in danger of being subverted, and for ever destroyed, therefore did Providence deliver up this king into the hands of wicked men, who had usurped the administration of affairs; that the mortification in the constitution might be cured by the death of this destroying prince; and the violence of his exit remain a monument in terrorem to all future kings of England; to have a care how they offer to make any alteration or change in the original form of government; for violations of the constitution had brought Charles the First to the block. This had been a reasonable account of that sad affair. It is supported by matters of fact.
N.B. The contentions between his Majesty and the house of commons began about the following essential points.
A. The power the king assumed, and challenged as a right, to impose taxes, levy monies, and impose duties on merchandises, without a previous grant thereof in parliament;
B. That the commons were obliged to observe and obey the king's messages, in giving precedency to the matter of supplies, preferable to the redress of grievances, and to depend on royal promises, for time and opportunity to dispatch other business.
C. That the commons had no right and power of enquiring into the demeanour of the king's ministers and nearest servants, and impeaching them for misdemeanours.
D. That the king could, in his courts below, take cognizance of, and censure the debates of the commons.
E. That the king could, by warrants signed with his own hand, arrest and imprison his subjects; and especially the members of parliament, for what they said and did in parliament.
These illegal and destructive acts of power King Charles I. claimed as his prerogatives, and exercised them as long as he was able, with great rigour, and extraordinary circumstances; and how such a general oppression, and rendering the two estates of lords and commons of no signification, can make the memory of this prince blessed; or, how his suffering in the manner he did, in defence of such absolute, law-giving power, that was inconsistent with the constitution, and with the reasons upon which it is founded, can render him a holy and blessed martyr, is past my comprehension. I should rather choose to say, that since that monarch would not act for the protection, happiness, and safety of his people, but by a continued exertion of sovereign power, endeavoured to oppress and ruin them, and change the form of government, his arbitrary principles brought him to a dismal extremity. This, as before observed, is the truth of the case. May his death be a warning to future English kings; that they may govern with parliaments, and exert their power for the protection, safety, and happiness of the people.
86. The great Du Plessis de Mornay was born on the 5th of November, 154g. He wrote several excellent books, and one that is invaluable, On the Eucharist, against the papists, which was published in 1598. This book produced the famous conference between Du Plessis Mornay and Cardinal Perron, at Fontainebleau in the year 1600. The victory at this conference is by the papists ascribed to Perron but the protestants, with more justice affirm, that Du Plessis was victor at Fontainebleau. Jacques Davy du Perron, bishop of Evreux, published at the time, a book on this conference, in which he gives a pretended true account of it, and illustrates and defends his cause: but to this the great Mornay replied, and made a poor devil of Perron. See those pieces, reader, and you will be finely entertained; for, Perron, though a papist, was a great man. Du Plessis died at his barony La Foret in Poictou, Nov. 13, 1623, aged 74; having retired to his country seat after Louis XIII. had taken from him the government of Saumur.
Cardinal Du Perron, born Nov. 25, 1556, was trained up in the reformed religion with great care; but went off to popery, on the preferments offered him by Henry III. As, on the contrary, Du Plessis Mornay had been educated a papist, but became a protestant, to the loss of the greatest preferments.—It was Du Perron that converted to popery the famous Henry Sponde, bishop of Pamiers, and abridger of the Annals of Baronius, dedicated to Perron; and, in conjunction with Cardinal D'Ossat, he made a papist of Henry the Fourth of France. It was owing to the management of this Cardinal de St. Agnes, in the conclave, and to D'Ossat, that that wicked fellow, Paul V.* was created pope, and Cardinal Baronius lost the popedom. Bellarmine, however who was likewise one of the fifty-nine cardinals in that conclave, might have had it, but he refused it. Those things we find in the Lettres de Guy Patin, Vol. I. in Godeau Melanges Critiques, apud Antillon, and in the Histoire des Conclaves. Cardinal Du Perron, died at Paris, in 1618, aged 63.
(*So Marbais, a doctor of divinity, who knew this pope well, assures us, vid. Requeste a l'Empereur, Leyden, 1613 p. 223.)
Leo XI. who reigned but twenty-five days, died in the fifty-third year of his age, in 1605; was succeeded by Paul Borghese, alias Paul V., who died 28th of Jan. 1621; aged 68; having for his successor Ludovisio, called Gregory XV.
D'Ossat was born Aug. 23, 1536. His five volumes of Letters are a masterpiece in politics, and next to Father Paul's History of the Council of Trent, are the best books you can look into, reader, for an exact and full description of the artifices of the Court of Rome. Remarkable was the saying of this Cardinal, when Henry IV. of France was stabbed; "If there was the least pretext for such assassinations, they ought to be contrived and executed by the heretics, whom the king separated from and abandoned, and thereby gave them reason to be afraid of him; but they never made the least attempt of this kind, neither against him, nor the five kings his predecessors, though their majesties made the most cruel butcheries of the Huguenots." D'Ossat died at Rome: March 13, 1604, in the sixty-seventh year of his age.
Baronius was born Oct. 30, 1538. His Ecclesiastical Annals, in twelve volumes, folio, containing the history of the church for twelve centuries, ending at the year 1198, have been well called the twelve labours of the Roman Hercules. It is a prodigious work. The reading, the erudition, the judgment; the order, and method of the author are amazing; but an unhappy prejudice for papal rights, and Romish pieties, attaches him continually to the Roman cause, without the least regard to truth, and makes it plain, that he was not as he affirms, assisted from above in this work. The most judicious of the Roman Catholic writers say, "Il seroit a souhaiter eut ete exempt des preventions que son education et son pais lui avoient inspirees."["It would be desirable for him to have been exempt from the prejudices which his education and his country had instilled in him".] Baronius in writing his Annals ascribes the guidance and success of his pen, to the favour of the most holy Mary, the mother of God. "To her, from whom I acknowledge the whole to be received, I offer these Annals, &c. To her by whom the whole of this gift comes to us from God, to the most holy Virgin, the most safe ark in which our labours may be kept, and in safe custody protected, we offer these Annals, that she may sanctify them with her blessing. For the entireness of his net, after his having cast it so often, and the continuance of his strength fresh and green in his old age; all was from the grace of Abishag, their Shunamite, cherishing his aged bones; the most holy and pure virgin favouring the work begun, and taking care of, and happily promoting all his affairs." What must a true Christian say to thisé
Many are the abridgements of the Annals; but the best is that of Henry Sponde, the apostate, aforementioned. Baronius died Jan. 30, 1601, aged 68.
After all, the Centuries of Magdeburg, which were published in 1559 and 1560, are the most valuable body of ecclesiastical history. Baronius, who pretended to answer them by his Annals, is undoubtedly the finest writer; but the ministers, Matthias Flaccius, Jean Vigand, Matthew le Judin, Basil Faber, Nicholas Gallus, and Andrew Corvin, are the learned men to whom we are indebted for the noblest collection of historical truths in ecclesiastical affairs, that ever appeared in the world. They are honest writers indeed. Every page of their work discovers a zeal for truth, and the glory of Christ; while Baronius sadly labours for a pontifex maximus,["Supeme Pontiff"] and the cheats of Rome. The work of the centuriators extends to the thirteenth century, and every century contains sixteen chapters: the first is a summary of the things to be recited; then the second treats of the place and extent of the church; the third, of persecution and peace; the fourth, of doctrine; the fifth of heresies; the sixth, of ceremonies and rites; the seventh, of polity and government; the eighth, of schism; the ninth, of synods; the tenth, of bishops; the eleventh, of heretics; the twelfth, of martyrs; the thirteenth, of miracles; the fourteenth, of the Jews; the fifteenth, of religions separated from the church; and the sixteenth, of broils and political changes. In this clear and distinct manner are the things of every age treated.
Bellarmine, born the 4th of October, 1542, was a man of great learning in the works of the fathers, councils, canon-law, and church history, and wrote several laboured things; but his chief performance is his body of Controversy, in four volumes folio; which the Catholics think very fine: They show, indeed, great reading; but, ignorance of the sense of scripture, and are quite void of argument. There is not one article of popery tolerably well defended in the four volumes. Every exposition and vindication is senseless and ridiculous. He died Sept. 17th, 1621, aged 79.
Isaac Casaubon, who wrote the Exercitations on Baronius; was born Feb. 18, 1559, died in 1614, in the 55th year of his age, and was interred in Westminster Abbey.
Besides his Exercitations, he published several learned works, and animadversions and commentaries on Persius, Polybius, Athenæus, Strabo, Suetonius, and Diogenes Lærtius. It was he, having purchased the MS. at a great price, first published in Greek, Polyænus's Stratagems of the Ancients in War, in the year 1589; but the Latin Version added to it, was done by Justus Vulteius: and we have since had a more correct edition of Polyænus, by Pancratius, in the year 1690. The Epistolæ Causauboni are likewise valuable things; but of most merit are his Exercitations, and his Persius. His Commentary on Persius is admirable, not only for a just explication of his incomparable author, but for much fine classical learning which he has scattered through it; and for his Exercitations against Baronius, the friend of truth must be for ever charmed with them. It is to be lamented that we have but sixteen of them. They go no farther than to the thirty-fourth year of Jesus Christ, and relate principally to Baronius's bad explication of scripture.
Two Jesuits, Boullenger and Jean L'Heureux, wrote against the Exercitations; but the defence of Baronius by Endemen Jean, the name L'Heureux went by, is very weak, as you will soon see, reader, on turning him over. And as to Julius Cæsar Boullenger, the other monk, when you have read his Dissertation against Casaubon, and Bishop Montague's Animadversions on that dissertation, you will perceive he was a poor creature.
It is remarkable, that Isaac Casaubon's two sons Henry and Merle, both went off to popery, and died in France, apostate priests in the Romish church; though their father had fled from that country for the sake of the protestant religion, and was one of the best defenders of the reformed faith. He was one of the judges at the famous conference between Du Plessis and Perron: and, by the way, I think it equally remarkable, that the grandson of the great primate Usher, and the only remaining person of the archbishop's family, should be the most violent papist I ever saw. I knew the man in Dublin, and never heard so outrageous a Catholic as he was. He said, to my astonishment, that "his grandfather was a great light, but burn'd with his head downwards in this world, till he drop'd into hell in the next."
As to the conference between Du Plessis and Perron, about the Eucharist and other matters, besides the two pieces I have mentioned, to wit, Perron's acconnt of it, and Mornay's answer to the account, you will find a good relation of it in the Histoire de l'Edit de Nantes, tom. 1. p. 343, et suivante; and see further on this article Sully's Memoirs.
The ingenious and excellent Miss Mornay, of Shelford-Park, is descended from the great Phillip Mornay Du Plessis, and the last of the house of Du Plessis now [1756] living. Her grandfather, Jacques de Mornay, was great grandson to Du Plessis Mornay, and came over to England on the revocation of the edict of Nantes, in the year 1685, when Louis XIV, with the same hand that signed the revocation of the edict of Nantes, granted to the reformed by Henry IV., in 1598, in the ninth year of his reign; likewise signed an order for eighty thousand merciless dragoons and other troops, to march against his protestant subjects, and force them by plundering and torturing, to turn papists.
I say with the same hand, because the twelfth article of the edict signed by this cruel and perfidious prince, in the forty-third year of his reign, is as follows: "And furthermore, Those of the said pretended reformed religion, till such time as it shall please God to illuminate them, may abide in the towns, and places of our kingdom, countries and lands of our dominion, and continue their traffic, and enjoy their goods, without being molested or hindered, on account of the said pretended reformed religion, provided they do not assemble to exercise it, &c." This was a monstrous cheat and highly perfidious to deceive and ensnare his poor subjects. Something might be said for the edict of revocation, if Lewis had declared, that to quell the agitations of his conscience, be must revoke the edict of Nantes, though he had sworn to the observation of it; and that he allowed a certain time to his protestant subjects, after which they must either turn catholics, or quit the kingdom, with their families and effects, or else they should be exposed to such and such treatment. This had been plain and honest dealing, though an arbitrary proceeding: but to give it under his hand to his subjects, that they "might stay and continue their traffic, enjoy their goods without being molested, or hindered on account of their religion," and at the same time leave them to the mercy of the dragoons; Was not this an heinous act— "Had he been guilty of this single one only," says Laval, in the sixth volume of his excellent History of the Reformation in France, "it would have imprinted such a spot on his reputation, that all the waters of the Seine were not sufficient to wash it away."
87. Theodore Agrippa D'Aubigne, the favourite of Henry IV., was born in the year 1550, and died 1631, aged 80. He wrote several curious things; but his great and principal work is his Universal History, containing the transactions from 1550 to 1601, in three folio volumes. This is a very extraordinary history, and contains many curious relations that are nowhere else to be found. He was obliged to leave France on account of this history, and died at Geneva. His two satires, called La Confession de Saucy and Les Aventures du Baron de Fæneste, are fine things. Du Chat's edition of the latter, which is really a very curious thing, is well worth reading. The best edition is that printed at Cologne, in 1729, in two small volumes 12mo.
[The life of this extraordinary man, was written with much elegance and perspicuity, by Mrs. Sarah Scott, and printed in 1772, in one volume, 8vo. Ed.]
87. Joseph Scaliger, born Aug. 4, 1544, died in the 65th year of his age, at Leyden, Jan. 21, 1609. His father, Julius Cæsar Scaliger, died in the 75th year of his age, October 21, 1558.
The father was a papist, the son a protestant; were both great men in the republic of letters, and both wrote many books, but the son was by far the greatest man.
What I like best of the father's works, are his Poetics, His Account of the Latin Tongue, and his Exercitations against Cardan. These are fine pieces. His Problems on Aulus Gellius are also excellent.
In the works of Joseph the son, one meets with so various and fine an erudition, and so much valuable criticism, that if the reader of fortune will take my advice, he will get them all into his closet as soon as possible; and at the same time, the four excellent pieces I have mentioned of Julius Cæsar Scaliger, the father of Joseph.
The great Louis Cappel, author of the Assertion of the True Faith, was a protestant minister at Saumur. He was born October 14, 1583, and died at Saumur, the 16th of June, 1658, aged 75. He was likewise the author of that excellent book called, Arcanum Punctuationis Revelatum; and of another very valuable work, entitled Critica Sacra. His son, Jean Cappel, turned papist, and died a despicable apostate in the Romish church.
There were two other Cappels, protestant ministers; both Jacques, one who died in 1585, the other in 1614, who were both authors of several controversial pieces against popery. They were however weak writers, when compared with the learned Louis Cappel.
88. In Penpark-hole you are let down by ropes fixed at the top of the pit, four fathom perpendicular, and then descend three fathom more, in an oblique way, between two rocks, which brings you in a perpendicular tunnel, thirty-nine yards down, into which you descend by ropes, and land in a spacious chamber, that is seventy-five yards in length, forty one in breadth, and nineteen yards high, from the margin of a great water, at the north end of it, to the roof. This water is twenty-seven yards in length, twelve in breadth, and generally sixteen deep. It is sweet, bright, and good drink. It rises sometimes several feet, and at other times sinks two feet below its usual depth. The torches always burn clear in this chamber, nor is the air in the least offensive, though fifty-nine yards from the surface of the earth, and separated from the day by such deep tunnels, and an oblique descent between them. The great tunnel is about three yards wide, and in the south side of it thirty yards down, nine yards before you come to the opening of the chamber, or cavity below, is a passage thirty-two yards in length, three and a half high, and three yards broad. It is the habitation of bats, and towards the end of it, a sloping hole goes to some other place. This passage, and the tunnels, and the chamber below, are all irregular work.
Penpark-hole has long been an object of curiosity, and induced many to leave "the roddie lemes of daie," ["The bright lights of day"—a quotation from aelig;lla, by Thomas Chatterton (TN)] to explore its terrific and gloomy subterranean caverns. The descent of Captain Sturmy in 1669, and of Captain Collins in September 1682, are on record; but few later visitors of such scenes, so dismal and dreary as are rarely to be paralleled and, of which the most fervid imagination can form at best an inefficient and faint idea, have published any descriptive account. Mr. George Symes Catcott, who more than once gratified his curiosity in attempting further discoveries in those 'regions of horror and doleful shades;' on a visit to this place on Easter Monday, April 17, though the year is not mentioned, describes the chamber noticed in the preceding note as about ninety feet long, and fifty-two broad, with a hard rocky vaulted roof, about thirty feet above the water; but when the water is at the lowest, it is supposed to be at least about ninety feet, so that even with the assistance of torches the summit cannot be distinctly seen. The roof appears to be of nearly an equal height in every part; and very much resembles the ceiling of a Gothic cathedral. This place is rendered awful by the great reverberation which attends the voice when speaking loud, and still more so by the pendant rocks which sometimes break in very large pieces from overhead and the sides, riveting forcibly on the mind the most horrific tremor and dreadful apprehensions of personal danger. The water, agreeably to the preceding description, is stated by Mr. Catcott, to be in many places seven or eight fathoms deep, but "in August 1762, it was found not more than one fathom." In conclusion of the notice of this dreadful chasm, the melancholy circumstance of the poor traveller being thrown headlong by the villains who had robbed him, into Eldine-hole, near Derby, may recur to the reader, when he is told that on the 17th of March, 1775, the Rev. Mr. Newnam, fell by accident into this tremendous cavern, and was no more seen. Public curiosity was excited, and for some weeks a vast concourse of persons were brought together daily, to visit this ill-boding and gloomy spot. Some few persons summoned sufficient fortitude to descend into and explore the yawning gulf, and the result of these inquiries were communicated by Mr. Mr. Catcott, to an excellent, but long since discontinued work, the Literary Magazine, March 1793, pp. 206-9. Ed.
89. Pool's Hole, about a mile west of Buxton Wells in Derbyshire, is in the whole length from the entrance to the farthest ascent, but two hundred and thirty yards. The account of this in Camden's Britannia is very imperfect, and next to nothing: and what the authors of the Tour through Great-Britain say of it, even in their fifth edition, in the year 1753, only shows to one who has been there, and carefully examined it, that neither Daniel Defoe, nor those since concerned in improving and correcting the four volumes of the Tour, ever were in the inside of Pool's Hole. Their description of this, like a thousand other places in those volumes, is mere imagination, with some things from Cotton's false account; and the fancy not only wrong, but very bad. I would describe it here, but that the reader will find me in Derbyshire before I take my leave of him, if death does not prevent, and I shall then give a full and true history of this high and rough country; its waters, curiosities, and antiquities. At present, I shall only observe, to abate the wonder of my passing from the bottom of the inside of one of the Richmond mountains to the plain on the top of it, that the hill in which is Pool's Hole is open within side, in the ascent, so far, that five yards more of aperture would bring one to the outside of the top: and I believe it is very possible for art to make an entrance that way, as nature has done at the bottom.
90. Little did I think when I talked in such a manner to Miss HARCOURT against the famous symbol, that I should ever find in the book of a most learned man and excellent divine, the same kind of arguments seriously produced in favour of the Creed of St. Athanasius; yet this strange thing has time brought on, and thereby convinced the world, that the greatest learning and the most exalted piety, employed in the cause of mystery, can become so extravagant and erring as to maintain that a thing incomprehensible to human reason can be revealed, and that the more incomprehensible it is to human reason, and the more senseless it appears to human understanding, the more glorious is the object of faith, and the more worthy to be believed by a Christian. This deplorable argument for the truth of Christianity I met with in a book lately published by an admirable man, Dr. Joseph Smith, provost of Queen's College, Oxon. In his third section of A Clear and Comprehensive View of the Being, Nature, and Attributes of God, from p. 61. to p. 68, the reader may see this plea for darkness, confusion, and implicit faith.
91. The texts produced by Miss HARCOURT, the next day, in a sheet of paper, she gave me, and in my written explication of them in answer, I satisfied her, that the letter of scripture was not full in favour of contradiction, and that where it had any appearance of being so, reason allowed the purest modesty to use some freedom in interpreting, and take the texts in a lower meaning, such a liberty as Protestants take with the words 'this is my body,' when they reject the doctrine of transubstantiation. By this means I made a convert of her. This lady became a strict Christian-Deist.
92. Ordonnance: The composition of a picture. (TN)
93. Elle n'inspire pas une simple veneration, elle imprime une terreur respectueuse: "It does not simply inspire veneration, it impresses on us a feeling of respectful fear." A quotation from Critical Reflections on Poetry and Painting by Jean-Baptiste Dubos, 1731. (TN)
94. As the first notion of God's glory, in the scripture, is a physical notion, and signifies the manifestation of God, by fire, light, clouds, brightness, and other meteorous symbols, such as the marching pillars of fire and cloud that went before the Isrælites, and the shechinah in the Holy of Holies, which the Jews called the visible presence; so is there a glory of God in a moral signification. There is a shechinah in a physical sense by fire, light, and refracted colours: and there is a moral shechinah, or glory, when men live in obedience to all the divine laws, and walk as children of light. This shows the special presence of God in the righteous, as much as the cloud of glory did manifest him in the temple. The power and wisdom and goodness of God are displayed in the holy lives of men. Like the heavens they declare his glory, and are the visible epistle of Christ to the world, written not with ink, but with the spirit of the Living God. 'Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and that his Spirit dwelleth in youé' (A quotation from 1 Cor. 3:16 — TN)
95. Lepid: Charming and amusing. (TN)
96. Connoisance: The knowledge of a connoisseur. (TN)
97. Ombre: A card game for three players, resembling solo whist. (TN)
98. When the tribes went off from Noah in Peleg's days, in the a era of the deluge 240, that is, so many years after the flood, we must in reason suppose, that they had from the venerable patriarch, a final and farewell relation of the creation, and the state of innocency, and the fall; the institution of worship; and the hope of acceptance, and the promised seed. We may believe they had, at going off, a distinct repetition of all the capital articles of their faith. They received a clear review of the facts and revelations which Adam and Noah had the knowledge of, and in a compend of every doctrine and duty, speculative and practical, especially the doctrine of the being of a God, his unity and perfections, had a sufficient fund of useful knowledge to set up with, in the new world. This is natural behaviour in all good parents, and we may conclude, that the pious patriarch acted in this manner, when he sent his relations away. But this oral tradition was liable to a gradual declension, and sunk at last into a state of evanescence. Doctrines deduced from facts long since past, and known by tradition only, become precarious. The tradition is rendered obscure and dubious. It might remain nearly perfect, while Peleg, Reu, Serug, Nahor, and Terah lived, as they had their informations from Noah, and were thoroughly advised to make God the object of their supreme love and fear, and trust and worship; and to practise all virtue and righteousness towards each other, as the great instruments and means of a general happiness. With an earnest tenderness, these things were recommended to them. But as the people who came after them never saw Noah, and their information depended on relators, who had it from relators, a dimness prevailed upon the ancient facts, and distance and other objects overshadowed them. A deprivation of tradition might likewise arise from relators forgetting material circumstances, and from a misapprehension of ancient facts. There might likewise be many that designedly corrupted these facts, and out of a dislike to truth, and a distaste to virtue, did their best to weaken the principles of religion. Ingenious bad men there were among mankind then as well as in our time, and as there was no written system and history to go by, they might give the ancient story a turn more favourable to sinners. By this means, contradiction and obscurity came on, endless fables were introduced, and truth was disguised, corrupted and lost.
In respect however of an infinite mind, the author of the universe, it must he confessed that those men could not have lost a right notion of him, if they had been faithful to themselves; for the works of, nature still remained in all their wondrous beauty, and useful order, and furnished daily evidence, that neither chance, nor undesigning necessity, could produce, the beautiful and harmonious, the regular and convenient, the amiable and good; which their eyes beheld whatever way they turned. Not only the heavens, the air, the earth, the sea, demonstrated the wisdom and goodness of God; but every beast, every fowl, every fish they could take, every plant and tree, showed an exact proportion of parts, and discovered design in the whole of its constitution. Their own intelligence ought likewise to have led them to the great original it was formed by, an uncreated mind. There must be a divine understanding, or there never could be pure intellection in man. It is impossible to solve the phenomena of moral entities, without the being of God. If it were possible for atoms, rencont'ring in an infinite void, to produce by collision and undirected impulse, the corporeal systems, and the various beauteous forms which we see; yet the wild and senseless hypothesis could not be applied by atheism itself to the production of ideas entirely independent of matter, and all its properties and powers. We must have them from an intelligent cause. The human mind is so framed, that we may surely infer the cause of the constitution was intelligent. So that God did not in any age, leave himself without witness, or evidence, of his own being and perfection. We have full proof of creating, ruling intelligence. All the works of nature proclaim it, and especially the human soul.
But through negligence, and false notions of religion brought in by impious men, corrupt customs, and prejudices of education, we find that not only virtue was lost, soon after the dispersion, but even the notion of God. Idolatry and wickedness prevailed for the greatest part of the grand period of tradition, from the dispersion to the imparting the knowledge of letters by Moses. This shows the folly, vanity, and inconsistency of all tradition, and that for the support of virtue, and true religion in the world, a written word is necessary. In the early ages of the postdiluvian world, religious knowledge was decayed, and we can trace the origin and beginning of idolatry very high. Even in Serug's time, who had received a compend of religion from Noah, when he became infirm by years, and was no longer able to inspect the manners of his colony, and go about to take cognizance of their irregularities, we find the innovation had begun. We read in the books, that Terah, the father of Abraham was an idolater, in the 170th year of his age, which was the year that Serug died, and to be sure, that was not the first year of his false religion: and it is not to be supposed, that when he went forth, a worshipper of false gods, from Ur of the Chaldees, with Abraham, his son, and Lot, that the young people were safe from the infection. It prevailed before Abraham was warned to withdraw, and of consequence he was one of the ungodly, that is an idolater. To me it is plain St. Paul says so. They all served other gods. In all probability, that was beginning to be the case when Abraham was born, which was in the year after the flood 352; and as he was forty years old when his father marched him from Ur, we may think he was then a settled idolater; and if it had not been that the divine mercy called him by revelation to true religion, he and the whole world might have remained in their gross innovation, eternal strangers to the original truths. The free grace of the universal Father took him and his posterity into covenant, and used them as a mean to restore true piety and virtue to the world, till such time as he was pleased to show his astonishing mercy, and inestimable love in Christ Jesus. The Creator and Governor of Gentiles as well as Jews, in his infinite wisdom proceeded in this manner, first selecting one nation to be a beacon upon a hill, a public voucher of the being and providence of God; and in the fullness of time, blessing the human race with a gospel and Redeemer. Adored be his goodness then for the written word. This only can preserve the doctrine of religion free from corruption. The miserable papists may trust to their traditions, and wander where no covenant is to be found: but the religion of Protestants must be the Gospel of Christ. The written doctrine of the apostles let us receive. The unwritten word of Rome let us despise. There is no security in tradition. It is insufficient for the preservation of truth: and for that reason, God gave us the writings of inspired men.
99. Worthy to receive &c.: Revelations 4:11 (TN).
100. Set: To catch birds by using a dog called a setter (or pointer) to locate them hiding in undergrowth or long grass, and then throwing a net over them. (TN)
101. With regard to the Gods, &c.: Isocrates, Discourses 2. To Nicocles. The original is in Greek. I am indebted to Dr. Michael O'Kelly for the translation. (TN)
102. We are consimilated to the Deity: We become like unto God. (TN)
103. Hecatomb: The sacrifice of 100 animals. (TN)
104. Zechariah 9:9-10 reads: "Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion; shout, O daughter of Jerusalem: behold, thy King cometh unto thee: he is just, and having salvation; lowly, and riding upon an ass, and upon a colt the foal of an ass." John 12:14-15 reads "And Jesus, when he had found a young ass, sat thereon; as it is written, Fear not, daughter of Sion: behold, thy King cometh, sitting on an ass's colt." Matthew 21:1-5 reads "And when they drew nigh unto Jerusalem, and were come to Bethphage, unto the mount of Olives, then sent Jesus two disciples, Saying unto them, Go into the village over against you, and straightway ye shall find an ass tied, and a colt with her: loose them, and bring them unto me. And if any man say ought unto you, ye shall say, The Lord hath need of them; and straightway he will send them. All this was done, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophet, saying, Tell ye the daughter of Sion, Behold, thy King cometh unto thee, meek, and sitting upon an ass, and a colt the foal of an ass." (TN)
105. Erasmus, Grotius, Limborch, Baxter, and Dodwell, were great and excellent men, and their lives and writings highly merit consideration. Of the former it may justly be said, that he in vain lived and died in the Romish communion, and sustained many reflections from some zealous Protestants; he was not the less ill-treated both during his life, and after his death, by several Romish Catholic writers; for though taking all things together, Erasmus was what they called a Roman Catholic; yet his Colloquies show his hatred of the monks, and it was plain from his writings and behaviour, that he did not see without joy the first steps of Luther. Bayle says of Erasmus, that he was one of those witnesses for the truth, who were wishing for a reformation in the church, but who did not think it was to be procured by erecting another society to be supported by leagues, and that should pass immediately a verbis ad verbera, from words to blows, for speaking of his contemporary Luther, Erasmus says, "had all that he wrote been good, his seditious freedom would still have been disagreeable to me. I would rather submit to some errors than raise a civil war, and put the whole world in an uproar for the sake of truth." Jo. Manlius in Locorum Commmunium Collectaneis, printed at Frankfurt on the Maine, in 1568, in Svo., has this passage: "Erasmus Roterodamus moriturus sæpe ingeminavit hanc vocem, Domine, Domine fac finem, fac finem, sed quid voluerit dicere non possum" ["Erasmus of Rotterdam, when he was dying, often repeated 'Lord, Lord, make an end, make an end, for I cannot say what he will want."] Manlius was with Erasmus in his last hour.
Erasmus was born at Rotterdam, October 28, 1466, and died of a bloody flux at Basel, aged 70. July 12, 1536.
The following epitaph is on a marble stone in the cathedral at Basil, where he was buried.
CHRISTO SERVATORI. S.
DES. ERASMO ROTTERODAMO.
VIRO
OMNIBUS MODIS MAXIMO, CUJUS INCOMPA-
RABILEM IN OMNI DISCIPLINARUM GENERE
ERUDITIONEM PARI CONJUNCTAM PRUDEN-
TIA POSTERI ET ADMIRABUNTUR ET PRæDI-
CABUNT; BONIFACIUS AMERBACHIUS, HIER.
FROBENIUS, NIC. EPISCOPIUS, HæREDES ET
NUNCUPATI SUPREMæ SUæ VOLUNTATIS
VINDICES, PATRONO OPTIMO NON MEMORIAT
QUASI IMMORTALEM SIBI EDITIS LUCUBRA-
TIONIBUS COMPARAVIT, IIS TANTISPER DUM
ORBIS TERRARUM STABIT SUPERFUTURO
AC ERUDITIS UBIQUE GENTIUM COLLOQUU
TURO, SED CORPORIS MORTALIS QUO
RECONDITUM SIT ERGO HOC
SAXUM POSUERE.
MORTUUS EST IV. E I D. JUL.
JAM SEPTUAGENARIUS, ANN. A CHRISTO NATO
M.D. XXXVI.
Above this epitaph is the device and seal of Erasmus, to wit, TERMINUS, the god of bounds, and the words-
CONCEDO NULLI.
The inscription to his memory, at Rotterdam, is this:
DESIDERIO ERASMO
MAGNO SCIENTIARIUM ATQUE LI-
TERATURæ POLITIORIS VIN-
DICE ET INSTAURATORI
VIRO SUI SæCULI PRIMARIO
CIVI OMNIUM PRæSTANTISSIMO
AC NOMINIS IMMORTALITATEM
SCRIPTUS æVITERNIS JURE
CONSECUTO.
S. P. Q. ROTTERDAM.
NE QUOD TANTIS APUD SE SUOSQUE
POSTEROS VIRTUTIBUS PRæMIUM
DEESSET
STATUAM HANC EX æRE PUBLICO
ERIGENDAM CURAVERUNT.
BARBARIæ TALEM SE DEBELLATUR ERASMUS
MAXIMA LAUS BATAVI NOMINIS ORE TULIT
REDDIDIT EN! FATIS ARS OBLUCTATA SINISTRIS,
DE TANTO SPOLIUM NACTA QUOD URNA VIRO EST
INGENII COELESTE JUBAR MAJUSQUE CADUCO
TEMPORE QUI REDDAT SOLUS ERASMUS ERIT.
Froben published an edition in 1540, of all the works of Erasmus at Basel, in nine volumes, folio. The first, second, and fourth, contain his Philosophical, Rhetorical, and Grammatical Pieces, his Colloquies and Praise of Folly: the third, his Epistles, which are very fine, and many of them relate to the affairs of the church: the fifth, his Books of Piety: the sixth, his version of the New Testament, with notes: the seventh, his Paraphrases on the New Testament: the eighth, his Translations of some Greek Fathers: the ninth, which is the largest, his Apologies. His New Testament, Letters, and Colloquies, are the most valuable of his works. The preface to his Paraphrase on the Gospel of St. Matthew is an admirable thing. An English translation of it, with notes, and a good preliminary discourse addressed to Roman Catholics, was printed in 1749. Reader, though the edition of 1540, here mentioned is a good one, yet that of Le Clerc's printed at Leyden, in 1703, in eleven volumes, folio, is infinitely superior, and in better estimation.
Hugo Grotius, the son of Jean de Groot was born at Delft in Holland, the 10th of April, 1583, and died at Rostock in Mecklenburg, Sept. 8, 1645, aged 62. [In the former editions of this book, a condensed list of the writings of Grotius followed this note, which was derived from M. de Burigny's excellent Life of that great man, printed in 1752, and translated from the French into English in 1754. With much asperity if not ill-nature, Amory has accused M. de Burigny of being 'a bigotted papist,' and charges him with having 'in a sad and ridiculous manner strained some lines written by Grotius to prove that he died a member of the Church of Rome.' The Abbé Raynal, a judicious French writer, observes that "M. de Burigny, has introduced nothing but facts well supported, or theological discussions delivered, but with the greatest conciseness and accuracy," and that, the most valuable part of his work, is the just and concise idea which it gives of Grotius's several writings." The commendation given by the Abbé Raynal is wholly and absolutely just; should the reader, therefore, be desirous of becoming better acquainted with the Life and Writings of Grotius, he will find himself agreeably entertained by perusing the Life written by M. de Burigny, and printed in 1754, in 8vo. The list of the works of Grotius occupies pp.363-8, and though it has met with the maledictory censure of Amory, will questionless receive its due meed of praise from the reader. ED.]
The great and good Richard Baxter was a nonconformist divine, who suffered much by the severity of that cruel monster of a man, lord chief justice Jefferies, in a prosecution, in Easter Term, 1685, on account of some passages in his Paraphrase on the New Testament. He was confined in the King's Bench prison from the beginning of the year 1685, till Nov. 24, 1686; when, by the mediation of Lord Powis, he obtained a pardon from King James, and was released out of prison. The passages marked for censure, by Sir Roger L'Estrange; were his explications of Matt. ch. v. v. 19. Mark, ch. ix. v. 39; xi. 31; xii. 38, 39, 40. Luke, ch. x. v. 2. John, ch. xi. v. 57; and Acts, ch. xv. v. 2. Dr. South, is said to have likewise, put into his enemies' power, some annotations, from Romans, ch. xiii. The charge was, that his paraphrase on these places reflected on the prelates of the Church of England, and, consequently, that he was guilty of sedition; but equity at this day can find no such reflection or sedition in the passages so condemned.
Richard Baxter was born November 12, 1615, at Rowton in South Bradford. He was an author fifty-two years, and in that time wrote one hundred and forty-five distinct treatises, whereof four were folios, seventy-three quartos, forty-nine octavos, and nineteen in twelves and twenty-fours; besides single sheets, separate sermons, and prefaces to other men's writings. He began with Aphorisms of Justification, printed in 1649, in his thirty-fourth year; and ended with the Certainty of the World of Spirits, in 1691; on the 8th of December, in the same year he died at the advanced age of 76 years, at his house in Charter-house-Yard. The following books of his composing in English, are excellent: The Saint's Everlasting Rest; Call to the Unconverted; Dying Thoughts; Certainty of the World of Spirits; and his Paraphrase on the New Testament. His Latin pieces are De Catechisatione Domestica. Aphorismi de Justificatione et Foederibus. Apologio. Libellus Rationum pro Religione Christiana contra Gassendum et Habesium. Epistola de Generali Omnium Protestantium Unione adversus Papatum. Dissertatio de Baptismo Infantium. Directiones de Reformatione Ecclesia. De Religione Grotiana adversus Piercium. De Jure Sacramentorum. Gildas Salvianus, sive Pastor Reformatus. Catechismus Quackerianus. Clavis Catholicorum. De Regimine Ecclesic. De Universali Redemptione contra Catvinum et Bezam. De Rep. Sancta. Historia Conciliorum.
But few I am persuaded in those days of dissipation and pleasure, will sit down to read all or any of what Baxter. hath written. It may however, be conscientiously asked, What must become of us when high and low, rich and poor, fly from themselves, and laugh at everything serious; run into every extravagance and vanity, and wanton life away in dissipation and diversioné For shame, rationals, reflect. Consider what ye are. You are beings endued with reason, to the end that you may pursue the true happiness of rational nature, and by a truth and rectitude of life, unite yourselves to the supreme inexhaustible fountain of all intellectual and durable good. You are likewise accountable creatures, standing on the brink of death, resurrection, and judgment; and when this fleeting scene of vanity is over, moral impotence, or natural weakness, as they are now called, will not be accepted as a plea for the offender against nature and reason, for, let reason be heard, and spend some hours of your every day, in reading good books, and in the closet in prayer, with a resolution to do your best to live as you pray, and that power, which darkens the understanding, enslaves the will, and obstructs the operations of conscience, you may easily remove. You will despise every gratification against truth, and delight in being useful and pious here, that you may secure eternal happiness in some future world. Ponder then, rationals, in time. As you are placed here in a mutable condition, capable of bliss and misery; to be made confirmed blessed spirits above, when the time of probation is over, if you have kept the commandments of God; or, to live with Lucifer and the apostates for ever in darkness and woe, if you have not fought the good fight, and kept the faith; therefore, do all that piety and goodness can do in this life. Resolve by the advice of the gospel, and let nothing in nature be able to divert the execution, but a countermand from the same authority. I speak to the rich and gay, who nightly visit the resplendent and delusive scenes of vitiated life, among the higher orders; as well as to others who frequent the dances given at fairs and sixpenny hops as they are termed; where people of both sexes, of low and middling condition, assemble together, to their destruction in all respects. Here the ruin of many an honest tradesman's daughter commences; and from being men of pleasure at these places, idle young fellows come by degrees to the gallows. Their morals are here corrupted, their time is wasted, and money must be got some way or other, to answer the expenses. The women there, are for the most part loose characters, and the greatest part of the men, pickpockets and gamblers; nor do they keep themselves sober; for the last time I looked into one of their dancing rooms, to see how it was with my kind, one night, as I was walking home, I saw some of the men fuddled, fighting for the women; and several unhappy girls, so drunk, they could not stand. The whole was a sad scene.
But you, who are great, honourable, and rational, may be called on, I suppose, to stay every wandering or illicit thought, every inconsiderate word, and to bring every intended action before the supreme bar of righteous and impartial reason. You may, perhaps, remember what I beg leave to tell you, that you live under a threefold duty to God, to your neighbours, and to yourselves: and of consequence, that you must flee all those pleasures, and diversions, and alienation of mind, which usually obstruct the love of God, his fear, and honour; that you must have no immoderate desires, which may tempt you to violate the laws of justice and charity; and in the regimen of yourselves, that you must observe a strict moderation and temperance, and make your whole life an oblation, and submission to the will of God. This advice I humbly offer to those intelligent, immortal beings, who waste their precious hours in routs and spectacles, and in every species of plays and sports, frolic it all the long day.
Philip de Limborch, a remonstrant divine, and professor of Theology, was born June 19, 1633.He was a learned and excellent man, and hath written the following excellent books: Systeme Complet de la Theologie, which was translated into English, and printed in 8vo. Collatio Amica de Veritate Religionis Christianæ, cum Erudito Judæo. At the end of this, is an account of Uriel Acosta, a Portuguese deist, who had been a Jew, and Limborch's Defence of Christianity against Acosta's objections. This remarkable life and defence of revealed religion were translated into English in the year 1740. But the Collatio has not been published in English by any one: at least I never saw such a thing: and for this reason, I have begun a translation of it, and intend to finish it with many notes on the arguments of the two disputants; if death, or sickness, do not hinder. L'histoire de ce Terrible Tribunal l'Inquisition; that is The History of the Inquisition; was translated into English by Samuel Chandler [see below], a dissenting minister; who prefixed, in an introduction, a History of Persecution, that cannot be sufficiently praised, or enough admired. The History and introduction were published in 4to, in 1731, and the introduction was afterwards reprinted in 8vo. and again by Atmore, in 1813, 8vo. Commentarius in Acta Apostiolorum et in Epistolas ad Romanos et Hebræos, printed in folio. This is one of the most valuable books in Christian learning; strong and beautiful; just and rational. Let it stand next your bible in your study, and when you sit down to the Acts of the Apostles, and the Epistles to the Romans and Hebrews, let Limborch's Commentary be open before you, and you will be improved and charmed.
Let me likewise advise you, reader, to open, at the same time, Dr. Sykes on the Hebrews; a glorious performance; and his most excellent book on Redemption: these two have been published very lately. By the way, Dr. Sykes's Essay upon the Truth of the Christian Religion, is one of the best, if not the best, of all the good things that have been published for revelation; and his Connexion and Discourse on the Miracles, are admirable.
See likewise his Essay on Sacrifices, his True Foundations of Natural and Revealed Religion, his Two Defences of Clarke's Exposition of the Catechism, his Phlegon, his Two Previous Questions, and Defence of the Two Questions of Dr. Middleton against Dr. Chapman, Dr. Church, and Mr. Dodwell. These, and all his pieces, are delightful, useful learning. They illustrate revelation, and give a just and charming account of the Christian religion.
Limborch wrote some other small things, as Letters, Prefaces, and Essays. Among the former those addressed by him to Locke are excellent; that on Liberty or Power, was too much even for that distinguished and profound philosopher. But his most celebrated Letter to Locke, in which Limborch gave the history of his arguments, used in bringing back an ingenious lady to Christianity, who had been converted to Judaism, has not been published. It has been seen by several, but is now probably irretrievably lost.
In 1675, Limborch published the valuable works of his master Etienne de Courcelles, an Arminian divine. Courcelles, born in 1586, succeeded Simon Episcopius, who died April 4, 1643; as pastor to the Church of the Remonstrants in Holland, but Courcelles dying May 29, 1659, was followed by Arnold Poelemberg, who was succeeded on his death in 1667, by Limborch; who in 1603, published the Sermons of Episcopius, in a large folio, to which he not only prefixed a preface, but an admirable Life of Episcopius, which was published separately, in 8vo. Arnoldus Poelemberg, the writer of the Life of Courcelles, prefixed to his works, in 1675, was a learned and pious man. His Dissertatio Epistolaris contra Hoornbeekium, and his Examen Thesium Spanhemii, are fine things. His preface to the second volume of Episcopius's Theological Works, is excellent; and in a valuable book called Epistolæ Præstantium Virorum, you will find many letters by Poelemburgh, that are extremely beautiful, in respect of the charms of his style, and his judicious manner of treating his subjects.
The best thing of Courcelles is his Quaternio Dissertationum Theologicarum, in which he treats, as an able, rational divine, of the Trinity, Original Sin, the Knowledge of Jesus Christ, and Justification. The next in value to this, are his Institutiones Religionis Christianæ; Diatribe de Jesu Sanguinis; Vindicice contra Amyraldum; and Avis d'un Personage Desinteressæ; in which he acted the Mediator between the Calvinists and Arminians; but without success. It is a vain attempt to unite parties. Every party is a church, and infallible in its own conceit. Happy they that are of no party, but devoted to Jesus Christ only, and his plain gospel; doing their best to be pure and good, even as the Lord Jesus Christ was pure and good, and worshiping God the Father Almighty, in the name of Jesus, as his disciples, without speculating, inventing, or perplexing ourselves with imaginations. This was our Lord's direction. When you pray, say, Our Father, whatever ye ask in my name, without holiness no man shall see the Lord. Here it is, gentlemen of the laity, as the doctors call us, and will have us to be an inferior tribe to them. Adhere to these few, plain things, and you will be for ever happy, though the church damns you by bell, book, and candle-light.
The learned and pious Henry Dodwell, who was some time fellow of Trinity-College, Dublin; and Camden Professor of History in Oxford, till he was ejected for refusing to take the oaths to King William; was born at Dublin, in October 1641. His works are the following: Prolegomena ad Tractatum Joannis Stearnii de Constantia in Rebus Adversis. Two Letters of Advice on going into Holy Orders, and Theological Studies, with a Tract concerning Sanchuniatho. Considerations of Present Concernment, how far the Romanists may be Trusted by Princes of another Persuasion. An Account of the Fundamental Principle of Popery, and an Answer to six queries proposed to a Lady by a Romish Priest. Separation of Churches from Episcopal Government Schismatical, and a Defence of it. Dissertations on St. Cyprian. A Dissertation on a passage of Lactantius. A Treatise of the Priesthood of Laics. Additional Discourses to the Posthumous works of Dr. Pearson, published by Dodwell. Dissertations on Irenæus. A Vindication of the Deprived Bishops, Sancroft, Lloyd, Turner, Ken, Frampton, White; to whom succeeded Tillotson, Moore, Patrick, Kidder, Fowler, Cumberland; and a Defence of the Vindication. Four Camdenian Lectures, called Prælectiones Academica. The Annals of Velleius Paterculus, 8vo. An Account of the Lesser Geographers. The Lawfulness of Church Music. An Account of the Greek and Roman Cycle. A Letter against Toland, relative to the Canon of the New Testament. The Annals of Thucydides and Zenophon: and an Apology for the Philosophical Works of Cicero. A Letter on the Soul to Mr. Layton, and a Letter to Dr. Tillotson on Schism. Two Dissertations on the Age of Phalaris and Pythagoras. An Admonition to Foreigners concerning Schism. An Epistolary Discourse to prove the Soul a Principle naturally Mortal, but Immortalized by its Union with the Divine Baptismal Spirit; that the Bishops only can give this Immortalizing Spirit; and that Sacerdotal Absolution is Necessary for the Remission of Sins. Three Treatises in Defence of the Epistolary Discourse.
These are the works of the learned Dodwell. Some are very valuable, many of them good for nothing; and all of them written with great perplexity; without any beauty of style, or any order. Dodwell's learning was very great, but beside the singularity of his notions, which he affected, his learning lay like a lump of puzzled silk in his head, and he could draw few useful threads. Dodwell in the fifty-second year of his age, married a very young girl, the daughter of a gentleman, in whose house he boarded in the country; having been her preceptor for five years; from a regard to her fine understanding, and by her had ten children. Two sons and four daughters survived him; one of the sons is the present [1756] rector of Shottesbrook, well known by the title of ORTHODOX DODWELL, on account of his writings for the fathers against Dr. Middleton; and to distinguish him from the author of a bad book, finely written [by Tindal], called, Christianity not Founded on Argument.
Dodwell, the elder, died at Shottesbrooke, June 7, 1711; aged 70.
[Note] Samuel Chandler: This gentleman is still living, [1756,] and greatly to be honoured, on account of several other excellent writings, in defence of true piety, and the gospel of Christ. His Vindication of the History of the Old Testament against Dr. Morgan. His Discourse of the Nature and Use of Miracles; and his Answer to Anthony Collins' Grounds and Reasons of the Christian Religion, his Re-examination of the Witnesses of the Resurrection, his Commentary on Joel, his two sermons called The Notes of the Church, in the second volume of the Salter's Hall Sermons against Popery, his Sermon on Superstition, and two funeral sermons; one on the death of Dr. Hadfield, 'For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of Clod is eternal life, through Jesus Christ our Lord.' Romans, ch. vi. v. 23. The other on the death of Mr. Smyth. 'Who shall change our vile body, that it may be fashioned like unto his glorious body, according to the working whereby he is able to subdue all things to himself.' Phil. ch. vi. v. 23. are all fine pieces, well written, with a sense and spirit, that renders all Mr. Chandler's performances very valuable; and therefore, they highly merit the attentive reading of every gentleman. Some other things written by this minister I mentioned in my Memoirs of Several Ladies of Great Britain, 1755, 8vo. p. 73, to which the reader is referred.
Reader, on The Resurrection of Jesus, first read bishop Sherlock's Trial of the Witnesses, and Tipping's Defence of the Trial: then take up Mr. Chandler's piece; and when you have seriously read it, see what Dr. Pearce, bishop of Rochester, says on this subject in the first part of his Four Discourses on the Miracles; add to them Grove's Sermons on the Resurrection; and I imagine, these fine little pieces will give you satisfaction: if a doubt should still remain, open Mr. West's fine book on the Article, and I think you will be easy as to this point. Reduce the strength of what they all say to a few written arguments, and keep them for use.
106. Let me recommend to you, reader, two large volumes written in an epistolary form; the first, is Sentimens de Quelques Theologiens d'Hollande sur l'Histoire Critique du Vieux Testament, et de Nouveau Testament, par P. R. Simon, and the second Defense des Sentimens contre Bolville. These are fine books: my reason for mentioning them, is, that the eleventh and twelfth letters in the former, are on the Inspiration of the Sacred Writers; and the tenth and eleventh letters in the Defence, &c. are a continuation of the subject in a very extraordinary manner, i.e. by giving a solid demonstration of the truth of our religion, without interesting it in this controversy, by clearly proving, that the Christian religion is true, though the apostles had not been continually inspired. Le Clerc, was the author of these works; and the letters here spoken of were translated into English, and printed in 1690, in duodecimo. Some account of Le Clerk and his writings, will be found in the Memoirs of Several Ladies of Great Britain, pp. 356-358.
The famous Father Richard Simon, who wrote the Critical History of the Old Testament, was born at Dieppe, 13th of May 1638, became a priest of the Oratory, and was the author of many learned works, which a general reader should be no stranger to. His Lettres Choisies, his Bibliotheque Critique, and his Nouvelle Bibliotheque Choisie, in which there is much curious learning, mixed with a no less portion of prejudice, are still worthy of commendation. Simon was a great man, and bad as the Histoire Critique, is in respect of design, it is a learned work, and of great use to those, who have heads fit to use it. Simon died at Dieppe, April 7, 1712. Herman Witsius, who defended Simon in his Miscellanea Sacra, by abusing Le Clerc, was a Doctor in Divinity and Professor of the faculty at Franeker, and beside the Miscellanea Sacra, published some other works, entitled, Oeconomia Foederum, &c., Exercitationes Sacræ in Orationem Dominicum; and ægyptiaca. If like me, reader, you have nothing else to do but read, I advise you to read them as curious things; there is learning, though not much good in them. See M. Mark's Funeral Oration on Witsius. Simon's Elogæ you will find in the Journal Litter. tom 3. p. 225. And if you have a critical head I recommend to you Father Simon's Dissertation Critique against Du Pin's Nouvelle Bibliotheque des Auteurs Ecclesiastiques: it is an arch piece of criticism, though it does not hurt Du Pin's Bibliotheque.
The learned and excellent Louis Ellies Du Pin, author of the valuable Bibliotheque Ecclesiastique, was born June 17, 1657, and died at Paris, June 16, 1719, aged 62. He wrote many other excellent works: but the Bibliotheque Nouvelle des Autears Ecclesiastique. from Jesus Christ to the year 1710, printed in thirty-five volumes in 8vo, was the principal labour of his life. The best edition in English of this fine work, is that printed by Grierson, at Dublin in folio.
The other works of Du Pin are Dissertation Preliminaire ou Prolegomenes sur la Bible, in three volumes, 8vo. De Antiqua Ecclesiæ Disciplina, in seven Dissertations. De la Puissance Ecclesiastigue et Temporelle. La Doctrine Chretienne et Orthodoxe. Notes on the Pentateuch. Les Pseaumes en Latin, et des Notes, in 8vo. Version Francois des Pseaumes, avec des Notes. A Defence of his Notes on the Psalms.
He edited in folio, the Works of Optatus Aser, a Numidian bishop, who was living anno 368; to this edition, he prefixed an History of the Donatists, and the Sacred Geography of Africa. He also superintended the edition of Gerson's works in five volumes folio; to which he joined a work of his own, called Gersoniana; containing the Life of Gerson, the History of his Times, and the doctrines and Lives of Contemporary Authors. Critique sur l'Histoire d'Apollonius de Tyanne. Une Lettre sur l'Ancienne Discipline touchant la Messe. Un Traite de l'Excommunication. Une Histoire de l'Eglise en Abregé. Une Histoire Profane depuis les Temps les Plus Reculez jusqu'a Present. Une Analyse de l'Apocalypse, avec des Dissertations sur Diferentes Matieres Curieuses. Une Histoire du xvii Siecle. Un Traite de l'Amour de Dieu; and Bibliotheque des Historiens Profanes. Of this last work, he did not publish more than two volumes, which have been translated into English: and so far as he went are so well done, that it is to be lamented, that he did not finish his noble design. As to his edition of Basnage's Histoire des Juifs, without mentioning the name of Basnage, and his making many alterations in it contrary to its author's mind, it brought on him a severe castigation from Basnage; as I mentioned in my account of the writings of that writer, in my Memoirs of Several Ladies of Great-Britain, p. 350; where I referred the reader to a fine piece, called the Histoire des Juifs reclaime.
Note: next to the Bibliotheque des Auteurs Ecclesiastiques, the best books of Du Pin are, his Seven Dissertations de Antiqua Disciplina Ecclesiæ: in Latin, in one volume, 4to, and his Puissance Ecclesiastique et Temporelle; in one volume, 8vo. In these volumes, he works the Pope in a fine manner, as to supremacy and infallibility.
107. Long since my conversation with Mr. BERRISFORT, I have seen an excellent book, written by the learned minister of Maybole, in which he labours, through several 4to. pages, from p. 213, to reconcile Mark and Matthew, by virtue of a second visit to the monument by Mary Magdalene, when the Lord appeared first to her; and a second visit to the sepulchre by the other women, when Jesus appeared next to those women; and in my opinion; he, has proved it, beyond a possibility of rational reply. See Macknight's Harmony. Le Clerc, in his Harmony, does likewise evince the thing clearly to conviction.
108. Lections: Ways of reading a passage. (TN)
109. For further Satisfaction on this Article, and to be convinced that the books of the New Testament, as we now have them, are the word of God, see, reader, Blackwell on The Sacred Classics, and Jones's Method of Settling the Canonical Authority of the Testament. By the way, if Jacob Ilive, who stood in the pillory, the 30th of June, 1756, for writing and publishing a thing called Modest Remarks on (Dr. Sherlock) the bishop of London's Sermons in a letter to his lordship, had read with attention the books I have mentioned, and Dr. Lardner's Credibility of the Gospel-History, he would not, I imagine, have composed a pamphlet, that manifests not only an impious licentiousness, but an ignorance at once great and despicable, in relation to the subjects he pretended to write on.
110. Let us now see, says a great man and upright Christian, what use the enemies of Christianity have endeavoured to make of the prophecies, as the evangelists apply them; and what answer the truth of the case will oblige us to give to them.
They assert that the foundation of the Christian religion is laid by the evangelists, on the proof of this point, that the mission and character of Jesus were foretold by the prophets; and that the validity of this proof depends entirely on the force of those particular prophecies which the same evangelists have applied to the illustration of it, in their several gospels. Upon this hypothesis, the enemy undertakes to show, that the prophecies, so applied by them, do not at all relate to Jesus, in their proper and literal signification, but only in secondary, typical, and figurative sense: but then this way of interpreting them is equivocal, precarious, and incapable of yielding any rational satisfaction; and of consequence Christianity has no foundation. Such is the use the enemy make of the prophecies applied by the evangelists.
In truth, if we admit that Christianity has no other foundation than what its enemies assign it, it might not perhaps be difficult for them to make good the rest: for upon that supposition, many objections are thrown in our way, which it is scarce possible to get rid of. But while they fancy themselves to be demolishing foundations, they are battering only such parts of the edifice, as serve for its ornaments rather than its support: and had the enemy gone farther, and shown that some of the prophecies cited by Matthew did not relate to Jesus in any sense at all, they would have done no more than what some of the primitive fathers, as well as modern critics had done before them, without designing or doing the least hurt to Christianity.
Jesus declared in general, that Moses and the prophets had testified of him: but since the evangelists did not think it necessary to give a precise account, or deduction of the several prophecies, which were alleged by him in proof of that declaration, it is sufficient to take it, just as we find it, without thinking ourselves obliged to defend all the particular instances or applications, which were offered afterwards in support of it by fallible men. Whiston, in his Literal Accomplishment of the Scripture Prophecies, has produced forty-five prophecies from the Old Testament, which are cited in the New, in proof of the Messiahship of Jesus, and which he declares to have been clearly and directly fulfilled, without the least pretence of any reply from any author whatsoever. Now if any number of these, how small soever, are found to be as clearly accomplished, as he takes them to be, they are sufficient to support the authority of the gospel, though all the rest were thrown aside.
But to say the truth, the grounds of our faith, in these latter ages of the church, do not lie in the particular interpretations of prophecies, made by men, who might be mistaken, and who, as Jerome*[see note below] says more than once, by trusting to their memories, in citing these very prophecies, were frequently mistaken in the words, and sometimes in the sense of them. Nor is the evidence of prophecy so proper in these days, to convert men to the faith of Christ, as to confirm those who have already embraced it: serving chiefly, as St. Paul expresses it, not to them, who believed not, but to them who believe.
The sum then of this article is, that upon the first promulgation of the gospel, while the conversion of the Jews was the principal object of our Saviour's ministry, and afterwards of his apostles, the argument of prophecy was, of all others, the best adapted to persuade, and conquer the prejudices of that nation. But in preaching the gospel to the Gentiles, not acquainted with the Jewish scriptures, nor tinctured with any Jewish prejudices, the testimony of its miracles, and the purity of its doctrines, were the most affecting proof of its divine origin. Yet when by the evidence of these, people had once received the Christian faith, and acquired a competent knowledge of it, they would then perceive, that the argument of prophecy, was a part also of the evidence, essentially necessary to complete the demonstration of its truth.
* ST. JEROME is one of the four great doctors of the Latin church, who support the magnificent bronze chair of St. Peter, in this saint's church in Rome. The other three doctors are St. Augustine, St. Ambrose, and St. Gregory. Great might be the piety of those doctors, for anything I can say to the contrary: but this is certain, from their writings, that they did not understand Christianity.
St. Jerome, born at Stridon, in Dalmatia, in the year 340; was a hot, abusive man, and quarrelled even with St. Augustine. In his disputes, he is more like a madman than a saint, and ever in the wrong. He wrote commtents on all the prophets, Ecclesiastes, St. Matthew, and the epistles to the Galatians, Ephesians, Titus, and Philemon; but they are sad stuff in respect of some modern performances. Compare them with the comments of Dr. Clarke, Locke, Dr. Benson, and others of our country, and you will see what a poor creature this saint was in respect of our English divines and philosophers. He translated the Old Testament into Latin from the Hebrew; without understanding the Hebrew well: and he corrected the ancient Latin version of the New Testament. This is far from being correct, though the church of Rome has decreed it to be infallible, and appointed it to be used in the church. The best and most useful thing this saint hath written is his Treatise of Illustrious Men; which contains a summary of the lives, and the titles of the books, written by ecclesiastical authors, to his time. The next in worth to this, in my opinion, is his book of letters; in which are several fine moral sentiments, and much good advice; though his criticisms on the Bible in this work are weak enough. He will have it, that it was wisdom, and not a young woman, that David took into bed to him, when he was old and cold; which is a mere fancy, that plainly contradicts the history of that affair in the Bible. But St. Jerome, in his Letters, tells us, he abhorred a woman, as much as Mrs. Astel did a man; detesting and blackening matrimony and a wife, to extol and exalt that whim of his brain virginity. He owns that he beheld with detestation every pregnant woman though rendered so in the holy matrimonial bed, and could not bear looking at her, but as he reflected that she carried a virgin. He was consequently a fit supporter of St. Peter's chair. Of the works of St. Jerome, who died in the year 420, aged 80, there is a good edition, in nine volumes, in folio, printed at Paris, in 1623; but the later one, edited by Martianay, the Benedictine, is much finer and more valuable.
St. Ambrose is the next supporter and saint. This holy prelate, born at Treves in the year 340, was a great contender for tritheism and the rights of the church, and wrote many worthless pieces for them and persecution. He acted an insolent and senseless part, when the emperor Theodosius, in the affair of Thessalonica, ordered the seditious to be destroyed: and died soon after, in April anno 397, 'the greatest and most blessed of men,' so say Paulinus and Baronius who have both written his life. The best edition of his works is that enriched with many notes by the Benedictines, and printed at Paris in 1691, in two volumes, folio.
As to St. Gregory of Neocaesarea, and the four other saints of the name, to wit, the two Nazianzens, Nysse, and Armenia, I shall have occasion to mention them in the next volume of my journal, and therefore shall here only observe, in respect of Neocaesarea, usually called Thaumaturgus, or the wonder-worker, that he died in the year 265, according to Baronius, and the saint of Armenia, or in 270, according to Fabricius and that the best edition of his works is that by Gerard Vossius, printed at Mayence in 1604, 4to. His pieces were likewise printed in a collection of things written by some minor saints, at Paris, in 1621, in a single volume, in folio.
111. Manchet: A small loaf or roll of the finest wheaten bread. (TN)
112. The arguments I used to make a convert of FLEMING, the reader will find in the appendix to this journal, among other interesting matters, that are too long to be inserted in the story of my life. I shall print them in hopes that they may be of service to some other soul. They were introduced the first day I was at FLEMING'S house, by his saying to me, after dinner, "Dear sir, will you give me leave to ask you, by what strange cause if has happened, that you are thus travelling on foot in this unvisited country. It must be an extraordinary affair I am sure." "Sir," I replied, "my case is very uncommon. I do not believe that anything like it ever was before, and, perhaps, such another affair may never happen again." I little thought then, that I should afterwards meet with two instances of the same kind of thinking and resolution in the female world, to wit, Miss Chawcer and Miss Janson; whose histories I have given in my Memoirs of Several Ladies of Great Britain, p. 41-64. The critics, I remember, had some doubts as to the reality of these two cases: but to this I answer, that they may as well doubt the truth of my own story; and from thence proceed to deny the reality of my existence; because several incidents in my life are strange, and such as they have not heard of before. It is not, however, in the power of criticism to invalidate what I deliver as facts. I will tell you my story: and so began to relate the religious dispute between my father and me, and how it was brought to a head by the devil possessed by a woman, called a mother-in-law. As the glass went round, I let them know, how a man in the twenty-second year of his age, forsook all for the true gospel of Christ, and at a time of life, when very few think of religion, resolved to confess himself a Christian deist, to all whom it concerned, if it brought him to want, and from a morsel of bread to the grave. So far I was heard without interruption, though I declaimed by the way against the dreadful heresy of three gods; but not thinking I was in company with Catholics, for then I imagined that such subjects of the king of England were only to be found in Ireland, I brought into my oration against false religion, the diabolism of popery, and gave it several thrusts; as, indeed, I always do, whenever it comes in my way; for, good reader, though I love the Catholic men and women, because I am a friend to man, and nearly related to many Romanists of great fortune; yet, popery I abhor; and look upon it as the greatest woe that ever the devil introduced into this lower world, to ruin mankind: but when I began to touch this string, and was raking Rome papal fore and aft, FLEMING the friar, changed colour several times, which I took notice of, and knew not what to ascribe it to, unless he was very sick; and at last he told me, by way of game, that I was an eloquent young gentleman, and had a flow of language; but my mistakes as to the church of Rome were very great, and he begged leave, as he was a priest of the holy Roman church, to set me right in my notions. This was a great surprise to me. It struck me silent for some minutes. At last, however, I told the gentlemen, that I asked their pardons for making so free with their religion, which I should not presume to have done, but that I thought they had been Protestants; that, as to his offer to set me right, he did me great honour, and I would with pleasure hear him. I would, to be sure, be a convert to the strength of his arguments, if unanswerable; or, offer such reasons for remaining a Protestant, as must satisfy a rational man. He then went on, and my reply followed.
113. Carry a brown musket: Become a common soldier. (TN)
114. The black cock, is as large as our game cocks, and flies very swift and strong. The head and eyes are large, and round the eyes is a beautiful circle of red. The beak is strong, and black as the body; the legs robust and red. It is very high eating, more so than any native-bird in England except the fen-ortolan; but in one particular it exceeds the fen birds, for it has two tastes, being brown and white meat; under a lay of brown is one of white meat: both delicious, the brown is higher than the black moorcock, and the white much richer than the pheasant.
The moorcock is likewise very rare, bhut is to be had sometimes in London, as the sportsmen meet with it now and then on the hilly heaths, not very far from town, particularly on Hindhead-heath, in the way to Portsmouth. It is as large as a good Dorking fowl, and the colour is a deep iron-grey. Its eyes are large and fine as the black cock's; but, instead of the red circle round them, it has bright and beautiful scarlet eyebrows.
The cock of the wood, as unknown in London as the black cock, is almost as large as a turkey, but flies well. The black is a mixture of black, grey, and a reddish brown; the belly grey, and the breast a pale brown, with transverse lines of black, and a little white at the tips of the feathers. It has a large round head, of the purest black, and over its fine hazel eyes, there is a naked space, that looks like an eyebrow of bright scarlet. It is delicious eating, but far inferior to the black cock.
115. I will be a God unto thee, &c.: Genesis 17:7(TN)
116. If succession be the main thing, and to prevent the extirpation of the rest of mankind by junction, why may it not be carried on as well without marriage, as in that confined wayé I answer, that as the author and founder of marriage was the Ancient of Days, God himself, and at the creation, he appointed the institution: as Christ, who was vested with authority to abrogate any laws, or supersede any custom, in which were found any flaw or obliquity, or had not an intrinsic goodness and rectitude in them, confirmed the ordinance, by reforming the abuses that had crept into it, and restoring it to its original boundary: As he gave a sanction to this amicable covenant, and statuted that men should maintain the dignity of the conjugal state, and by virtue of this primordial and most intimate bond of society, convey down the race of mankind, and maintain its succession to the final dissolution; it is not therefore to be neglected or disregarded. We must not dare to follow our fancies; and in unhallowed mixtures, or an illegal method, have any posterity. As the great God appointed and blessed this institution only, for the continuance of mankind, the race is not to be preserved in another way. We must marry in the Lord, to promote his glory, as the apostle says, 1 Cor. ch. vii. v. 39. The earth is not to be replenished by licentious junction, or the promiscuous use of women. Dreadful hereafter must be the case of all who slight an institution of God.
I am sensible, the libertine who depreciates and vilifies the dignity of the married state, will laugh at this assertion: The fop and debauchee will hiss it, and still do their best to render wedlock the subject of contempt and ridicule. The Roman clergy will likewise decry it, and injuriously treat it as an impediment to devotion, a cramp upon the spiritual serving of God, and call it an instrument of pollution and defilement, in respect of their heavenly celibacy.
But as God thought marriage was suitable to a paradisaical state, and the scriptures declare it honourable in all: as this is the way appointed by heaven to people the earth; and the institution is necessary, in the reason and nature of things, considering the circumstances in which mankind is placed; to prevent confusion, and promote the general happiness; as the bond of society, and the foundation of all human government; sure I am, the rake and the mass-priest, must be in a dreadful situation at the sessions of righteousness; when the one is charged with libertinism and gallantries, with madness and folly, and with all the evils and mischief they have done by illicit gratification, contrary to reason, and in direct opposition to the institutes of God: and when the other the miserable mass-priests, are called to an account, for vilifying the honour and dignity of the married state, and for striving to seduce mankind into the solitary retirements of celibacy, in violation of the laws of God; and more especially of the primary law or ordinance of heaven. Wretched priests; your institutions are breaches in revealed religion, trespasses upon the common rights of nature, and such oppressive yokes as it is not able to bear. Your celibacy has not a grain of piety in it. It is policy and impiety.
Hear me then, ye libertines and mass-priests: I call upon you of the first row, ye rakes of genius, to consider what you are doing, and in time turn from your iniquities: Be no longer profligate and licentious, blind to your true interest and happiness, but become virtuous and honourable lovers, and in regard to the advantages of this solemn institution, called wedlock, as well to the general state of the world, as to individuals, marry in the Lord; so will you avoid that dreadful sentence, Fornicators and adulterers God will judge, that is, punish; and in this life, you may make things very agreeable, if you please; though it is in the heavenly world alone, where there shall be all joy and no sorrow. Let there be true beauty and gracefulness in the mind and manners, and these with discretion, and other things in your power, will furnish a fund of happiness commensurate with your lives. It is possible, I am sure, to make marriage productive of as much happiness as falls to our share in this lower hemisphere; as the nature of man can reach to in his present condition. For, as to joy flowing in with a full, constant and equal tide, without interruption and without allay, there is no such thing. Human nature doth not admit of this. "The sum of the matter is this: To the public the advantages of marriage are certain, whether the parties will or no; but to the parties engaging, not so: to them it is a fountain that sendeth forth both sweet and bitter waters. To those who mind their duty and obligations sweet ones; to those who neglect them bitter ones."
In the next place, ye monks, I would persuade you, if I could, to labour no longer in striving to cancel the obligations to marriage by the pretence of religion. The voice of heaven, and the whispers of sound and uncorrupted reason are against it. It is will-worship in opposition to revelation. It is such a presumption for a creature against the author of our nature, as must draw down uncommon wrath upon the head of every mass-priest, who does not repent their preaching such wicked doctrine. Indeed I do not know any part of popery that can be called Christianity: but this in particular is so horrible and diabolical, that I can consider the preachers for celibacy in no other light than as so many devils. May you ponder in time on this horrible affair.
117. Relation de l'Ambassade, dediæe a Don Sebastien, roy de Portugal. ["An account of the Diplomatic Mission, dedicated to Don Sebastien, King of Portugal"]
118. Maria Schurman, was born at Cologne, on the 5th of Nov. 1607, and died at Wieuwert in Friesland, on the 7th of May, 1678, in the seventy-first year of her age. Jean le Labeurer, in his Histoire du Voyage de la Reyne de Pologne,["History of the travels of the Queen of Poland"] printed at Paris in 1648, speaking of her surprising endowments, says, "Elle respondit en Italien a Monsieur d'Orange, qui l'interrogeoit par ordre de la Regne, and elle argumenta tres subtilement en Latin sur quelques poincts de theologie. Elle repartit aussi fort ellegamment en mesme langue, au compliment que je lui fis pour Madame la Mareschalle. Elle parla grec avec le Sieur Corrade premier medicin de la Regne. Enfin elle nous oust encore parle d'autres langues si nous les eussions sceues; car outre la Grecque, la Latine, la Francoise, l'Italienne, l'Espagnole, l'Allemaude, et le Flaman, qui lui est naturel, elle a encore beaucoup de connoissance de l'Hebreu, Syriacque et Chaldaique; et il ne luy marque qu'un peu d'habitude pour les parler." ["She replied in Italian to the Prince of Orange, who questioned her on the Queen's orders, and she argued most subtly in Latin on certain points of theology. She also replied in the same tongue, very elegantly, to the compliments I gave her from the Marshal's Lady. She spoke Greek with Mr. Corrade, the foremost doctor of the kingdom. She also spoke with us in the other languages she knew; for as well as Greek, Latin, French, Italian, Spanish, German, and Flemish, (her mother tongue), she also had a great knowledge of Hebrew, Syriac and Chaldean, and lacked only a little practice in speaking them."] Her writings entitled Opuscula Hebraea, Græca, Latina,["Short works in Latin, Greek and Hebrew"] were published by Frederic Spanheim, Professor of Divinity, in 1618, in 12mo. There are some admirable Latin letters on moral subjects in this book. Her epistle de Vitæ Termino ["On the End of Life"] to Berovicius, is a fine thing. Her other work is called Eukleria, or Bona Pars,["The better part"] in allusion to Mary's choosing the better part. (in Luke 10:38-42 TN.) This is hard to be met with. It is one octavo in Latin, and though it be not without some vision, yet it is in the main a beautiful and solid performance. It is in the manner of Law's Christian Perfection, and has several sentiments resembling those of Madam Guion, in her Comment on the New Testament, and Madam Bourignon, in her numerous works. It was the famous Labadie, the fanatic, who brought Mrs. Schurman over to the interior life and silent worship, in the forty-third year of her age, and from that time to her dying-day, she renounced the world, and never went to public worship. The men of learning and worth were no longer seen in crowds at her house, engaged with her in the noblest literary conversations, for the advancement of truth and the sciences; but in a solitude, purchased by herself, she moped away her remaining life in quietism, and holy reveries, and parting from reason in religion, sunk into passive unions of nothing with nothing, and became the prey of cunning and stupid religionists. Her house was always full of them. She would see no other company. The holy Labadie expired in her arms, aged sixty-four, in the year 1674; Mrs. Schurman being then sixty-seven. What a deplorable change was here, and owing to no reason in religion. Adhere to reason I enjoin you, for whoever tells you, you must give it up in religion, is the son of darkness, and the truth is not in him.
Labadie, born Feb. 13, 1610, had been many years a Jesuit, then Jansenist, Carme Solitaire, Missionnaire, and Devot, and afterwards by the interest of the Marquis de Rivas, a Protestant, was made minister of Montauban.
Bayle, Bernard, and Basnages, in the Nouvelles de In Republique des Lettres, tell a strange story of this man, while he was minister at Montauban: that he had brought over a beautiful young lady, Madamoiselle de Calonges, to the interior or spiritual life, and to make her perfect in what they call la spiritualité et l'oraison mentale, ["Spirituality and oraison mentale (Oraison mentale is a spiritual condition in which the soul tries to communicate in a state of silent meditative prayer centred on divine contemplation — TN)] he told her she must be absolutely alienated from all sensible objects in her meditations, and lost in he depths of reflection, dans le reveillement interieure. To this purpose he gave her a point to meditate on, and desired she would give it her whole application, as she sighed after Christian perfection. Miss began, and the director left her, under a detachement absolu ["A state of complete disconnection from the world"]; but returned in an hour or two to her chamber. He found her like contemplation on a monument; her eyes fixed, and her whole body, as if it were a petrifaction. Softly the holy man approached; strange pleasures filled his soul, as he gazed upon his heavenly disciple, and believing her quite perfect, from her attitude, in the interior way, he gently put his pious hand upon her lovely breast, and began to feel the finest tetons ["breasts"] in the world. But as Madamoiselle de Calonges was a woman of sense and virtue, she could not resign to this part of interior religion, and started up in a passion, giving the director a pounce [a blow of the fist — TN], and asking him what he meant by such behaviouré
The minister replied, "sans être deconcert;é, et avec un air devot; 'je vois bien ma fille, que vous êtes encore bien éloignée de la perfection. Reconnoissez humblement vôtre foiblesse, et demandez pardon a Dieu d'avoir été si peu attentive aux mystères que vous deviez mediter. Si vous y aviez apporté tout l'attention necessaire, vous ne vous fussiez pas apperçue de ce qu'on faissoit à votre gorge. Mais vous etiez si peu detachée des sens, si peu concentrée avec la divinité, que vous n'avez pas été un moment a reconnoitre que je vous touchois. Je voulois éprouver si votre serveur dans l'oraison vous elevoit au dessu de la matière, et vous unissoit au souverain etre, la vive source de l'immortalité et de la spiritualité, et je vois avec beaucoup de douleur, que vos progrés sont trés petits: vous n'allez que que terre à terre. Que ce la vous donnez de la confusion, ma fille, et vous porte a mieux remplir les saints devoirs de la prière mentale.'" ["without being disconcerted, and with a devout air, 'I see clearly, my daughter, that you are still far removed from perfection. Humbly reconsider your weakness, and ask pardon of God for having been so inattentive to the religious mysteries on which you should meditate. If you had given them the full attention they deserve, you would not have noticed what had been done to your breast. But are so little detached from the senses, so small was your concentration on spiritual things, that you immediately noticed that I touched you. I wanted to test whether your devotion to prayer had raised you above material things, and united you with the Supreme Being, the living source of immortality and spirituality, and I see with great sorrow, that you have made very little progress: you are only staying down to earth. This is what confuses you, my daughter, and you must perform the holy duties of mental prayer more diligently.'"]
This speech, continue the historians, was so far from satisfying the beautiful Miss Calonges, as she perceived the dreadful consequence of such doctrine, and knew it might be extended to the most impure transactions, in order to be thoroughly concentered with the divinity, that it enraged her as much as the action of Labadie, and she would never after have any more to say to him. "Elle rompit entierement avec lui." ["She completely broke with him."] Bayle says he will not warrant the truth of this story, and Bernard tell us he has some doubt about it; but Henry Basnage in his Histoire des Ouvrages des Savans, assures us he had the account of this affair from the mouth of Mademoselle de Calonges: he says he heard her relate it several times, and that she always spoke of the false and hypocritical devotion of Labadie with horror. But, notwithstanding all this, I have some doubts as to the veracity of Miss Calonges' relation, not that I think such behaviour has never been practised by a mystic, for there is a lady now living, who was debauched by a mass-priest, while he was instructing her how to be perfect in the interior life and abstraction. He first made a convert of her to popery, and then to raise her to the tiptop saints, consolidated her soul to an impenetrable centre; and taught her to pray in silence in the inward sanctuary, without any regard to what was outward; the more insensible, the more perfect. This continued for some time, and the confessor told her she was in a fair way to the highest degree of perfection; a little more absence from the body, and she was quite glorious. In short, from touching the tip of her ear, as she sat like one inanimate, he proceeded to the most illicit liberties. She thought him an angel of a man, and was undone by the uncommon sanctity he wore, and the strong desire she had to be a perfect mystic.
But as to Labadie, if he was the man Miss Calonges reported him, is it to be thought Mrs. Schurman would have made him her nearest friend, and first minister in the management of her house and religionists, and have travelled with him wherever he went. Beside, Mrs. Boutrignon did not make this an objection against joining him and Mrs. Schurman. Among the many books written by Labadie, and by him published, there are some of them moral, and extremely pious: and more than this, Yvon was his principal disciple, and all I think allow he was one of the most pious of mortals, though a thorough visionary. He founded a society at Wiewert, which was another la Trappe. "Espece d'Abbaye de la Trappe dans le parti Protestant, très eloignée de l'esprit de mondanité, reformez dans leurs moeurs et dans leurs dogmes",["A kind of Protestant Trappist abbey, far removed from worldly things, reformed in their morals and dogmas"] says Bayle in his Nouvelles for November 1685. And the Marriage Chrétien of Yvon, published immediately after the death of Labadie, is a piece of sanctification too severe I think for mortals. I imagine then, that in contempt of those mystics and visionaries, there may be some things overtold, and some stories received, that would bear mitigation, if all the circumstances relating to them were known. It is bad enough that there are mystics and visionaries in the world: and therefore, if I could, I had rather discover virtue amidst their intellectual immoralities, than have an opportunity of displaying imperfections in any of their hearts. As to Labadie, supposing the worst, and that as Henry Basnage, says, he began to feel the breasts of Miss Calonges, might not the attitude of the charming image, and the privacy of the place, be too much for the poor man, as they say she was a prodigious fine girl, and tempt him to commit an indiscretion he might be very sorry for after? He was at that time a huge, strong, healthy he-mystic, and perhaps had a bottle of generous in his stomach.
Madame Bourignon, whom I have mentioned, was separated from her earthly tabernacle the 20th of October, 1680, St. Vet. anno;[Old style year] having lived sixty-four years, nine months and fourteen days. She died at Franeker, in West Friesland, and had suffered greatly in many persecutions. She had an extraordinary fine understanding, and would have been a valuable and useful creature, if she had not gone in to vision. There are however many admirable things in her works, which she published herself at several times, and to that purpose, had a printing house of her own, in the island of Nordstrand in Holstein; which island she purchased from Monsieur Cort, one of the fathers of the oratory. Her works were afterwards printed at Amsterdam, 1686, in nineteen volumes in 8vo. A presiding good sense appears every now and then in her writings, which kept her from sinking into the profundities, unions, and annihilations, of Labadie, whom she despised, though Mrs. Schurman was so fond of him. Labadie wanted her to come and live with him and Mrs. Schurman, and be one of the perfectionists in their retreat. He pressed her to it but she would have no connection with them. She told them their plan and economy were weak, and they had not the operation of the spirit in what they schemed and did. The two best books in this lady's works are, The Light of the World, and Solid Virtue. They have been translated into English; but are not now to be found.
Madame Guion, another illustrious visionary, died the 9th of June, 1717, at Blois, in the seventieth year of her age. Fenelon, archbishop of Cambray's troubles were all owing to this lady. She debauched his understanding with her splendid visions and notions of perfection and quiet, and to his last moment he had the most singular veneration for her, and thought her to be what our grand visionary, the reverend William Law, calls her in one of his pieces against Dr. Trapp, the 'enlightened Guion.' Notwithstanding the prelate made a public recantation, through fear, of his maxims of the saints, yet he was to his extreme unction, a thorough Guionist; that is, by associating and concentering with the divinity, as Madame directed, he was all light, all eye, all spirit, all joy, all rest, all gladness, all love; pure love. These are their terms. They rest in quietness, and are absorbed in silent spiritual pleasure, and inexpressible sweetness. Filled with a rapturous stillness, they sit the hours away at a royal banquet, and enjoy a divine repose in the sweet fellowship of the bridegroom. They even become sometimes like angels without bodies, so exceeding light and easy do they feel themselves with the body. Wretched delusion. It is all a wild, senseless fancy. It wants the beams of eternal and unalterable reason, and therefore can never be that useful, glorious piety, called Christianity; can never be that heavenly religion which was promulgated by Jesus; which consists in offering prayers with our lips, praising and giving thanks to the one true God the Father, at proper seasons; and in reducing the principles of the gospel to practice; by a righteousness of mind, and an active universal benevolence.
Madame Guion's works are twenty volumes of Explications and Reflections on the Old and New Testament, concerning the Interior Life. Five volumes of Spirituel Cantiques and Emblems on Pure Love. Two volumes of religious discourses. Four volumes of Letters. Her Life in three volumes. Three volumes of Justifications in defence of herself against her persecutors. And two volumes entitled Opuscules.
. As to Fenelon, archbishop of Cambray, he was a great and beautiful genius, and his Telemaque cannot be enough admired; but that bright genius he laid at the foot of mystery: His noble reason he would not use in religion, and therefore, in this article, was as poor a creature as any of the people. His maxims of the saints declare the weak visionary; and his submitting them afterwards to the censure of the man of sin, called the sovereign pontiff, renders his speculating religious character very despicable. He was a thorough visionary; and at the same time a thorough papist. The letter he dictated for Lewis the XIVth's confessor, after he had received extreme unction, shows that no man ever had more at heart that monstrous, and most audacious corruption of the Christian religion, called popery. In his expiring moments he conjures that bloody tyrant, the king of France, to order him a successor that will, like him, do everything to oppose and suppress the Jansenists; the only remaining light within the vast black realms of papacy: "Je prendrai la liberté de demandez a sa majesté deux graces, qui ne regardent, ni ma personne ni aucun de miens. La premiere est que le roi ait la bonté de me donner un successeur pieux, et regulier, bon et ferme contre le Jansenisme, lequel est prodigieusement accreditit sur cette frontière." ["I will take the liberty of asking two favours from his majesty, which will not benefit me nor anything of mine. The first is that he will appoint a successor to me who is pious and orthodox, truly firm against Jansenism, which is widely supported in this land."]
118. Completorium: Compline, the last service in the daily routine of a monastery. (TN)
119. In the morning very early went out into a solitary place, and there prayed: Mark, ch.i. v. 35.
120. Who dismissing his disciples departed into a mountain to pray: Mark, ch. vi. v. 46.
121. And he continued all night in prayer to GOD: Luke, ch. vi. v. 12.
122. We are ordered to glorify and bless this only wise God for ever: Romans, ch. xvi. v. 27.
123. Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ: 2 Cor. ch. i. v. 3.
124. To God and our Father be glory for ever: Phil. eh. iv. v. 20.
125 And to love him truly by keeping the commandments: Mark, ch. xii. v. 29, 30, 31.
126. There is no one good, &c.: Mark, ch. x. v. 18.
127. Nullus est bonus nisi unus Deus: "There is nothing good except the one God." Sebastian Castalio (also Castellio, Chéteillon, Chétaillon, Castellién, and Castello) 1515-1563 was a French preacher and theologian; and one of the first Reformed Christian proponents of religious toleration, freedom of conscience and thought. (TN)
128. This is life eternal, &c.: John, ch. xvii. throughout.
129. It is one God who will justify: Romans, ch. iii. v. 30.
130. We know there is none other gods &c.: 1 Cor. ch. viii. v. 4-6.
131. There is one GOD and Father of all, &c.: Eph. ch. iv. v. 6.
132. And we should confess one Mediator, &c.: 2 Tim. ch. ii. v. 5.
133. Severin Bini, or Binius, as he is commonly called, born in 1543, was a doctor of divinity at Cologne, in the circle of the Lower Rhine in Germany, and canon of that archiepiscopal cathedral. He published in that city, in the year 1606, an elegant edition of all the Councils in four very large volumes, folio, and by this work, made the editions or collections of James Merlin, Peter Crabb, and Lawrence Surius, of no value, but the second edition published by Binius in the year 1618, in nine volumes smaller folio, is far preferable to the first, and the Paris edition printed in 1638, in ten large volumes, folio, is further enlarged, more correct, and of consequence still better than the second edition of 1618. This is not however the best edition to buy, if you love to read that theological stuff called Councils. The Louvre edition of 1644, in thirty-seven volumes, folio, is what you should purchase; or, that of 1672, printed at Paris, by the Jesuits Labbé and Cossart, in eighteen large volumes in folio. I prefer this last, on account of the additions, correctness, and beauty of the impression. Pere Hardouin likewise printed a later edition of the Councils, with explications and free remarks, an extraordinary and curious work I have been told; but I could not even see it in France, as the parliament of Paris had ordered the work to be suppressed, on account of the remarks. Binius died in 1620, Æt.["aged"] 77.
James Merlin, the first editor of the Councils, was a doctor of divinity, and chanoine of Notre-dame de Paris. Besides the Councils, in two large volumes folio; he published the works of Durand de St. Porçain, in 1515; the works of Richard de St. Victor, in 1518; and the works of Peter de Blois, in 1519. His Defence of Origen, in 4to. a good thing; and Six Homilies on Gabriel's being sent to the Virgin Mary, in 8vo; which homilies are not worth half a farthing, are all that may be considered his. Merlin, born in 1472, died in 1541, ét. 69.
Peter Crabb, the second editor of the councils, born in 1470, was a Franciscan friar. He published two volumes of the Councils, in folio, at Cologne, in 1538; and a third volume in 1550.éHe died in 1553, ét. 83.
Lawrence Surius, the third editor of the Councils, born in 1522; a monk of the Chartreux, published his edition of them, in four large volumes in folio, in 1560; and a few years after printed his Lives of the Saints, in six volumes. He wrote likewise a short History of his own Time; and An Apology for the Massacre of St. Bartholomew. He was the most outrageous, abusive bigot that ever wrote against the Protestants. The great men of his own church despised him, and Cardinal Perron, in particular, calls him béte["stupid"] and l'ignorant. He died in 1578, ét. 56.
Philip Labbé, the Jesuit, born in 1607; the fifth editor, and next after Binius; lived only to publish 11 volumes of the Councils, the eleventh came out the year he died; the other seven were done by Cossart. Labbé was a man of learning, and besides his collection of Councils, wrote several other pieces. The best of them are Bibliotheca Bibliothecarum; Concordia Cronologica; Bellarmini Philologica; and the Life of Galen. He died in 1667, ét. 60.
Gabriel Cossart, the continuator, who published the other seven volumes in 1672, died at Paris, the 18th. of December, 1674, ét. 59.
Richard de St. Victor, whose works were published by Merlin, at Paris, in 1518, was a Scotchman, and prior of the abbey of St. Victor in Paris. He was the author of Three Critical and Historical Dissertations on the Tabernacle; Two on the Temple; Three on the Harmony of the Chronology of the Kings of Judea and Israel; Commentaries on the Psalms, Canticles, the Epistles of St. Paul, and the Revelation; as also of some Treatises in Divinity; and several Disquisitions relating to Spiritual Life. There have been four editions of these pieces, and the best of them is that printed at Rouen in 1650, in two volumes, by Father John de Toulouse, who wrote the life of Father Richard, and added it to his edition. The three other editions are those of Paris, in 1518; of Venice, in 1592, and of Cologne, in 1621. Richard de Victor has been highly commended by several celebrated writers, particularly by Henry de Grand, Trithemius, Bellarmine, and Sixte de Sienne. There are many curious and fine things in his writings, it must be allowed; but in general, he is too subtle, too diffuse, and too full of digressions. His commentaries, for the most part, are weak, and evince that he did not understand St. Paul. He died 10th March 1173, ét. 91; and, for the twelfth century, was an extraordinary man.
But who was St. Victor, to whom the abbey of Chanoines Reguliers in Paris, and the greater abhaye of Chanoines in Marseilles, are dedicatedé He was a Frenchman, who fought under the Emperors Dioclesian and Maximilian with great applause, in the most honourable post; but in the year 302, suffered martyrdom for refusing to sacrifice to the idols. He was executed on the spot where the abbey of St. Victor in Marseilles now stands, and there they have his relics, 'a la reserve du pie,' that is, except his foot, which lies in the Abbaye de St. Victor de Paris. William Grimaud, abbot of St. Victor de Marseille, on his being made Pope, under the title of Urban V. in 1362, took the foot of St. Victor from his abbey, when he left it, and made a present of it to John, Duke of Berry, one of the sons of John I. King of France, who was taken prisoner by Edward the Black Prince, in the battle of Poitiers, Sept. 19, 1356; and this duke of Berry gave the inestimable foot to the monks of St. Victor in Paris. There it remains to this day; and though so small a part of the blessed Victor, sheds immense benefits on the pious Catholics who adore it. Happy Catholics!
As to Peter de Blois, he was archdeacon of Bath, in the reign of Henry the second, and died in London, in the year 1200, ét. 71. His works comprise one hundred and eighty-three letters on various subjects, twenty sermons, and seventeen tracts of several kinds, they were first printed at Mayence in 1500, then by Merlin at Paris, in 1519, as before mentioned; and afterwards, John Buse the Jesuit, gave an edition of them in 1600; which is far preferable to that edited by Merlin. But the most valuable edition is that of Peter de Goussainville, printed at Paris, in 1667, in folio; to this edition is prefixed the life of Peter de Blois, and very learned remarks on his writings, and the subjects he wrote on, are added, by Goussainville. De Blois's works contain many excellent things, and his life is a curious piece. Some of his notions relating to the scriptures are very good, and he writes well against vice. He is a good author for the age he lived in. His letters are well worth reading, especially such of them as relate to his own time. King Henry II. ordered him to make a collection of them for his royal use.
Durand de St. Pouréain, bishop of Meaux, in 1326, died the 13th of September, 1333, in the 89th year of his age. His works are, Liber de Origine jurisdictionum, a learned piece; and Commentaries on the Four Books of Sentences. The book called the Sentences, was written by the famous Peter Lombard, bishop of Paris, who died in the year 1164, ét. 82. In the Sentences, one of the propositions argued on is this: Christus secundum quod est homo, non est aliquod.["That Christ was truly a man."] Some call these Sentences excellent, which is what I cannot think them; but in Durand's Commentary on them, there are several excellent things.
As to the Jesuit, Jean Busse, who published the third edition of the works of Peter de Blois; he was the author of many books not worth mentioning, and died at Mayence, 30th of May, 1611, aged 64.
The learned Goussainville, who printed the last edition of De Blois, with notes, died in the year 1663, extremely poor and miserable. He likewise published the works of Pope Gregory, with many valuable remarks and notes. There are four editions of this pope's works; that by Tussiniani, bishop of Venice, by order of Pope Sixtus the Vth; the Paris edition of 1640; Goussainville's edition; and the Benedictine edition; but Goussainville's is, in my opinion, the most valuable.
The Sermons in the first and second editions of Peter de Blois' works are not his, but by Peter Comestor. De Blois' sermons are only to he found in Goussainville's edition of this archdeacon's works. Peter Comestor was a regular canon of St. Victor's in Paris, and died in the year 1198, ét. 65. Besides the sermons published by mistake as the work of De Blois, he wrote a large Scholastic History, which comprehends the sacred history from Genesis to the end of the Acts. This is reckoned a good thing, and has been abridged by one Hunter, an Englishman.
But as to Councils, we have the following account of the eighteen general ones in the Vatican library, and are told, that the several inscriptions affixed to them were made by pope Sixtus V.; the famous Felix Peretti, who was born the 13th of December, 1521, and died the 27th of August, 1590, in the 69th year of his age.
The first Council, which is that of Nice in 325. St. Sylvester being pope, and Constantine the great emperor, Jesus Christ the Son of God is declared consubstantial with his Father; the impiety of Arius is condemned; and the emperor, in obedience to a decree of the council, ordered all the books of the Arians to he burnt.
The second Council, which is that of Constantinople in 381. The holy Damascus being pope, and Theodosius the elder emperor, the divinity of the Holy Ghost is defended against the impious Macedonius, and his false doctrine is anathematized.
The third Council, which is that of Ephesus in 431. St. Celestin being pope, and Theodosius the younger emperor; Nestorius, who divided Jesus Christ into two persons, is condemned, and the Holy Virgin is decreed to be the mother of God.
The fourth Council, which is that of Chalcedonia in 451. St. Leo being pope, and Marcian emperor, the unhappy Eutychius is anathematized, for maintaining that Jesus Christ had but one nature.
The fifth Council, which is the second of Constantinople in 553. Vigilius being pope, and Justinian emperor, the debates relating to the doctrine of Theodore, bishop of Mopsueste; Ibas, bishop of Edessa, and Theodoret, bishop of Cyr, are suppressed, and the errors of Origen are separated from the holy doctrine.
The sixth Council, which is the third of Constantinople in 680. St. Agatho being pope, and Constantine Pagonatus emperor, the heretics called Monothelites, who admitted but one will in Jesus Christ, are condemned.
The seventh Council, which is the second of Nice in 784. Adrian being pope, and Constantine, the son of Irene, being emperor, the impiety of the image-breakers is condemned, and the worship of the holy images is established in the church.
The eighth Council, which is the fourth of Constantinople in 689. Adrian II. being pope, and Basil emperor. Ignatius, patriarch of Constantinople, is re-established in his see, and Photius, the usurper, is with ignominy driven away.
The ninth Council, which is the first of Lateran in 1122.
The tenth Council, which is the second of Lateran in 1169. The canons of these two councils are wanting, and they have no inscription in the Vatican.
The eleventh Council, which is the third of Lateran in 1179. Alexander III. being pope, and Frederick I. emperor; the errors of the Vandois are condemned.
The twelfth Council, which is the fourth of Lateran in 1215. Innocent III. being pope, and Frederick II. emperor; the false opinions of the abbot Joachim arc condemned; the holy war, for the recovery of Jerusalem, is resolved, and the Croisades are appointed among Christians.
The thirteenth Council, which is the first of Lyons in 1245. Under the pontificate of Innocent IV., the emperor Frederick is declared an enemy to the church, and deprived of the empire; they deliberate on the recovery of the Holy Land; St. Lewis, King of France, is declared chief of that expedition. The cardinals are honoured with red hats.
The fourteenth Council, which is the second of Lyons in 1274. Gregory X., being sovereign pontiff, the Greeks are reunited to the Church of Rome; St. Bonaventure does signal service to the Church in this council; friar Jerome brings the king of the Tartars to the council, and that prince receives, in the most solemn manner, the blessed water of baptism.
The fifteenth Council, which is that of Vienne in 1311. Under the pontificate of Clement V., the Decretals, called the Clementines from the name of this pope, are received and published; the procession of the holy sacrament is instituted throughout Christendom; and professors of the oriental languages are established in the four most famous universities in Europe, for the propagation of the Christian faith in the Levant.
The sixteenth Council, which is that of Florence in 1439. The Greeks, the Armenians, and the Ethiopians, are reunited to the Catholic Church, under the pontificate of Eugene IV.
The seventeenth Council, which is the fifth of Lateran, began in the year 1517. They declared war against the Turks, who had seized the island of Cyprus, and possessed themselves of Egypt, on the death of the sultan: the emperor Maximilian, and Francis I., king of France, are appointed generals of this war, under the popes Julius II. and Leo X.
The eighteenth Council, which is that of Trent, the last of the écumenical or general councils; held from the year 1545 to the year 1563. Paul III. Julius II., and Pius V. reigning at Rome, the Lutherans and other heretics are condemned, and the ancient discipline of the church is re-established in her exact and regular practice.
These, reader, are the eighteen famous General Councils; and if you will turn to the third volume of a work, called Notes relating to Men, and Things, and Books, you will find my observations on them; my remarks on the popes, the princes, and the fathers, assembled; their unchristian immoralities, and sad acts against the laws of Christ, in order to establish for ever, that very senseless, and very wicked religion, called Popery; which is, a composition of sin and error so base and abominable, that we might expect such a thing from the devil; but it is impossible it could come from heavenly-inspired fathers. In that book you will find many thoughts on the religion delivered to the world by those Councils, and by them established, though it is in reality a disgrace to Christianity; a dishonour to the religion of nature; and a faction against the common rights of mankind; which ought to be the just object of universal contempt and abhorrence; whether we consider it as a system of idolatry, impiety, and cruelty; or, as a political scheme, to destroy the liberties, and engross the properties of mankind. Of these things, particularly and largely, in the piece referred to.
Here I have only further to observe, that in the large collections of the Councils, it is not only the eighteen écumenical the collectors have gathered, but so much of all the councils as they could find, their acts, letters, formularies of faith, and canons, from the first council at Jerusalem, in the year 49, to the last council in the eighteenth century; which was convoked by the archbishop of Ambrun against Jean de Soanem, bishop of Senez. These amount to above 1600 councils. Note, Reader, the condemnation and banishment of old John de Soanem, the most learned and excellent prelate in France, of his time, in the eightieth year of his age, by Firebrand Tartuff, archbishop of Ambrun, and his council, Sept. 21, 1727; was on account of the bishop's admirable pastoral instruction against the execrable constitution unigenitus, and the antichristian formulary of pope Alexander II., and because he recommended the reading of Pere Quesnel's very pious and fine Reflections Morales.
Pasquier Quesnel, a famous Jansenist, and father of the oratory, was born in 1636, was the author of many books, some of them very good. He was severely persecuted for many years, and died at last in prison, if I mistake not, a sufferer for religion.
134. ex professo, and data opera: "Explicitly and deliberately" (TN)
135. God had exalted the Lord Jesus Christ, &c.: Acts, ch. v. v. 31.
136. He ever liveth to make intercession for them: Hebrews, ch. vii. v. 25.
137. He is gone to heaven, &c.: Acts ch. ix. v. 24.
138. There is no other mediator betwixt God and men, &c.: 1 Tim. ch. ii. v. 5.
139. Had not the spirit of God foretold, &c.: 1 Tim. ch. iv. v. 4.
140. We have no command to supplicate any in heaven, &c.: Matt. ch. vi. v. 13.
141. He alone is that angel to whom much incense was given, &c.: Rev. ch. viii. v. 3
142. O thou that hearest prayer, unto thee shall all flesh come.: Psalm lxv. V. 2.
143. As God is but one, &c.: Quid tam proprium Christi quam advocatum apud deum patrem adstare populorum.["What is so appropriate as that Christ should stand as advocate for the people before God the father."] Ambrose in Psal. 39. Pro quo nullus interpellat sed ipse pro omnibus, hic unus verusque mediator est.["For no-one but him intercedes for all, he is the one and only intermediate"] Aug. Cont. Parmen. lib. ii. c. 8.
144. The Roman doctors say, the saints know the transactions that are done here below, by revelation or intuition. To this I answer, if it is by revelation, that they know our requests and prayers to them, then it must be either from God or from angels; of which there is not the least assurance or certainty to be anywhere found: but if we could be sure of it, then, in my opinion, we ought to pray to God or angels to make known our prayers to saints; which would be strange religion. If it be by intuition, as the greatest part of the doctors say, and that the saints see the requests in the divine essence, as men see things in a corporeal glass: then, (exclusive of answering that the scriptures say no such thing) the saints must see all things in the divine essence, or only such things as God is pleased to permit them to see: if all things, they would be omniscient: if only the things permitted to be seen, how is it possible for us to know whether God is pleased to permit them to see therein our prayers, or to know the requests we make to them, unless he had told us so. Let it be revelation or intuition, it is sad stuff.
145. Alaternus: Buckthorn (Rhamnus cathartica) (TN)
146. Ha-ha: A kind of sunk fence intended to keep cattle in without interrupting the view: consisting of a trench one side of which (the side the cattle are) slopes down gently, and the other is vertical and usually faced with stone or brick, like a wall. (TN)
147. Stow: Lord Cobham's, now Earl Temple's seat in Buckinghamshire, fifty-nine miles from London.
148. All that dwell on the earth shall worship him: Rev. ch. xiii. v. 8.
149. The waters which thou sawest, &c.: Rev. ch. xvii. v. 15.
150. I could find no ruling power, except Rome papal, &c. : Rev. ch. xviii. v. 24.
151. Reader, it is well worth your while to turn to the first volume of that admirable work, the Salters-Hall Sermons against Popery, and there see how the Cardinal's notes of his church are considered by that learned and excellent man, Dr. Samuel Chandler. His consideration of the sixth note more immediately concerns me here, and therefore I give you an abstract of it.
The writings of the apostles are allowed even by our adversaries to be the oldest records of Christianity, and therefore to this ancient and infallible rule we ought to appeal, to determine the controversy between us and the papists, that is, to see how far this antiquity favours their doctrine and practices, or is in agreement with ours.
l. The Protestants renounce the Pope, and acknowledge one law-giver, the Lord Jesus Christ, for these reasons, That the Pope is not mentioned in the New Testament; that Christ says, one is your master, even Christ; and St. Paul says, there is but one Lord, and one Faith: the whole family in heaven and earth is named of the Lord Jesus Christ.
2. Protestants do not pay any worship at all to saints and angels, but as St. Paul directs, consider Jesus Christ as their sole mediator and advocate; for there is but one God, and one mediator between God and man, the man Jesus Christ. They say, such veneration and prayer to saints and angels is superstition and will-worship, and only worship God with all their hearts and souls, with the most raised affections, and the highest degrees of love and fear, faith and confidence; for it is written, Thou shalt worship the Lord God, and him only shalt thou serve. And the angel in the Revelation said to John, who fell down at his feet to worship him, See thou do it not, for I am thy fellow-servant.
3. We affirm, that in the sacrament of the Lord's Supper, after consecration, there is nothing existent but bread and wine; for St. Paul says, 'Whosoever shall eat this bread and drink this cup,' and as often as you eat this bread and drink this cup.'
4. We affirm the Eucharist is only a memorial of Christ's death; for Christ says, do this in remembrance of me; and St. Paul assures the Corinthians from Christ himself; Cor. ch. xi. v. 21, that they were to receive the elements with this view only: and in his epistle to the Hebrews he tells us, that by one offering Christ hath for ever perfected those who are sanctified; and that because there is remission of sins under the new covenant, there is no more offering for sin; which proves, the Eucharist is not a propitiatory sacrifice.
5. We renounce the doctrine of purgatory, and affirm that the future state is no state of probation; for at death, the dust shall return to the earth as it was, and the spirit shall return to God who gave it. And St. Paul declares, that at the judgment-seat of Christ every one shall receive the things done in the body, according to that he hath done, whether it be good or bad.
6. Protestants affirm, that the worship of God ought to be performed in a language which all men understand; and that they have a right to search the scriptures. For, if I speak with tongues, says the apostle, in such a language as those I speak to cannot understand, what shall I profit youé Let all things be done to edifying. And Christ bids us search the scriptures. And how could the word of Christ dwell richly in us in all wisdom, teaching and admonishing one another in psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs, if we had not the word of Christ, and the scriptures of truth to read and consult for ourselves.
These are the Protestant doctrines, and we see they were taught by Christ and by his apostles. We have the sanction of the most venerable antiquity on our side, and this note of the true church of Christ belongeth to us in the highest perfection.
When the papists then scornfully say, Where was your church before Luther and Calviné The answer is obvious: the doctrine of our church was in the writings of the inspired apostles, where the church of Rome is never to be found; the same that was taught by Christ himself, whom they have forsaken, and whose faith they have corrupted. As to our predecessors and professors, they were the persecuted disciples of the crucified Jesus, those martyrs and confessors, whose blood the church of Rome had cruelly spilt. This is the genuine antiquity the Protestants have to boast of. Their doctrines are the word of Christ, and their fathers were put to death by papists for the testimony of Jesus.
But the papists on the contrary, exclusive of the example of the devil, who was a murderer from the beginning, and Antiochus Epiphanus, Nero, Domitian, and other monsters of mankind, who went before them in the measures of persecution, cruelty, and blood; and excepting the idolatrous nations of the earth, and the false prophets and deceivers among the Jews, by whose authority, and example they may vindicate their own idolatries, they, have no genuine antiquity to plead. Many of their doctrines were unknown to, or abhorred by the primitive church, and are mere novelties and innovations, that were originally introduced by superstition, and then maintained by cruelty and blood.
152. Voltaire's words are:é "And notwithstanding all the troubles and infamy which the church of Rome has had to encounter, she has always preserved a greater decency and gravity in her worship than any of the other churches; and has given proofs, that when in a state of freedom, and under due regulations, she was formed to give lessons to all others." Is not this facing the world, and contradicting truth with a bold fronté Decency and gravity in the church of Rome! The licentious whore. And formed to give lessons! Lessons, Voltaire! Is not her wisdom, in every article of it, earthly, sensual, devilish; and her zeal, that bitter, fierce, and cruel thing, which for ever produces confusion and every evil worké With a just abhorrence, and a manly indignation, we must look upon this mystery of iniquity, and never let that horror decay, which is necessary to guard us against the gross corruptions of the Roman church; the idolatry of her worship, the absurdity and impiety of her doctrines, the tyranny and cruelty of her principles and practices. These are her lessons, Voltaire; and you ought to ask the world pardon for daring to recommend a church, whose schemes and pieties bid defiance to reason, and are inconsistent with the whole tenor of revelation. This is the more incumbent on you, as you say you are a philosopher, and let us know in more places than one in your writings, that by that word, you mean a man who believes nothing at all of any revelation.
153. Reader,éBouhier, president of the French academy, to whom Le Blanc inscribes his fifty-eighth letter, died in 1746. He was a scholar. L'Abbé de Olivet, speaks of him in the following manner; "Je me suis prété a ce nouveau travail, et d'autant plus volontiers, que M. le President Bouhier a bien voulu le partager avec moi. On sera, sans doute, charmé de voir Ciceron entre les mains d'un traducteur aussi digne de lui, que Ciceron lui-meme étoit digne d'avoir pour traducteur un savant du premier ordre."["I applied myself to this new work all the more willingly, because President Bouhier has kindly divided it with me. Everyone will undoubtedly be happy to see Cicero in the hands of a translator so worthy of it; Cicero himself would be flattered to have such a first-rate scholar for a translator."] Tusc. Disp. tom. i. p. 13. And again; "Le feu M. President Bouhier, le Varron de notre siecle, et l'homme le plus capable de bien rendre les vraies beautez d'un original Grec ou Latin, avoit tellement retouché ses deux Tusculanes, qu'on aura peine é les reconnoitre dans cette nouvelle edition." ["President Bouhier, the Varro of our times, and the man who is best able to capture the beauties of a Greek or Latin original, has so reshaped these two Tusculan Disputations, that you would hardly recognize them in this new edition."] Tusc. Disp. tome ii. p. 1.
This is Olivet's account of Bouhier; and I have heard some gentlemen who knew him say, that he was a very fine genius; but, they added, a popish bigot to the last degree, and therefore, Le Blanc chose him as the fittest person of his acquaintance, to write an epistle to, that abused the reformation, and the English divines. Great is the prejudice of education! When so bright a mind as Bouhier's cannot see the deformity of Popery, and the beauty of the reformation; but, on the contrary, with pleasure reads the despicable defamation in Le Blanc's letter.
N.B. The two Tusculans, so finely translated by Bouhier, are the third, de égritudine Lenienda: and the fifth, Virtutem ad Beate Vivendum seipsa esse Contentam. De la Vertu: Qu'elle suffit pour Vivre Heureux. See likewise M. Bouhier's curious and useful remarks on the three books, De Natura Deorum; the five Tusculans; Scipio's Dream; and on the Catilinaires, or three Orations against Catiline. These remarks are the third volume of Olivet's fine edition of Cicero.
154. Hic non Dubito, &c.:" No doubt you will exclaim against this, and will make it a reproach against us that you highly esteem and approve perfect chastity, but do not forbid marriage, because your followerséthat is, those in the second
grade among youéare allowed to have wives." (TN)
155. Heb. ch. xiii. v. 4.
156. Titus, ch. i. v. 6.
157. Chrysost. Hom. ii. in c. 1. ad tit.
158. Note, reader, in the fourth volume of a work, called Notes relating to Men, and Things, and Books, you will find some more of my remarks on the Abbé Le Blanc's epistles. You will see, among other observations on this monk, a vindication of Archbishop Tillotson. The Abbé rails at one of this prelate's fine sermons, with great malice and impudence, and has the vanity to think his miserable declamation an answer. This wretched and despicable Romish apostate has the impudence and impiety to defend the worship of his God of dough, and would, if it were in his power, persuade the readers of his letters, to adore the tiny cake he prostrates himself before. For this the reader will find the mass-priest well chastised in the work I have referred to; and see the doctrine of the Lord's Supper set in a true light. You will find there a curious history of the mass, from the time the popish doctors first drew it out of the bottomless pit; and see it made quite evident, that in this abominable article of their faith, as well as in every other part of their execrable religion, they make void the law of God, and sink the human race into the vilest slavery and idolatry. Beware then, Christians, of popery. Still bravely dare to protest against her infernal schemes and inventions, and draw your religion from the book of God, that holy volume of inestimable treasure. It is our light in darkness, our comfort under affliction; our direction to heaven, and let us die in defence of it, if ever there should be occasion, rather than suffer the blood-thirsty papists, the red-handed idolaters, to snatch it out of our hands. They will give us for it the despicable legends of fictitious saints and false miracles; a history of diseases cured instantly by relics; accounts of speaking imageséstories of travelling chapelséwonders done by a Madonna; and the devil knows what he has crowded into their wretched heads. Down with popery then, the religion of hell, and may that happy state be erected, when truth and love shall embrace and reign. Come Lord Jesus, come quickly.
159. The author of John Buncle, junior, printed in 1776, a second volume of which appeared in 1778, endeavours to exculpate himself and brethren from this concise but severe satire which the author has passed upon his children, by observing that being already stamped with the character of a fool, and consequently no character to lose, he with more boldness published those letters, as the only chance left him, by which he might gain the good opinion of the reader, and as a means of wiping off the reproach their dear father had entailed upon them. Anecdotes of John Buncle, junior, vol. i. p. 72.
160. In solutis principiis: Dissolved. (TN)
161. Scotomia: An ailment whose symptoms are failing eyesight and dizziness. (TN)
162. Chachexy: Weakness and wasting of the body due to severe chronic illness (TN)
163. Protracter: Something which expands or prolongs something. (TN)
164. Sociorums: A phrase used by Swift.(Author's note). Companions (TN)
165. Mollia tempora fandi: "Times favourable for speaking." Virgil, éneid, Bk. IV l 293-294. (TN)
166. Sanity: Health (TN)
167. Sal polychrestum, or hepar sulphuris: Liver of sulphur, a mixture of various potassium sulphides and sulphates. (TN)
168. Ischuries: Difficult or painful in urination. (TN)
169. Gleet: A whitish purulent discharge, as from the urethra in gonorrhoea. (TN)
170. St. Anthony's fire: Erysipelas, a skin inflammation. (TN)
171. King's evil: Scrofula, an infection of the lymph nodes in the neck by the tuberculosis bacterium. It was so called because it was believed that being touched by a King would cure it. (TN)
172. Sal Glauberi: Sodium sulphate, often used as a laxative. (TN)
173. Gambozia: Gambodge, the resin of the Garcinia plant, used as a painter's colour and a powerful laxative. (TN)
174. Scammony: A resin extracted from the root of Convolvulus scammonia, used as a laxative. (TN)
175. Hydragogue: In pre-modern medicine, a drug which removed "excess moisture" from the body. (TN)
176. Descriptive Poem: see https://books.google.ie/books?id=kCBWAAAAYAAJ (TN)
177. Reader, that you may the better understand the conversation I had with this learned Carthusian, I must inform you what the Talmud, and other writings of the Rabbies are.
The Talmud, a celebrated piece of Jewish literature, full of Rabinical domination and enthusiasm. The Rabbins pretend, this book contains the oral laws, and other secrets, which God communicated to Moses. It consists of two parts, each of which is divided into several books. In the first part, which they call Mishna, is the text. In the other, is a sort of comment on the text, and this is styled the Gemara.
This oral law, or tradition of the Jews, was collected after the destruction of the Temple, A. D. 150, by Rabbi Judah, and is by them preferred before the scripture. They suppose it was orally delivered by Moses to Israel, and unlawful to be written; but when Jerusalem was destroyed, they were constrained to write it, lest it should be lost; but yet it was so written, as that none but themselves might understand it. This Mishna and Gemara complete the two Talmuds: that of Jerusalem, A. D. 230; and that of Babylon, five hundred years after Christ. Many parts of these Talmuds are translated by several learned men, who have endeavoured to render them intelligible: but in order to understand them fully, you must read the Jad Chaska, or Mishna Torah of Moses Maimonides, who was physician to the king of Egypt about six hundred years ago. This Rabbi hath comprised the substance of the Mishna and Gemara of the Talmud, in his books, and enabled us to understand all the Mishna with ease and pleasure. See likewise the Clavis Talmudica, Cock's Excerpta, and the works of the excellent Ludovicus de Campeigne du Veil, who had been a Jew, but after becoming, a Roman Catholic, went over to the Church of England, in which he continued for several years in the character of a great divine: but at last turned Baptist, and died a member of that Christian church; which lost him all his friends and interest. He died the beginning of this century, with the reputation of an upright Christian and a most learned man. There is no tolerable account given of him in any of the Biographical Dictionaries. What they say is short and next to nothing. And the Popish accounts are not only short, but false, and sheer calumny. I took much pains some years ago, to collect among the Baptists, and from others who knew this great man, everything I could get relating to him and his works, and formed what I had got into a life of him, which I did intend to insert in this place: but by some accident or other, it is gone. I cannot find it anywhere.
178. Exte Bethlehem &c.: "I will produce from the heart of Bethlehem a Messiah, that he may have dominion over Israel, and whose name is spoken for ever." (TN)
179. Fluor albus: A thick whitish discharge from the vagina. (TN)
180. Lienteria: A form of diarrhéa in which food passes through the body undigested. (TN)
181. A Postilla, reader, is a barbarous word made up of the words post illa, and was brought into use in the twelfth century, when the marginal explicators of the Bible left the margins, and under their text writ short and literal notes, before which they put the word postilla, instead of the words post illa, meaning the particular words in the text, from whence, by a letter, they referred to the little note below: but in the thirteenth century, the barbarous word took so much, that all the commentators following, appropriated the name to their most copious commentaries, contrary to the first practice in the use of the word, and for three centuries after the biblical learning was all postilla, till at length the word disappeared, according to the wonted inconstancy and agitation of all human things, and gave place to a new and fifth invention, called tractatus, or homily. This is the history of a POSTILLA.
182. Iam ne agnoscor, &c.: "If I meet one of them in the street, he passes me by as he might pass the tombstone of one long dead; it has fallen face upwards, loosened by time, but he wastes no moment deciphering it." Lucian, Timon the Misanthrope, Translated by H. W. Fowler and F. G. Fowler (TN)
183. Nomen amicitiae si quatenus expedit, &c:
"As long as is expedient, the name of friendship lives
Just as in dicing, Fortune smiles or lowers;
When good luck beckons, then your friend his gleeful service gives
But basely flies when ruin oéer you towers."
Petronius, Satyricon, Ch. 18, Translated by W. C. Firebaugh. (TN)
184. Eandem cum Timone nostro sortem, &c: "My situation is the same as Timon's: once supported by many friends while a favouring breeze filled my sails, now that the wild seas have been swelled by the stormy wind, I am abandoned on a shattered boat in the midst of the waters". Ovid, Letters from Pontus, Book II, No. 3 To Maximus l. 23-28 (TN)
185. Premial: Of the nature of a reward. (TN)
186. Old French: Or rather in bad French, as the writer was no Frenchman.
187. Nostre confession de foy &c.: [Author's Note] La Verite et la Religion en Visite, Alamagne, 1695. Translation: "Our profession of faith follows the first teachings of the evangelists, because we have the holy scriptures as our basis; but it has come to us, as to all who have detached themselves from the Roman church, from those whom the Papists have called the authors of the religion, that is to say, Luther, Calvin and other doctors who are the restorers of the truthful doctrines which were almost lost under the tyrannical rule of the Roman church. During which rule the Holy Scripture became unknown to the majority of Christians, reading it was forbidden. But by the will of Divine Providence the revolution came when everyone tried their utmost to unearth the truth; and as in every revolution there are chiefs and prominent people, so it was in the re-establishment of the truths which had been stifled for such a long time. Luther, Calvin, Arminius and Socinus were these illustrious men, and for them this religion was named. You can, if you like, say that Socinius was not the author of our religion and was not even the first, because it had not arrived in Poland until after there already been formed an assembly of people who had opinions resembling his: I say to you that the only reason that he is a hero of our faith, is that he has written the books, although hardly anyone has read them, because Socin being a lawyer was extremely long-winded and boring; and also that we do not wish to have any other book than the New Testament or any other teachers than the apostles. It is against our will that we are called Socinians or Arians; these are the names given us by the malignity of our enemies in order to make us hated. Among ourselves we use the name simply of Christians. But because of the disunity of Christianity, people say that it is not enough to use this universal name, and it is necessary to distinguish us by a particular designation, so we will agree to have the name of Unitarian Christians, to distinguish us from the Trinitarian Christians.
"This name of Unitarian Christians strongly distinguishes us from those who do not wish to subscribe to the true doctrine of Jesus Christ, and who distort it in unjustifiable ways; we giving credence to the words of Jesus Christ in the 17th Chapter of the Gospel of John, when he said "Father, the hour is come; glorify thy Son, that thy Son also may glorify thee: as thou hast given him power over all flesh, that he should give eternal life to as many as thou hast given him. And this is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent." The Apostle St. Paul gives the same doctrine in the 8th Chapter of the epistle to the Corinthians, saying "But to us there is but one God, the Father, of whom are all things, and we in him; and one Lord Jesus Christ, by whom are all things, and we by him" It is because of this doctrine that we call ourselves Unitarian Christians, be cause we believe in only one God, He who was father and God of our lord Jesus Christ, Whom Jesus Christ has commanded us to adore, and Whom he adored himself, calling Him not only our God, by also his God, as he said "I go to my father and your father, my God and your God."[John 20:17. TN]
"So you can see that we adhere to the Divine truth. We have a religious veneration for the Holy Scripture. Despite that we are humble servants of the Trinitarians, if they do not hold it against us that we do not come to their altars, and have the forbearance to allow us our simplicity in Jesus Christ, and do not wish to force us to profess doctrines beyond those in Holy Scripture." La Verité et la Religion en Visite, Allegmagne, 1695.
188. While I waited at the inn, till the horses had eaten their corn, the landlord brought me a paper, dropped, by a lady he knew not, some days before at his house. He added, it was a curiosity, and worth my serious consideration.
A MORNING AND EVENING PRAYER.
"Almighty and ever-living God, have mercy on me. Forgive me all my sin, and make my heart one, to fear thy glorious fearful name, Jehovah. Guide me with thy counsel, I beseech thee, and be the strength of my life and my portion for ever.
"O Lord Jehovah, defend me from the power and malice, the assaults and attempts, of all my adversaries, and keep me in health and safety, in peace and innocence. These things I ask in the name of Jesus Christ, thy Son, our Lord; and in his words I call upon thee as, Our Father, who art in heaven, &c."
This prayer pleased me very much. In the most beautiful manner, as well as in a few words, it expresses all we need ask from heaven; and if Miss Dudgeon of Richmondshire was the composer of it, as I have been assured since, upon enquiry, I here place it to her honour, as a monument of her piety and sense; and in hopes the illustrious of her sex will use so short and excellent a form of devotion in their closets morning and night.
There is an expression in this prayer, which for some time I could not well comprehend the meaning of it; that is, Make my heart one: but on considering it, I found it supported by the greatest authorities.
Among the sayings of Pythagoras, one is, be simply thyself. Reduce thy conduct to one single aim, by bringing every passion into subjection, and acquiring that general habit of self-denial, which comprehends temperance, moderation, patience, government, and is the main principle of wisdom. Be simply thyself, and so curb desire, and restrain the inclinations, and control the affections, that you may be always able to move the passions as reason shall direct. Let not every foremost fancy, or every forward appearance, have the least mastery over you; but view them on every side by the clear light of reason, and be no further influenced by the imaginations of pleasure, and apprehensions of evil, than as the obvious relations and nature of things allow. Let the result of a perception which every rational mind may have of the essential difference between good and evil, be the cause or ground of obligation. This will add greatly to quiet, and be productive of much real felicity. It will render every present condition supportable, brighten every prospect, and always incline us more to hope than to fear. This is the doctrine of Pythagoras.
I likewise find that David expresses the same thought in the 86th Psalm, ver. 11, which is rendered in the Bible translation, "Unite my heart to fear thy name;" in the Common-Prayer Book, "O knit my heart unto thee, that I may fear thy name:" but the Hebrew is, "Make my heart one," to fear thy name; meaning, Let the fear of thee be the one ruling disposition of my soul, in opposition to the double-minded man, which the Hebrew elegantly expresses by a "heart and a heart;" one that draws to the riches, pleasures, and honours of this world; and another to the practice of all virtue.
As to the other part of the prayer, which has the words égloriouséfearfuléJehovah; whereas in the 86th Psalm it is only said, "to fear thy name;" the author certainly took them from Deuteronomy, ch. xxviii. ver. 58. The design of the dreadful threatenings in this chapter set before the people, is there thus expressed, "that thou mayest fear this glorious and fearful name, Jehovah thy God;" or as in our translation, "the Lord thy God."éAnd therefore I think these words are very finely used in this prayer.
"It is amazing to me," says the Rev. Mr. Peters, rector of St. Mabyn, "that throughout the Bible, the translators have everywhere changed the word Jehovah for the word Lord, when God himself gave the word Jehovah as his name to he uttered; and as in this word the whole mystery of the Jewish and Christian dispensations seem to have been wrapped up.
"Say to the people, Ami Jehovah. I am Jehovah. Ye shall know that I Jehovah am your God, which bringeth you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians." Exod. ch. vi. ver. 6, 7. Deut. ch. vi. ver. 4. "Hear, O Israel, Jehovah our God is one Jehovah."
Then as to this word's comprehending the two dispensations, a good writer observes that, though God was known to his true worshippers by many other names, as God Almighty, the High God, the Everlasting God, &c. yet Jehovah was his one peculiar name; a name which he had appointed to himself, in preference to all others, and by which he declared by Moses he would be distinguished for the time to come.
And as of all the names of God, this seems to be the most expressive of his essence, as it can only be derived from the root which signifies to be, and denotes the one eternal self-existent Being, from whom all other things derive their being, and on whom they must depend;éAs the word does likewise signify 'makes to be what was promised or foretold,' and by such meaning declares, as often as the word is repeated, that Jehovah our God is not only self-existent, and the Creator of the world, but Him in whom all divine prophecies and predictions centre; it follows, in my opinion, that we should utter this awful name in our addresses to God, and not, like the Jews, through a superstition omit it, and use another instead of it." This passage is to be found in an excellent Preface to the octavo edition of his admirable Dissertation on the Book of Job, in reply to that part of the Divine Legation of Moses demonstrated, in which the author, my Lord of Gloucester, sets himself to prove, that this book is a work of imagination, or dramatic composition, no older than Ezra the priest, whom he supposes to be the writer of it, in the year before Christ 467, or the year 155, in the twentieth year of the reign of Artaxerxes, king of Persia, when Daniel's seventy weeks begin; that is, the period of 490 years, that were to be fulfilled before the passion of our Saviour. And further, according to the author of the Legation, that this 'allegorical drama or poem,' was written to quiet the minds of the Jewish people under the difficulties of their captivity, and to assure them, as represented by the person of Job, of those great temporal blessings which three prophets had predicted.
Now in the Preface to the book aforementioned, in answer to all this and fully and beautifully answered it is, you will find the passage relating to the word Jehovah, and more than I have quoted from it.
As to Pythagoras the Samean, mentioned in this note, on account of his saying, "Be simply thyself;" he was famous in the 60th Olympiad, as Jamblicus informs us; that is, his Elikia, or Reign of Fame, began in the first year of this Olympiad, which was the year before Christ 540; for 60 x 4 gives 240 é 777 leaves 537 + 3, the plus years of the Olympiad; i. e. 2, 3, 4 = 540. And he died in the 4th year of the 70th Olympiad, that is, the year before Christ 497: for 70 X 4 = 280 é 777 remains 497: there are no plus years to be added here, as it happened in the 4th or last year of the Olympiad. This philosopher was contemporary with, and a near friend to, the renowned Phalaris, who was murdered in the year before Christ 556, when the Belshazzar of Daniel ascended the throne of Babylon. And as Pythagoras lived to the age of 90, according to Diogenes, he must have been born in the beginning of the reign of Nebuchadnezzar; the year this conqueror took Jerusaicm, and its king Zedekiah, which was Olymp. 47. 3, and of consequence before Christ 590: for 47 X 4 = 188 é 777, remains 580 + 1 = 590. This was 54 years before Thespis invented tragedy,*[see note below] and 11 years before the birth of éschylus, the reformer of tragedy. Cyrus was then in the 10th year of his age.
It is likewise evident from hence, that Pythagoras must have lived through the reigns of Cyrus, Cambyses, and the greatest part of the reign of Darius Histaspes, who slew Smerdis the Magi, and is called in scripture Ahasuerus, the king of Persia, who married Esther, and ordered Haman the Amalekite to be hanged on the gallows he had erected for Mordecai the Jew, in the year before Christ 510.
Note, David was before Pythagoras 519 years.
Reader, As to the word Elikia, which I have used to express the reign or time of flourishing of Pythagoras, I have an observation or two to make in relation to it, which I think worth your attending to.
Clemens Alexandrinus says, Stromata, p. 40, 'The years from Moses to Solomon's Elikia are 610; to wit
| Moses's life |
120 |
| From his death to David's accession |
450 |
| David's reign |
40 |
| Total |
610 |
From this passage it is plain, that the Elikia of Solomon is not meant of his nativity, but of the beginning of his reign, when he was 33 years of age.
It is then very surprising that Dodwell should insist upon it, that Elikia always signifies nativity. It is the more wonderful, as Dodwell quotes this passage from Clement; and as it is impossible to make out 610, without coming to the 33d of Solomon, as I have reckoned it.
Nay, in another place of the Stromata, Clement says, Isaiah, Hosea, and Micah lived after the Elikia of Lycurgus; where he can only mean the time when that lawgiver flourished; for, from the Destruction of Troy to the Akmé of Lycurgus, was 290 years: and from Solomon, in whose time Troy was taken, to the time of the prophets, was 360 years.
Thus does learning accommodate things. Dodwell wanted to fit a passage in Antilochus to his own calculation and so 312 years from the Elikia of Pythagoras, that is, says Dodwell, from the nativity of the philosopher, he meant taking the word in that sense, to the death of Epicurus, brings us exactly to the time. Who can forbear smilingé A favourite notion is to many learned men a sacred thing. Dodwell settles his passage in Antilochus to his mind, by perverting the word Elikia.
This, to be sure, in profane things, can do no great harm: but when the practice is brought into things sacred, it is a detriment to mankind. Some divines, for example, to support a notion as unreasonable as it is dear to them, tell us that the word Isos signifies strict equality, not like: and that when St. Paul says Isa Theo, we must construe it, Jesus Christ was strictly equal to the most High God. This is sad construction, when Homer, Euripides, éschylus, make the word Isos to import no more than like. Isanemos, swift as the wind; Isatheos phos, like a God; Isanerios, like a dream.
And when a divine is positive that os and kathos, as, and even as, words occurring in the New Testament, signify a strict equality, and not some sort of likeness; this is miserable perversion, and hurts the Christian religion very greatly; as they endeavour, by such a given sense, to prove that the man Christ Jesus is to be honoured with the same divine honours we offer to God the Father Almighty, by the command and example of Jesus, who was sent from God, and was a worshipper of God; who lived obedient to the laws of God, preached those laws, and died for them in the cause of God; who was raised from the dead by God, and now sits on God's right hand; intercedes with God, and in his Gospel owns his Father to be his and our only true God. This is sad accommodation. Though the words never signify more than a degree of likeness in the Greek classics, yet our headstrong orthodox monks will have them to mean strict equality; and Alexander the Great and Alexander the Coppersmith are the same Being. Amazing! Gentlemen; here is but One Ball, and out of itself you shall see this one ball send forth two other balls, big as it, and yet not lose one atom of its weight and grandeur. Hocus pocus, Reverendissimi spectatores, the One is Three.
And now, Gentlemen, be pleased to observe the miracle reversed. Pilluli pilluli, congregate, Presto presto, unite: observate, Signori Dottissimi, the Three are One. Such is the hocus pocus the monks have made of their Trinity.
*Note: Olymp. 61. I. Selden's Comment on the Arundel Marble.
189. See Memoirs of Several Ladies of Great Britain, 1755, 8vo.
190. Cleanthes was a native of Assus in Lysia, in Asia Minor, and so very poor, when he came to Athens to study, that, for his support, he wrought at nights in drawing water for the gardens, and in grinding behind the mill. He attended the lectures of Zeno, succeeded him in his school, and grew into very high esteem with the Athenians. He lived to ninety-nine, but the year he died we know not. His master Zeno died 342 years before Christ, and had conversed with Socrates and Plato.
The ancient academics were Plato, the disciple of Socrates; Speucippus, Zenocrates, Polemo, Crates, and Crantor; and from Crates, the fifth academic, sprung the old stoics, to wit, Crates, Zeno, Cleanthes, Chrysippus, and Diogenes the Babylonian; not he that was surly and proud. Cicero in his works often mentions this Babylonian, the stoic. We find in the Roman history, that he was living in the year of Rome 599, that is, 155 years before Christ; but when he died we know not. These gentlemen of the two old schools were to be sure great philosophers, excellent men; but then, to be strictly impartial, we must own, that all they knew in relation to the will of God, and a kingdom to come, was but poor moral learning, in respect to what is written in the New Testament for our instruction, if we will lay aside our fancies and systems, and let reason explain revelation. The Christian religion is really more for the glory of God, and the good of mankind, than reason, without inspiration, has been able to teach. Christianity, without the additions and supplements of monks, is not only above all just exception, but preferable to any other scheme.
191. Luctus: Distress or suffering. (TN)
192. Incide: to dissolve or loosen mucus, etc. (TN)
193. In acidis posita est omni curatio: "In acid things are all cures"(TN)
194. Testacea: shells, or other calcareous substances. (TN)
195. Alexipharmics: Antidotes to poisons. (TN)
196. Indoles: Inherent qualities. (TN)
197. Vesicatories: Substances which raise blisters when applied to the skin. (TN)
198. Perspiratory emunctories: Sweat and sebaceous glands.
199. Incendium: A fierce burning fire. (TN)
200. Crassamentum: Coagulated blood. (TN)
201. Colluctation: A conflict or struggle (TN)
202. Despume: To clear off scum or froth. (TN)
203. Subsultus: Twitching. (TN)
204. Rad. Ipecacuanha: Root of the plant Carapichea ipecacuanha, used as an emetic and expectorant. (TN)
205. Bole: A kind of absorbent clay used as an antidote to poisons. (TN)
206. conserva lujulae: Preserve of wood-sorrel (Oxalis); ex sem. fr. cum amygd. in aq. Hordei: of the seeds with almonds in barley water.(TN)
207. Radicated: Firmly rooted.(TN)
208. This article relating to the encroachments of the clergy, was not found among Miss Spence's papers, but is inserted here as in a proper place.
209. Ordinary: The bishop of the diocese. (TN)
210. Discourse of Laws, pp. 1, 66, and New Abridgement of the Law, p. 398.
211. New Abridgement of the Law, p. 398.
212. Coction: Purification by heating.(TN)
213. Affirmo sanctissime, &c.: "I declare most devoutly, that there is nothing better, nothing safer, nothing more effective, for grinding in the guts, that I have ever seen, than antimony simply powdered and steeped in good strong white wine. Taken at dawn in the smallest quantity, twenty or thirty drops, it causes profuse vomiting, and also a very therapeutic sweating. This medicine is easily prepared, but very powerful." (TN)
214. Aqua fortis: Nitric acid. Aqua regia: A mixture of nitric and hydrochloric acids. (TN)
215. Scorié: Slag or dross produced in metal-refining.
216. Caliginosa nocte premit deus: "God hides it in darkest night." Horace, Odes Bk. 3. 29. l. 30.
217. These lines from the Antiquities of Buissard, are a real inscription on a tomb in Italy, which this antiquary found in his travels, and copied it as a curiosity to the world. Homonéa was a great beauty at the court of the Emperor Honorius, and married to Atimetus, a courtier and favourite, who preferred her to the most illustrious of ladies of that time, on account of her extraordinary charms, and uncommon perfections; but she did not long enjoy the honour and happiness she was married into. Before she was twenty, death snatched her away, in the year of the reign of Honorius, A. D. 401, and the following beautiful epitaph was cut on her monument, and remains to this day; I place it here for the entertainment of my readers, and likewise La Fontaine's elegant translation of it.
HOMONéA'S EPITAPH.
Si pensare animas sinerent crudelia fata,
Et posset redimi morte aliena salus
Quantulacunque meé debentur tempora vitae
Pensarem pro te, cara Homomea, libens.
At nunc quod possum, fugiam lucemque deosque,
Ut te matura per stuga morte sequar.
(Atimetus the husband, is the speaker of these six lines.)
Parce tuam conjux fletu quassare juventam,
Fataque merendo sollicitare mea.
Nil prosunt lacrumas, nec possunt fata moveri.
Viximus; hic omnes exitus unus habet.
Parce, ita non unquam similem experiare dolorem.
Et faveant votis numina cuncta tuis!
Quodque mihi eripuit mors immatura juventé,
Hoc tibi victuro proroget ulterius.
(Homonéa is supposed to speak these eight lines, to her husband; and then relates her case to the traveller, who is passing by.)
Tu qui secura procedis mente parumper
Siste gradum quéso, verbaque pauca lege.
Illa ego qué claris fueram prélata puellis,
Hoc Homonéa brevi condita sum tumulo,
Cui formam paphia, et charites, tribuere decorem,
Quam Pallus cunctis artibus eruduit
Nondum bis denos étas compleverat annos,
Injecere manus invida fata mihi.
Nec pro me queror; hoc morte mihi est tristius ipsa,
Méror Atimeti conjugis ille mihi.
Sit tibi terra levis, mulier dignissima vita
Quéque tuis olim perfruerere bonis.
(These two lines may be the words of the Public, or of whoever erected the monument to the memory of Homonéa.)
Now see how finely La Fontaine has done this inscription into verse.
Si l'on pouvoit donner ses jours pour ceux d'un autre
Et que par cet échange on contentat le sort,
Quels que soint les momens qui me restent encore
Mon ame, avec plaisir, racheteroit la votre.
Mais le destin l'ayant autrement arreté,
Je ne séaurois qui fuir les dieux et la clarté,
Pour vous suivre aux enfers dune mort avancée.
Quittez, O chére epoux, cette triste pensée,
Vous alterez en vain les plus beaux de vos ans:
Cessez de fatiguer par de cris impuissans,
La parque et le destin, deétez inflexibles.
Mettez fin a des pleurs qui ne le touchent point;
Je ne suis plus: tout tent a ce supreme poinct.
Ainsi nul accident, par des coups si sensibles
Ne vienne a l'avenir traverser vos plaisirs!
Ainsi l'Olimpe entier s'accorde a vos desirs!
Veéille enfin atropos, an tours de vétre vie
Ajouter l'etendué a la mienne ravire!
Et toy, passant tranquille, apprens quels sont nos maux,
Daigne icy d'arréter un moment a les lire,
Celle qui preferée aux partis les plus hauts,
Sur le céur d'Atimete, acquir un doux empire;
Qui tenoit de Venus la beauté de ses traits,
De Pallas son séavoir, des graces ses attraits,
Gist sous ce peu d'espace en la tombe enserrée,
Vingt soleils n'avoient pas ma carriere eclaires,
Le sort jetta sur mois ses envieuses mains:
C'est Atimete seul qui fait que je m'en plains,
Ma mort m'afflige moins que sa douleur amere.
O femme, que la terre é tes os soit legéreé
Femme digne de vivre; et bientét pusses tu
Recommencer de voir les traits de la lumieres,
Et recouvrer le bien que ton ceur a perdu.
Or thus in prose.
S'il suffisoit aux destins qu'on donat sa vie pour celle d'un autre, et qu'il fét possible de racheter ainsi ce que l'on ayme, quelque soit le nombre d'annees que les parques m'ont accorde, je le donnerois avec plaisir pour vous tirer de tombeau, ma chére Homonée; mais cela ne se pouvant, ce que je puis faire est de fuér le jour et la presence de dieux, pour aller bientot vous suivre le long du Styx.
O mon chere epoux, cessez de vous affiiger; ne corrompez plus le fleurs de vos ans; ne fatiguez plus ma destinée par de plaintes continuelles: toutes les larmes sont icy vaines; on ne sauroit émouvoir la parque: me voila morte, chacun arrive a ce terme la. Cessez done encore un fois: ainsi puissiez-vous ne sentir jamais une semblahle douleur! Ainsi tous les dieux soient favorable a vos souhaits! Et veéille la parque ajoéter a votre vie ce qu'elle a ravi a la mienne.
Et toy qui passes tranquillement, arrete icy je te prie un moment ou deux, afin de lire ce peu de mots.
Moy, cette Homonée que preferra Atimete a de filles considerables; moy a qui Venus donna la beauté, les graces et les agrémens; que Pallas enfin avoit instruite dans tous les arts, me voila icy renfermée dans un monument de peu d'espace. Je n'avois pas encore vingt ans quand le mort jetta ses mains envieuses sur ma personne. Ce n'est pas pour moy que je m'en plains, c'est pour mon mari, de qui la douleur m'est plus difficiic supporter que ma propre mort.
Que la terre to soit legere, O épouse digne de retourner a la vie, et de recouvrer un jour que to a perdu!
The legend on the monument of Homonéa, translated into English.
Atimetus.
If it was allowed to lay down one's life for another, and possible by such means, to save what we loved from the grave, whatever length of days was allotted me, I would with pleasure offer up my life, to get my Homonéa from the tomb; but as this cannot be done, what is in my power I will do, fly from the light of heaven, and follow you to the realms of lasting night.
Homonéa.
My dearest Atimetus, cease to torment your unhappy mind, nor let grief thus feed on your youth, and make life bitterness itself. I am gone in the way appointed for all the mortal race: all must be numbered with the dead. And since fate is inexorable, and tears are in vain, weep not for me, once more I conjure you. But may you be ever happy, may Providence preserve you, and add to your life those years which have been taken from mine.
The person who erected the monument to the memory of Homonéa.
Stop, traveller, for a few minutes, and ponder on these lines.
Here lies Homonéa, whom Atimitus preferred to the greatest and most illustrious women of his time. She had the form of Venus, the charms of the Graces; and an understanding and sensibility, which demonstrated that wisdom had given to an angel's form, a mind more lovely. Before she was twenty, she was dissolved. And as she had practised righteousness, by carrying it well to those about her, and to all that were specially related, she parted with them, as she had lived with them, in justice and charity, in modesty and submission, in thankfulness and peace. Filled with divine thoughts, inured to contemplate the perfections of God, and to acknowledge his providence in all events, she died with the humblest resignation to the divine will, and was only troubled that she left her husband a mourner. Excellent Homonéa.
May the earth lie light upon thee, and in the morning of the resurrection, may you awake again to life, and rise to that immortality and glory, which God, the righteous Judge, will give to true worth and dignity; as rewards to a life adorned with all virtues and excellencies, the dikaiomata, that is, the righteous acts of the Saints.
218. Edmund Curll: He was a real person and figured prominently in Pope's Dunciad. See Wikipedia article https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edmund_Curll for details of his disgraceful but highly successful career.(TN)
219. Baker-kneed: Knock-kneed; this was often regarded as a sign of effeminacy. (TN)
220. The Irish gentleman: Again, a real person. His name was Cotter and he was hanged in 1719. (TN)
221. We can do all things through Christ who strengthens us: Philippians ch. 4. v. 13. (TN)
222. Simplex munditis: "Simple Elegance." The name of a poem by Ben Johnson, which includes the lines:
Give me a look, give me a face
That makes simplicity a grace;
Robes loosely flowing, hair as free:
Such sweet neglect more taketh me
Than all th' adulteries of art;
They strike mine eyes, but not my heart.
(TN)
223. linea alba: The umbilical vein (TN)
224. SCOTT'S CEBES: As the Table of Cebes does best in prose, and Jeremy Collier the Nonjuror's translation of this fine mythological picture is not good, the reader will find another version of Cebes' Table, as an appendix at the end of this volume. I made it at the request of a young lady, who did not like Collier's version. The fine picture in his English, looks more like a work in the cant language of L'Estrange, or Tom Brown, than the ancient and charming painting of Cebes the Theban philosopher. It is fitter to make the learned men of a beer-house laugh, than to delight and improve people of breeding and understanding.
(TNéCebes was an ancient Greek philosopher. His Table (or Tablet), an explanation of an allegorical depiction of human life, was translated into English verse by Thomas Scott in 1754.)
225. In Claude's reply to Arnaud, the French papist, we are told it was the humour of the Prince of Condée, to have a man of wood on horseback, dressed like a field-officer, with a lifted broad sword in its hand; which figure was fastened in the great saddle, and the horse it was on always kept by the great Condé's side, when he travelled or engaged in the bloody field. Fearless the man of wood appeared in many a well-fought day; but as they pursued the enemy one afternoon through a forest, in riding hard, a bough knocked off the wooden warrior's head; yet still he galloped on after flying foes, to the amazement of the enemy, who saw a hero pursuing without a head. Claude applies this image to popery.
226. Then Jove omnipotent &c.: Hesiod, The Theogony, l. 690 ff., Tr. William Broome.(TN)
227. The case was this: As I was returning one summer's evening from Tallaght hills, where I had been to see a young lady, mentioned in the beginning of my first volume, I saw in a deep glen before me two men engaged; a black of an enormous size, who fought with one of those large broadswords which they call in Ireland, an Andrew Ferraro; and a little thin man with a drawn rapier. The white man I perceived was no match for the black, and must have perished very soon, as he had received several wounds, if I had not hastened up to his relief. I knew him to be my acquaintance, young FITZGIBBONS, my neighbour in the same square of the college that I lived in; and immediately drawing an excellent Spanish tuck I always wore, took the Moor to myself, FITZGIBBONS not being able to stand any longer, and a glorious battle ensued. As I was a master at the small sword in those days, I had the advantage of the black by my weapon, as the broad sword is but a poor defence against a rapier, and gave him three wounds for every slight one I received: but at last he cut me quite through the left collar-bone, and in return, I was in his vast body a moment after. This dropped the robber, who had been a trumpeter to a regiment of horse; and FITZGIBBONS and I were brought, by some people passing that way, to his father's house at Dolphin's Barn, a village about a mile from the spot where this affair happened. A surgeon was sent for, and we recovered in a few weeks' time; but my collar-bone was much more troublesome to me, than the wounds FITZGIBBONS had were to him, though he lost much more blood. This was the ground of the obligation the doctor mentioned, in his conversation with me.
228. When Vesalius began to dissect human bodies, he was considered by the people as an impious cruel man, and before he could practice publicly, was obliged to get a decision in his favour from the Salamanca divines. "C'est ce qui engage Charles V. de faire une consultation aux theologiens de Salamanque, pour savoir si en conscience on pouvoit dissequer un corps humain, pour en connoitre la structure. [It was this which moved Charles V. to consult with the theologians of Salamaca, to know if one could in conscience dissect a human cadaver, to learn its structure]" Memoirs de Niceron. They would not let him settle in France, but the republic of Venice gave him a professor's chair at Padua, where he dissected publicly, and taught anatomy seven years. He was but eighteen, when he published his famous book, La Fabrigue du Corps Humain, which was the admiration of all men of science; and a little after, he made a present of the first skeleton the world ever saw, to the university of Basle; where it is still to be seen. This great man, Andrew Vesal, was born the last of April, 1512; and in the 58th year of his age, October 15, 1564, he was shipwrecked on the isle of Zante, and in the deserts there was famished to death. His body was found by a goldsmith of his acquaintance, who happened to land there not long after, and by this man buried. Vesal's works were published by Herman Boerhaave, in two volumes, folio, in 1725. Every physician ought to have them.
229. Omnibus in terris &c.: Juvenal, Satires, X, l. 1-6
"In all the lands that stretch from Cadiz to the Ganges and the Dawn,
There are few who, free of a cloud of errors, can discern true good
From a host of opposites. What indeed do we wish for or fear that is
Rationalé How often is what we conceive so far from wrong-headed
That we donét regret both the effort, and the fulfilment of our desireé" Tr. A.S. Kline (TN)
230. The Moriscos were expelled Spain, in the year 1492; the inquisition was erected four years after, and the doings at Thorn, by which the quantity of blood formerly spilt on the ground by ever-cursed popery was increased, in the year 1721.
231. Le Diable a quatre: "The Devil to pay", a card game. (TN)
232. Bear me, &c.: from On the Seat of War in Flanders by William Broome (1689-1745) (TN)
233. Cunnus teterrima belli Causa: "A cunt is the most shameful cause of war" Horace, Satires I. 3. l. 106-7. (TN)
234. Notwithstanding all the fine learning of Dr. Law, I think he is mistaken in many of his notions, and especially in his Notes on Archbishop King's Origin of Evil; as I intend to show in my Notes aforementioned. His Tritheism likewise requires a few animadversions; which I shall humbly offer with plainness, fairness, and freedom.
235. Dr. Sherlock, bishop of London died at Fulham, after a long and lingering illness, Saturday, July 18, 1761, three months after the great and excellent bishop Hoadley, who departed this life at Chelsea, April 20, 1761. Sherlock and Hoadley never agreed; and which of them was right I attempt to show in my Notes on Men and Things and Books. Which will be published as soon as possible. Why I think Hoadley's Sermons far preferable to Sherlock's, vastly beautiful though some things are in the Discourses of the latter; and that my Lord of Winchester's Plain Account of the Supper is a most rational and fine performance; as gold to earth in respect of all that has been written against this book. Why, I say, all Hoadley's Tracts are matchless and invulnerable, and that he was victor in the Bangorian controversy, the Reader will find in many considerations on these subjects in the book called Notes, &c. aforementioned.
236. It is a question with some, if this book was not written by the Doctor's visionary daughter, or by her and the Rev. Athanasian bigot, her brother. But as I knew the Doctor after he was a little cracked with imaginary religion, and have heard him talk as in this book, I am positive it is his.
237. William Law, the father of our Methodists, and the disciple of Jacob Behmen the theosopher, died at King's Cliff near Nottingham, April 13, 1761, seven days before bishop Hoadley, against whom he was a bitter writer in the Bangorian controversy. I knew this famous visionary very well, and shall remark largely on his writings in my Notes relating to Men and Things and Books.
Law was the most amazing compound I have ever seen. He was a man of sense, a fine writer, and a fine gentleman; and yet the wildest enthusiast that ever appeared among men. His temper was charming, sweet, and delightful; and his manners quite primitive and uncommonly pious: he was all charity and goodness, and so soft and gentle in conversation, that I have thought myself in company with one of the men of the first church at Jerusalem while with him. He had likewise the justest notions of Christian temper and practice, and recommended them in so insinuating a manner, that even a rake would hear him with pleasure. I have not seen any like him among the sons of men in these particulars. It was wrong to put him in the Dunciad, and call him one Law, as Pope does. He was really a very extraordinary man; and to his honour be it remembered, that he had the great concern of human life at heart, took much pains in the pulpit, and from the press, witness his two fine books On a Devout Life; to make men fear God and keep his commandments. He was a good man indeed.
But what strange books did he write! His Appeal to the Deists, His Spirit of Prayer and Love, his Earnest and Serious Answer to Trapp; his Notes and Illustrations on Behmen; his Replies to Hoadley; and, what is stranger still, his abuse of bishop Hoadley, in his Appeal I have mentioned.
Here, had I room, I would relate a very curious conversation that passed between Dr. Theophilus Bolton, archbishop of Cashel in Ireland, a most excellent, most sensible, and most learned man, and me, on the third night's sale of archbishop King's library in Dublin, in relation to Mr Law. It happened on his Lordship's buying Jacob Behmen's Works for a pound, and then asking me who stood by him, if I had read them, and could enable him to understand themé But this I must place in my Notes aforementioned.
238. The Greek Words which Collier renders town-manufacture, are πολιτικον αναθημα [politikon anathema]
239. And what he calls outlandish, is ξενος [xenos]
240. A strange significant rate: The Greek is, διελεγετο πολλα και σπουδαια. [dielegeto polla kai spoudaia]
241. Wise, virtuous, and blessed: Εσεσθε φρονιμοι και ευδαιμονες [Esesthe phronimoi kai eudaimones]
242. Abandoned, blind, and miserable: αφρονες, και καικοδαιμονες, και πικροι, και αμαθεις. [aphrones, kai kaikodaimones, kai pikroi, kai amatheis]
243. The Sphinx: This monster, who lived near Thebes, was said to be the daughter of Typhon and Echidna, and had a head and face like a girl, wings like a bird, and in the rest like a dog.
244. A frightful lean man: This man, Collier calls, an ill-looking skeleton of a fellow, with scarce a tatter to his limbs. Cant! The Greek is, τις δυσειδης λεπτος, και γυμνος [tis duseidos leptos, kai gumnos]
245. The three enclosures in Cebes, allude to the division of human life into the sensual, the studious, and the virtuous.
246. They get her sovereign remedy: Collier translates it,éthey enter into a course of physic. The Greek is, και πιοζι πηυ καθαρτικην δυνμον τουτον[kai piozi pen kathartikon dounmon touton]. And what Collier a little before translates, 'She opens a vein, and gives them a glass of her constitution' when they have taken the stirrup cup, brimmers: the lasses frisk about : salute with a deal of welcome, and then lug them off, some to ruin, and some to the gallows. All this, and much more night-cellar stuff, the Theban philosopher had not an idea of, as any one may see who can turn to the Greek. How Collier learned such guard-phrases, and why he used them, seemed for some time very strange to me, till I was informed by one who knew this divine well, that in the days of his youth, he kept very low company, and was known at several night-houses. In that period of his life, he translated Cebes.
247. Protended: Stretched out (TN).
248. In this lightsome field: Λειμωνοειδης και φωτι πολλω καταλαμπομενο [leimonoeides kai photi pollo katalampomeno]
249. An expressive type of certainty: Καθεστηκυια το προσοπον, [kathestekuia to prosopon] constanti vultu or constans vultum.
250. I beseech you, brethren, &c.: Romans, 12:6.
251. Before the thief, &c.: The Latin of these two lines is Cantabit vacuus coram latrone viator, which Dryden translates thus:
The beggar sings, ev'n when he sees the place
Beset with thieves, and never mends his pace.
Shadwell, who was Poet Laureate in King William's time, does it thus :
While the poor man, void of all precious things,
In company of thieves, jogs on and sings.
252. Could he, &c.: Juvenal here means Democritus.
253. Fastening petitions &c.:The Latin of these two lines is é
Propter qué fas est genua incerare deorum.
Which Dryden does not translate at all. His lines are é
He laughs at all the vulgar cares and fears:
At their vain triumphs, and their vainer tears:
An equal temper in his mind he found.
When Fortune flatter'd him, and when she frown'd:
'Tis plain from hence that what our vows request.
Are hurtful things, or useless at the best.
254. Dryden's translation of this passage is thus:
Sejanus, almost first of Roman names,
The great Sejanus, crackles in the flames:
Form'd in the forge, the pliant brass is laid
On anvils. And of head and limbs are made,
Pans, cans, and piss-pots, a whole kitchen trade.
The Latin is:
Jam strident ignes, jam follibus atque caminis
Ardet adoratum populo caput, et crepat ingens
Sejanus. Deinde ex facie toto orbe secunda
Fiunt urceoli, pelves, sartago, patellae.
255. Sejanus, the vile minister of Tiberius, was executed by order of the Emperor, A. D. 31, and to prevent his suspecting any such thing, and providing against the calamity, which the favourite might easily have done, as he commanded the Praetorians, and had all power given him, his master named him his colleague in the consulship; which of all things Sejanus most desired, and thought the highest mark of his sovereign's affection. So true it is that we know not what we wish for.
256. And made the world obey his beck: Julius César, who acquired the sovereign sway by art and slaughter, and when a tyrant, fell by his own desires.
257. Jobbernowl: A fool. (TN)
258. Much more than virtue does inflame, &c.: The Latin of this passage, which is truly beautiful, is:
Et laudis titulique Cupido
Hésuri saxis cinerum custodibus : ad qué
Discutienda valent sterilis mala robora ficus:
Quandoquidem data sunt ipsis quoque fata sepulchris.
Which Dryden renders in the following manner:
This avarice of praise in times to come,
Those long inscriptions crowded on the tomb,
Should some wild fig-tree take her native bent,
And heave below the gaudy monument,
Would crack the marble titles, and disperse
The characters of all the lying verse.
For sepulchres themselves must crumbling fall
In time's abyss, the common grave of all.
259. Saburra: The greatest street in Rome.
260. Go, madman, &c.: The Latin is:
I demens currepur Alpes.
Ut pueris placeas, et declamatio fias.
Dryden has given it thus:
Go, climb the rugged Alps, ambitious fool,
To please the boys, and be a theme at school.
