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periculum sit, haud facile dictu est."

Utrumque optime perspexit Augustiuus in Joh. Homil. 53. "Quosdam nimia suæ voluntatis fiducia extulit in superbiam, et quos dam nimia suæ vocationis diffidentia dejecit in negligentiam. Illi dicunt, Ut quid rogainus Deum, ne vincamur tentatione, quod in nostra est potestate? Isti dicunt, Ut quid conamur bene vivere, quod in Dei cst potestate? O Domine! O Pater! qui es in cœlis, ne nos in feras in quainlibet istarum tentationum, sed libera nos a malo." Sed dicere quid sola gratia possit, quid cum et sub gratiâ liberum arbitrium possit, pericui plenum est. Quemadmodum enim non raro contingit, ut qui duobus inimice concurrentibus, dirimendæ pugnæ, medium se interponit, amborum in se iram atque impetum convertat, itidem in controversiis istius modi plurimum usu venire solet, ut qui veritatis simul ac pacis studio ductus, gratia liberique arbitrii concordiam profite tur, nec agnoscendo liberum arbitrium, satisfaciat illis qui ejus inune nomen putant, nec gratiam prædicando, iis se probet, quibus sola arbitrii libertas utramque paginam facit. Voss. Hist. Pélag. lib. i. c. 1.

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Qui primi eos, qui patres vocantur, sic vocarunt, nescio. Credo, quibus corum authoritas usui erat, et quorum intererat, ut ita vocarentur. Nullo jure. Siquis enim scripta eorum sine præjudicio legat, quis non videt, primo, quam longe sæpe a vero aberrent, quam procul interdum a Scripturarum sensu abeant, quam palpabiles errores non raro errent. Nec hoc tantum; sed secundo, quam sæpe a scipsis dissideant, tanquam si dormitantes quædam scripsissent? Imo tertio, quam crebro inter se > dissentiant, et quidem in iis, quæ nunc ab iis qui eos patres vocarunt, fundamentalia dogmata habentur. Denique quam frequenter ea dicant, quæ Cothurnorum instar sunt et cuilibet pedi aptari possunt, et fere aptari solent. Hæc causa est, cur in its operam magnam non pono, eorumque authoritatibus me tueri religioni ducam. Episcopius de Cultu Imagin. c. 1.

Justin Martyr, in the second century, wrote an excellent apology for the Christians, which now goes under the name of his second apology.

Tertullian, in the third century, wrote an excellent apology for Christianity, trea tises of penitence, baptism, prayer, and putience. The style of this author is vehement, energetic, and sententious, but not very polite, and often obscure. It is hard to say whether he has done more service to the church by writing against its heresies than he has done hurt by attacking its discipline, in order to maintain that of the Montanists.

Origen, in the third century, a very laborious author, entertained some singular opinions; and it cannot be denied, that, by endeavouring to reconcile the Platonic 'philosophy with Christianity, he departed from the simplicity of the truth.

St Cyprian, in the third century, is to be respected for his sanctity, his wisdom, and the beauty and solidity of his writings, penned with a great deal of eloquence, full of 'noble sentiments of religion, and are very useful for learning the antient discipline of the church, and the pure morality of the Gospel.

St

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St Basil, in the fourth century, joined the beauty of eloquence to the solidity of learning: he excelled in every kind.

St Gregory Nazianzen certainly carries the prize of eloquence from all the fathers, for the purity of his words, the nobleness of his expressions, the elegance of his diction, the variety of his figures, the justness of his comparisons, the solidity of his reasonings, and the beauty of his thoughts. He was born in 328.

St Ambrose, in the fourth century, had as much nobleness, greatness, and majestyj in his style, as were in his actions and conduct. His chief discourses are those on mysteries, virginity, and penitence, with his offices.

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St Chrysostom, i. e. golden mouth, is one of the most eloquent Christian; orators; and his eloquence is so much the more valuable as it is natural, without affectation, without constraint, and without obscurity.

St Jerom, without dispute the most learned of all the fathers, well skilled in the languages, had abundance of the belles lettres: he was very conversant in history and

the classics.

St Isidore, the Monk, in the fifth century, Bishop of Pelusium in Egypt, was also famous for a great number of letters upon passages of Holy Scripture, in a laconic style, with abundance of wit and agreeableness. Dupin's Auteurs Eccles.

Many of the works of the fathers are so voluminous that the attention of the ecclesiastical student must of course be confined to particular parts of them. The following selection would, perhaps, give no very inadequate idea of the general merits of their authors. The Apology of Tertullian, the Dialogue of Minucius Felix, the Commentaries of Origen, and his books against Celsus, the Epistles of Cyprian, the institutions of Lactantius, the Ecclesiastical History and Evangelical Preparation of Eusebius, the homilies of Basil, the Orations of Gregory of Nazianzum, the Commentaries and Epistles of Jerom, the City of God by Austin, the Duty of the Priesthood by Chrysostom, the Commentaries and Homilies of Theodoret, and the Ecclesiastical Histories of Socrates and Sozomen. But the first attention of an ecclesiastical student is most properly directed to Clemens Romanus, Ignatius, Polycarp, Justin Martyr, Irenæus, and Athanagoras, whose writings immediately succeeded the publication of the New Testament. Kett's Bampton Lectures, notes p. 22, 1. 8, &c.

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Remarkable instances of the pernicious consequences of FORTUNE-TELLING The first is related as follows in Moore's Manners of France, vol. ii. p. 202,

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"I went a few days since, with Mr Fortescue, to see a man executed for the murder of a child. His motives for this horrid deed were much more extraordinary than the action itself. He had accompanied some of his companions to the house of a fellow who assumed the character of a fortune-teller; and, Y 2 having

having disobliged him, by expressing a contempt of his art, the fellow, out of revenge, prophesied that this man should die on a scaffold. This seemed to make little impression at the time, but afterwards recurred often to this unhappy creature's memory, and became every day more troublesome to his imagination. At length the idea haunted his mind so incessantly that he was rendered perfectly miserable, and could no longer endure life. He would have put himself to death with his own hands, had be not been deterred by the notion that God Ahnighty never forgave suicide; though, upon repentance, he is very ready to pardon every other crime. He resolved, therefore, to commit murder, that he might be deprived of life by the hands of justice; and, mingling a sentiment of benevolence with the cruelty of his intention, be reflected, that, if he murdered a grown person, he might possibly send a soul to hell. To avoid this, he determined to murder a child, who could not have committed any sin which deserved damnation; but, dying in innocence, would go immediately to heaven. In consequence of these ideas, he actually murdered an infant of his master's, for whom he had always shewn an uncommon degree of fondness. Such was the strange account which this infatuated creature gave on his trial; and thus the random prophecy proved, as in many other cases, the cause of its own completion."

A respectable lady, of Chadlington, in Oxfordshire, had her fortune told her in the early part of life. The story told by the fortune-teller was this; that she should be married to three persons, by the two first of whom she would have no children; but that she should have a child by the third, and would die in child-bed. All these circumstances took place; and, though she was safely delivered of the child, and was as well as could possibly be expected, the impression this story had made on her mind so depressed her that she fell a sacrifice to her imagination; and, notwithstanding all the medical assistance that could be had, died in a few days.

Another melancholy example of the fatal consequences of this infamous practice fell under my own observation. → Sarah Guest, a strong robust washer-woman, of Chipping Norton, in Oxfordshire, had been told, thirty years before, by a fortuneteller, that when she arrived at seventy years of age she would be devoured by insects érawling all over her body. This strange relation had made so strong an impression on her imagination, that when she came to the age above-mentioned she was fully persuaded that this was the case; and I was desired, as vicar of the parish, to attend her; which I frequently did, and used all the arguments I possibly could to dissuade her from any such whimsical idea, but without any avail. And it so preyed upon her spirits, that in a short time she lost her appetite and gradually pined away. This abominable practice, therefore, when it is often attended with such direful conse quences, ought to be punished in a more severe manner.

Mr

Mr Fowlain, of Rolkight, near Chipping Norton, a very respectable farmer, nád a very eminent breeder of sheep and black cattle, particularly of the Dishtey kind, had in his possession a beautiful bull and cow, for which be refused last year (1790) 1000 guineas. Gent. Magaz. Obit. January, 1791. But several of his heifers were

sold at 260 and 250 guineas a piece.

Though we know nothing of the ornaments of the Israelites, yes, looking upon the antient talismans, the abraxas, the annuli, and other gems, that are still preserved, which are full of inscriptions and hieroglyphical figures, of which we can make so certain sense at this day, we may naturally conclude that the carliest ornaments, which had the virtue the latter were only supposed to have, (as defences against any, sudden mischiefs and unlucky casualties,) were formed somewhat in the same way, and that the hieroglyphical figures, with which they were charged, represented some sacred discoveries or promises, worn on certain parts of the body, to be perpetual memorandums of the propositions expressed in those emblems. And, accordingly, when the law was given by Moses in writing, in the room of that preserved formerly in hierogly phics, we see injunctious that the people should wear the law, or parts of it, as signs upon their hands, and FRONTLETS between their eyes, Deut. vi. 8. Which the later Jens understanding literally, wrote passages, as they conceived the most remarkable, of the law on vellum, which they rolled up in phylacteries, and wore on their arms and foreheads, with a superstitious rogard, in the days of Christ; and it is for the ostenta> tious hypocritical use of them, making broad their phylacteries, the Pharisees are reproved, and not for their being at all used, which some suppose; which shews that the wearing those signs and frontlets was literally, and not in a figurative sense only, enjoined. If we observe the passages of the law of Moses, in which the wearing those signs and frontlets is recommended, we shall find them exceedingly important; and that the intent of the recommendation is to keep for ever and attentively in. memory the particular transaction or declaration to which they relate, by way of eviadence that such a transaction happened, or such a declaration was made; and, in this light, they agree with the sense of the word we translate ornaments, which implies bearing evidence, testifying, Exod. xxxiii. 4. And, if the meaning of this later institu tion was to inculcate by written memorandums the important passages of the law, or the Jewish economy, it is very natural to think that the end of those hieroglyphical ornaments, in use before the written law, was of the same nature, to present fre-quently to men's view the most signal articles of the original revelation. Forbes's Account of Frontlets.

FREGGA, Saxonum dea, ejusque statua muliebri habitu amicta, sed arcu gladioque virili armata, traditur. Spencer.

Hence, probably, our Friday derives its name. See Voss. de Idolol.

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In a FUTURE STATE there will be no difference of sex; or; rather, propagation of the species; for this must be implied in what he says, Matt. xxii. 30. And a difference so considerable will probably be accompanied by other differencies in our constitution, perhaps with respect to food and nourishinent, and which may obviate the "objection, made by some, to the possibility of the subsistence of such numbers as will be raised from the dead and live upon the earth again: for, it will be hardly ṣupposed that we shall be removed to any other planet; the new heavens and the new earth, of which the apostle Peter speaks, probably meaning nothing more than a renewed and improved state of the present system. ¡Priestley's Evidences, vol. ii. p. 229,

The FIRST OF APRIL was antiently observed in Britain as a high and general festival, in which an unbounded hilarity reigned through every order of its inhabitants; for, the sun at that period of the year entering into the sign Aries, the new year, and with it the season of rural sports and vernal delight was then supposed to have commenced. The proof of the great antiquity of the observance of this annual festival, as well as the probability of its original establishment in an Asiatic region, arises from "the evidence of facts afforded us by astronomy, which shall presently be adduced. Although the reformation of the year by the Julian and Gregorian calenders, and the adaptation of its commencement to a different and far nobler system of theology, have occasioned the festival-sports, antiently celebrated in this country on the first of April, to have long since ceased; and although the changes, occasioned during a long lapse of years by the shifting of the equinoctial points, have in Asia itself been productive of important astronomical alterations as to the exact æra of the commencement of the year; yet, on both continents, some very remarkable traits of the jocundity which then reigned remain even to these distant times. Of those preserved in Britain, none of the least remarkable or ludicrous is that relic of its pristine pleasantry the general practise of making April fools, as it is called, on the first day of that month; but this Colonel Pearce has proved to have been an immemorial custom among the Hindoos (in the second volume of Asiatic Researches) at a celebrated festival, holden a bout the same time in India, which is called the Huli festival, I shall insert the account in the colonel's own words; " During the Huli, when mirth and festivity reign among Hindoos of every class, one subject of diversion is to send people on errands and expeditions that are to end in disappointment, and raise a laugh at the expense of the person sent. The Huli is always in March, and the last day is the general holiday. I have never yet heard any account of the origin of this English custom, but it is unquestionably very antient, and is still kept up even in great towns, though less in them than in the country. With us it is chiefly confined to the lower class of people, but in India high and low join in it; and the late Suraja Doulah, I am told, was very fond of making Huli fools, though he was a mussulman of the highest rank. They carry the joke here so far, as to send letters, making appointments, in the names

of

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