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intended to insist reduced into a written form; for fear the sight of her should not leave him enough master of himself. Like a true mathematician, he proceeded by rule and line, and made his calculations when his head was cool.

42. Alexander sent Phocion 100 talents. "Why to me, more than others?"" Because he looks upon you as the only just and virtuous man." Then let him suffer me to continue so."-Philip before had offered him a large sum. He was pressed to take it, if not for himself, yet for his children. "If my children," cried Phocion," resemble me, the little spot of ground, with the produce of which I have hitherto lived, and which has raised me to the glory you mention, will be sufficient to maintain them. If it will not, I do not intend to leave them wealth, merely to stimulate and heighten their luxury."

CHARITY.

1. In the world, no man liveth or worketh for himself alone; but every tradesman, mechanic, husbandman, &c. contributeth his labor and his skill towards supplying the different exigencies of the public, and rendering society comfortable. So ought it to be among Christians in the church, which is a body composed of many members, and requireth that each member should perform its proper office for the benefit of the whole.

2. Among the ancient Romans there was a law kept inviolably, that no man should make a public feast, except he had before provided for all the poor of his neighborhood. So the Gospel-"Thou, when thou makest a feast, call the poor," &c.—See Rule of Life, 166.

3. Let him, who has not leisure or ability to penetrate the mysteries of the SS. take comfort in this saying of Austin: "Ille tenet et quod patet et quod latet in divinis sermonibus, qui charitatem tenet in moribus."-" He is master of all that is plain, and all that is mysterious in the Scriptures, who is possessed of the virtue of charity."

4. The end of knowledge is charity, or the communication of it for the benefit of others. This truth may be finely illustrated by a passage in Milton. P. L. viii. 90 et seq.

-Consider first, that great
Or bright infers not excellence: the earth,
Though, in comparison of heav'n, so small,
Nor glist ring, may of solid good contain
More plenty than the sun that barren shines;
Whose virtue on itself works no effect,
But in the fruitful earth; there first receiv'd
His beams, unactive else, their vigor find

that man of the world, that man of pleasure, places charity to the distressed at the head of rational pleasures.-See the Letter on Expenses, vol. ii. 800.

6. There is no state of life, which does not furnish employment for care and industry: the mean must serve the great out of necessity; and the great are equally bound to serve the mean out of justice and charity.— Heylyn, ii. 325.

7. At man's first creation, charity was the divine principle implanted in his heart by his Maker. The adversary, by temptation, displaced it, and left self-love in its room, which was cherished by man, to the destruction of himself and his posterity. Thus a certain mischievous bird repairs to the nest of one that is harmless, and having devoured the eggs of the little innocent owner, lays one of her own in their place: this the fond foolish bird hatches with great assiduity, and, when excluded, finds no difference in the great ill-looking changling from her own. To supply this voracious creature, the credulous nurse toils with unusual labor, no way sensible that she is feeding an enemy to her race, and one of the most destructive robbers of her future progeny.-See Goldsmith, v. 264.

8. It is not easy to conceive, how much sin and scandal is occasioned by a severe quarrelsome temper in the disciples of Christ. It stirs up the corruptions of those with whom they contend; and leads others to think meanly of a profession which has so little efficacy to soften and sweeten the tempers of those who maintain it. Doddridge, Fam. Expos. ii. 186.

9. Bees never work singly, but always in companies, that they may assist each other. A useful hint to scholars and Christians.

10. An Abbé, remarkable for his parsimony, happened to be in company where a charitable subscription was going round. The plate was brought to him, and he contributed his louis-d'or. The collector, not observing it, came to him a second time. I have put in, said he. If you say so, I will believe you, returned the collector, though I did not see it.-I did see it, cried old Fontenelle, who was present, but did not believe it.

11. There are many deceptions concerning charity. 1. It may be practised on false motives; interest, custom, fear, shame, vanity, popularity, &c. 2. It is a mistake to imagine it will atone for a want of other virtues, or for a life of vice and dissipation.See Dupré, Serm. iii. Crit. Review, April 1782, p. 260.-Mr. Law's character of Negotius. Voltaire says, "the effect is the 5. It is very remarkable, that Chesterfield, same, whatever be the motive." But surely

DRYDEN.

the worth of every action must be estimated | Worn in the furrow shines the burnish'd share. by the motive on which it is performed. He who attends me when I am sick, with a view to the making of my will, and getting my estate, is a very different man from him who does it only because he loves me. Yet the effect may be the same: I may be equally

taken taken care of in either case.

We are

to be judged by one who knows the thoughts of our hearts, and will judge us accordingly. Charity made consistent with vice-Brown's Sermons, 278.- See Charity well described under the idea of Generosity, Fitzosborne's Letters, 123.

4. In China, the aspirants, in a literary way, are examined by the eminent men, for their degrees. The Emperor Kang Hi, finding matters did not go on as they should do, took it into his head one day, to examine the examiners, and sent several of the old dons packing into the provinces, for insufficiency. The dread of such another examination," says our author, "keeps those chiefs of the literati close to their studies."

CHRISTIANITY.

12. Mickle, the translator of the Lusiad, inserted in his poem an angry note against 1. With difficulty men are induced to Garrick, who, as he thought, had used him give up their favorite opinions: still harder ill, by rejecting a tragedy of his. Some time is the task to draw them from their favorite afterwards, the poet, who had never seen vices. Could a religion be less than divine, Garrick play, was asked by a friend in town which caused the Heathen world to quit to go to King Lear. He went, and, during both? the first three acts, said not a word. In a fine passage of the fourth, he fetched a deep sigh, and, turning to his friend, "I wish," said he, "the note was out of my book!" How often, alas! do we say and write bitter things of a man, on a partial and interested view of his character, which, if we knew it throughout, we should wish unsaid or un

written!

CHINESE.

1. It is an odd circumstance, that when a man dies, among the Chinese, the relations and friends wait three days, to see whether he will rise again, before they put the corpse into the coffin. Voyages and Travels, iv. 92, from Navarette. We are told, from the same author, that many in that country, in their life-time, get their coffin made, and give a treat to their acquaintance on the day it comes home. It is customary for the emperor, in particular, to have his coffin some time with him in the palace. Many keep it in sight for several years, and now and then go into it. Ibid.

2. It should be in a university, as in the empire of China, where " no husbandman is ever idle, and no land ever lies fallow." Ibid. 121.

3. Accomplishments of every kind are acquired and preserved by use and practice;

and the scholar and Christian would do well to reflect upon a piece of discipline in the Chinese armies, by which a soldier who suffers his arms to contract the least rust is punished on the spot with thirty or forty blows of the batoon. Ibid. 286, from Le Compte, and Duhalde-313, 216.

-Sulco attritus splendescere vomer,

GEORG. i. 46.

2. "Religion," say some," was invented by priests and politicians, to keep the world in order." It is a good thing, then, for that purpose at least. But the misfortune is, none of the supposed impostors of this kind have ever been named, who lived till after the general principles of religion were found disseminated among mankind, as the learned Stillingfleet shows at large (Orig. Sac. b. i. chap. 1,) even from the testimonies of the Egyptians and Greeks themselves.

3. The differences among Christians, about lesser matters prove the truth of those great and fundamental points in which they all

agree.

4. The little effect which Christianity hath on the lives of its professors, is frequently made an argument against it. So with regard to philosophy, the same objection is thus put and answered in Cicero's Tusc. Quest. lib. ii. sect. 5.—A. Nonne verendum est igitur, ne philosophiam falsâ gloriâ exornes? Quod est enim majus argumentum, nihil eam prodesse, quam quosdam perfectos philosophos turpiter vivere? M. Nullum verò id quidem argumentum est. Nam ut agri non omnes frugiferi sunt qui coluntur, sic animi non omnes culti fructum ferunt. Atque ut ager quamvis fertilis sine culturâ fructuosus esse non potest, sic sine doctrinâ animus: ita est utraque res sine alterâ debilis. See Lactant. De fals. Sap. vol.

iv. 226.

A. Is it not then to be feared, that you ascribe to philosophy a glory that does not belong to it? For what can afford a stronger lives of some of its most learned professors? argument of its inefficacy, than the vicious M. That argument is not conclusive. For as agriculture cannot render all soils fruitful, so neither are all minds equally improved by

instruction. Yet neither can any soil, nor any mind, bring forth good fruits by the unassisted force of its natural fertility; but both must remain unproductive without the aid of cultivation.

5. In Constantinople behold the judgments of God on apostates from true religion, and corrupters of it: see Jews and Christians perpetrating on each other the most enormous villanies, as the price of obtaining the favor of the Turks! At the same time behold the Greek prelates, even while groaning under the yoke of the oppressor, employing their time, their wealth, and their interest, in over-reaching and supplanting each other for a metropolitan see, or a patriarchate, at the court of that oppressor!

6. Christianity has, in every age, produced good effects on thousands and tens of thousands, whose lives are not recorded in ecclesiastical history; which, like other history, is for the most part a register of the vices, the follies, and the quarrels of those who made a figure and a noise in the world. Socrates, in the close of his work, observes, that, if men were honest and peaceable, historians. would be undone for want of materials.-Jortin's Remarks, b. ii. ad fin.

7. Theft was unknown among the Caribbees, till Europeans came among them. When they lost anything, they said innocently"The Christians have been here!"

CHURCH.

pleasing to God as variety of flowers. Now there can be but one religion which is true; and the God of truth cannot be pleased with falsehood, for the sake of variety.

7. Nothing is more common than for a religious or political sect to disclaim a principle, and then resume it under another form: as the Circoncelliones used no swords, because God had forbidden the use of one to St. Peter; but they were armed with clubs, which they called the clubs of Israel, and with which they could break all the bones in a man's skin. See Le Beau, i. 170. See Jortin's Remarks on Eccl. Hist. iv. 388.

8. The heat and acrimony with which some men write against revelation remind one of the cruelties practised by the abovementioned fanatics, who covered the eyes of the catholics that fell into their hands with lime diluted with vinegar. Ibid.

9. Apply to quarrels among Christians the following lines, addressed by Adam to Eve, after their mutual accusations and upbraidings:

But rise; let us no more contend, nor blame
In offices of love, how we may lighten
Each other, blamed enough elsewhere; but strive,

Each other's burden in our share of woe.

10. Upon viewing many of our places of worship in the country, one would be tempted to think the church of England had adopted the maxim laid down in a neighboring kingdom, "That cleanliness is not essen

1. The enemies of the church are encour-tial to devotion." A church of England lady aged to proceed in their attacks by the timidity of her friends; as Lysander, at the siege of Corinth, bade his men be of good courage, when he saw a hare run along upon the walls.

once offered to attend the kirk there, if she might be permitted to have the pew swept and lined. "The pew swept and lined!" said Mess John's wife, " my husband would think it downright popery."

11. If the intended reformation of our 2. Learned and good men are often deterred from engaging the adversaries of religion, liturgy goes on, the reformers may hereafter more through fear of their ribaldry than bring us in a bill like that of the Cirencester their arguments; as Antipater's elephants, painter: which beheld the apparatus of war unmoved, ran away at the grunting of the Megarensian hogs.

3. To admit all the jarring sects and opinions into the church by a comprehension, would be, as one well observes, to jumble together an indigested heap of contrarieties into the same mass, and to make the old chaos the plan of the new reformation.

4. Those clergymen, who betray the cause of their master, in order to be promoted in his church, are guilty of the worst kind of simony, and pay their souls for the purchase of their preferments.

5. Heresies seem, like comets, to have their periodical returns.

Mr. Charles Terebee to Joseph Cook, debtor. To mending the Commandments, altering the Belief, and making a new Lord's Prayer,

l. 8. d.

1 1 0

12. It is a principle advanced by president Montesquieu, that, where the magistrate is satisfied with the established religion, he ought to repress the direct attempts towards innovation, and only grant a toleration to other sects.-B. xxv. ch. 10.-See Hume, vol. vii. p. 40 and 41.

13. Sir Matthew Hale used to say, "Those of the separation were good men, but they had narrow souls, or they would not break the peace of the church about such inconsiderable matters, as the points in difference

6. Some think variety of religions as were."

14. Lord Clarendon, somewhere in hist Life, makes this severe reflection—“ That clergymen understand the least, and take the worst measure of human affairs, of all mankind that can read and write." Cited by Temple, in his Essay on the Clergy, p. 22. See his last chapter, On the service clergymen may do their country in matters civil and temporal.-The reason of the abovementioned circumstance it might be curious to investigate.

15. The person presiding over a church should diligently mark the very first starting of an error, or heresy, and employ a proper hand immediately to check and extinguish it; as, by order of the New River Company in London, a watchman is nightly fixed at such a height, near the river head, as to be able to overlook the whole town, and, on the momentary appearance of any conflagration, to turn the water full on the mains leading so the respective quarter, however remote the situation by which wise and commendable measure, the water generally arrives at the place of destination before the fleetest messenger.-Morning Chronicle, Jan. 27,

1781.

16. "As I do not check any suspicions in my own mind, I shall not easily be restrained from uttering them, because I know not how I shall benefit my country, or assist her counsels, by silent meditations."-Pulteney, in Johnson's Debates, vol. i. p. 5. A friend of the church, who is able to write or speak, in these days, should make the same reflections. 17. A right good man may be a very unfit magistrate: and, for discharge of a bishop's office, to be well minded is not enough; no,

not to be well learned also. Skill to instruct is a thing necessary, skill to govern much more necessary in a bishop. It is not safe for the church of Christ, when bishops learn what belongeth unto government as empirics learn physic, by killing of the sick. Bishops were wont to be men of great learning in the

laws both civil and of the church; and while they were so, the wisest men in the land for counsel and government were bishops. Hooker, vii. 24. p. 398.

COLLINS (ANTHONY.)

This person, on his death-bed, was under great anxiety, and, just before he expired, with a deep sigh pronounced the following words-Locke has ruined me! His niece, who attended him at the time, related this circumstance to Mr. Wogan, the pious author of an Essay on the Proper Lessons; as he assured a friend of mine, the Rev. Dr. Merrick of St. Ann's, Soho.

COMPOSITION.

1. Distension in the bowels is a sign of a bad digestion. In an author it is a symptom of the same infirmity.

2. If a man's studies are dry, his compositions will be insipid. Distil a bone, and you will have a quantity of water.

3. He that would write well in any tongue must follow this counsel of Aristotle ;-to think with the learned, but speak with the common people, that these may understand, and those approve him.-Ascham, p. 57.

4. Aptness, knowledge, and use make all things perfect; but they must join forces, or nothing will be well done. The first is the gift of God; the second we must have from others; the third we attain by our own diligence and labor.—P. 117.

by a man of genius.

5. The same arguments are quite different in their effects, when drawn up and urged by a man of genius. They go farther, and pierce deeper, like the shafts of Hercules, which, Hesiod tells us, were winged with eagles' feathers.

6. He who would excel in anything (oratory, e. g.) must not servilely copy any one orator throughout, but from different persons select the accomplishments for which they are severally eminent.

7. It was Cicero's opinion, that he who would speak well, must write much :

Caput autem est, quod (ut verè dicam) minime facimus (est enim magni laboris, quem plerique fugimus,) quàm plurimùm scribere.— which most of us shrink, on account of the De Orat. But the principal point is one from labor that attends it; I mean frequent and much composition.

8. Depth of sentiment, illustrated by a bright imagination, is like the sea when the sun shines upon it and turns it into an ocean of light.

age

9. Illustrations are peculiarly beautiful, where they are fetched from something near akin to the subject which they are employed to adorn as e. g. Sprat's observations on the thinks that small spot of civil arts, compared of learning among the Arabians-" Meto their long course of ignorance before and after, bears some resemblance with the country itself; where there are some few little valleys, and wells, and pleasant shades of palm-trees; but those lying in the midst of deserts and unpassable tracts of sand." Hist. of Roy. Soc. p. 45.

10. Zeuxis, the famous painter, before he sat down to a picture, used to animate his fancy by reading some passage in Homer relative to his subject.-A good hint to those who are about to compose in prose and verse.

11. Every man has a certain manner and character in writing and speaking, which he spoils and loses by a too close and servile imitation of another; as Bishop Felton, an imitator of Bishop Andrews, observed-"I had almost marred my own natural trot, by endeavoring to imitate his artificial amble.". Wanley, 647.

CONSCIENCE.

1. A man reproached with a crime of should feel no more uneasiness than if he was which he knows himself to be innocent, said to be ill when he felt himself in perfect health.

2. When Cleomenes was on the point of 12. It was a rule with Archbishop Williams, taking a bribe from Aristagoras, his virtue was to give himself some recreation before he preserved by his daughter, a child of nine sat down to compose, and that in proportion years old, who exclaimed, "Fly, father, or to the importance of the composition.-See this stranger will corrupt you."-Conscience his Life in Lloyd's Worthies, p. 379.-Dr. will often perform this office for us, if we H. More, after finishing one of his most laborious and painful works exclaimed"Now, for these three months, I will neither think a wise thought, nor speak a wise word, nor do an ill thing."-Life in the Biog.

Dict.

13. In an oration, one would wish that the whole should be well composed, and suitable to the dignity of the -subject. But let the progress to what is great and brilliant be gentle and gradual. Such is the rule and method of nature in all her works. At the first dawning of the brightest day that ever shone, light and darkness were scarcely distinguishable.Lawson, 380.

14. In compositions, young writers produce the most, but old ones the best, as Lord Bacon observes of grapes.-"The vine beareth more grapes when it is young, but grapes that make better wine when it is old; for that the juice is better concocted."

15. Style should resemble the atmosphere of Italy, which "embellishes all objects by showing them with clearness; for which reason, its gulfs, its woods, its cascades, and its meads, have a grace unknown beneath other skies." M. Sherlock's Letters, p. 21.

16. The author of Hudibras had a common-place book, in which he had reposited, not such events or precepts as are gathered by reading; but such remarks, similitudes, allusions, assemblages, or inferences, as occasion prompted, or meditation produced; those thoughts that were generated in his own mind, and might be usefully applied to some future purpose. Such is the labor of those who write for immortality. Johnson, i. 288.

17. Augustus loved correctness and accuracy in all his compositions, and never delivered his mind on any serious matter, even in his own family, without memorials or written notes. Ferguson, Rom. Hist.-A method practised and recommended by Bolingbroke and Chesterfield, to attain a habit of correctness in speaking.-So Bishop Atterbury of writing, "Let nothing, though of a trifling nature, pass through your pen negligently." Letters, i. 118.

would attend to its admonitions.

3. The same power (conscience) should do for us, respecting our passions and appetites, dinner to do for Darius, after the burning of what an attendant was ordered every day at Sardis, respecting his enemies-cry out, Re

member the Athenians.

CONTENTMENT.

1. When Christ bade us limit our cares to the day that is passing over us, he consulted our natural quiet no less than our spiritual welfare; since the chief sources of most men's uneasiness are chagrin at what is past, and forebodings of what is to come. Whereas, "what is past ought to give us no uneasiness, except that of repentance for our faults; and what is to come ought much less to affect us, because, with regard to us and our concerns, it is not, and perhaps never will be."

2. Plutarch, speaking of that inviolable friendship which subsisted between Pelopidas and Epaminondas, says, "The true and only cause of this excellent conduct was their virtue, which kept them, in all their actions, from aiming at wealth and glory, which fatal contentions are always attended with envy; but being both equally inflamed with a divine ardor to make their country prosperous and happy by their administration, they looked upon each other's success as their own."

3. In general, as he observes, among the Grecians, the personal enmity borne by great men of the same city to each other, exceeded that which they bore to the enemies of their country. The same passions have operated in the same manner among Christians; of which we have a remarkable instance at the siege of Constantinople by Mahomet II. when such was the animosity subsisting between the Greeks and Latins, within the city, that one of the former declared, he had rather see a Turk's turban in Constantinople than a Cardinal's cap.

4. When old Dioclesian was called from his retreat and invited to resume the purple, which he had laid down some years before, "Ah! (said he) if you could see those fruits

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