216. Prince Eugene's Prayer.

I believe in thee, O my God! Do thou strengthen my faith: I hope in thee; confirm my hopes: I love thee; inflame my love more and more: I repent of all my sins; but do thou encrease my repentairce! As my first beginning I worship thee; as my last end I long for thee; as my eternal benefactor, I praise thee; and as my supreme protector I pray unto thee; that it may please thee, O Lord, to guide and lead me by thy providence, to keep me in obedience to thy justice; to comfort me by thy mercy, and to protect me by thy almighty power. I submit uuto thee all my thoughts, words, and actions, as well as my afflictions, pains, and sufferings, and I desire to have thee always in my mind, to do all my works in thy name, and for thy

Refusing to hear any thing from me, or take any thing from the physician, he lay silent, as far as sudden darts of pain would permit, till the clock struck. Then with vehemence;

Oh, time! time; it is fit thou shouldest thus strike thy murderer to the heart. How art thou fled for ever! A month!Oh, for a single week! I ask not for years; though an age were too little for the inuch I have to do.

On my saying, we could not do too much: that heaven was a blessed placeSo much the worse. 'Tis lost! 'tis lost!-Heaven is to me the severest part of hell.

Soon after I proposed prayer. Pray you that can. I never prayed. I cannot pray-Nor need I. Is not heaven on my side already? It closes with my conscience. Its severest strokes but second my own.

His friend being much touched, even to tears, at this (who could forbear? I could not) with a most affectionate look, he said:

Keep those tears for thyself. I have undone thee.---Dost weep for me? That's cruel. What can pain me more?

Here his friend, too much affected, would have left him.

No, stay. Thou still mayest hope. Therefore hear me. How madly have I talked? How madly hast thou listened and believed? But look on my present state, as a full answer to thee, and to myself. This body is all weakness and pain, but my soul, as if strung up by torment to greater strength and spirit, is full powerful to reason; full mighty to suffer. And that, which thus triumphs within the jaws of mortality, is doubtless immortal.-And, as for a Deity, nothing less than an Almighty could inflict what I feel.

I was about to congratulate this passive, involuntary, confessor, on his asserting the two prime articles of his creed, extorted by the rack of nature; when he thus, very passionately:

No, no! let me speak on. I have not long to speak-My much injured friend my soul, as my body, lies in ruins; in scattered fragments of broken thought: remorse for the past, throws my thoughts on the future. Worse dread of the future, strikes it back on the past. I turn and turn, and find no ray. Didst thou feel half the mountain that is on me, thou

wouldst struggle with the martyr for his stake; and bless heaven for the flames ;that is not an everlasting flame; that is not an unquenchable fire.

How were we struck! Yet soon after, still more. With what an eye of distraction, what a face of despair, he cried out:

My principles have poisoned my friend; my extravagance has beggared my boy; my unkindness has murdered my wife! And is there another Hell? Oh! thou blasphemed, yet most indulgent, Lord God! Hell itself is a refuge, if it hides me from thy frown.

Soon after his understanding failed. His terrified imagination uttered horrors not to be repeated, or even forgot. And ere the sun arose, the gay, young, noble, ingenious, accomplished, and most wretched Altamont expired. Young.

218. The Majesty and Supremacy of the Scriptures confessed by a Sceptic..

I will confess to you, that the majesty of the Scriptures strikes me with admiration, as the purity of the Gospel hath its influence on my heart. Peruse the works of our philosophers with all their pomp of diction; how mean, how contemptible are they, compared with the Scripture! Is it possible that a book, at once so simple and sublime, should be merely the work of man? Is it possible that the sacred personage, whose history it contains, should be himself a mere man? Do we find that he assumed the tone of an enthusiast or ambitious sectary? What sweetness, what purity in his manner! What an affecting gracefulness in his delivery! What subliinity in his maxims! What profound wisdom in his discourses? What presence of mind, what subtlety, what truth in his replies! How great the command over his passions! Where is the man, where the philosopher, who could so live, and so die, without weakness, and without ostentation! When Plato described his imaginary good man loaded with all the shame of guilt, yet meriting the highest rewards of virtue, he describes exactly the character of Jesus Christ: the resemblance was so striking, that all the Fathers perceived it.

What preposession, what blindness must it be, to compare the son of Soproniscus to the son of Mary! What an infinite disproportion there is between them! Socrates dying without pain or ignominy, easily supported his character to the last; and if

Recantation.

When John Earl of Rochester came to see and consider his prodigious guilt and danger, what invectives did he use against himself, terming himself an ungrateful dog, and the vilest wretch that the sun shone upon; wishing he had been a crawling leper in a ditch, a link-boy, or a beggar, or had lived in a dungeon, rather than offended God as he had done! He sent awful messages to his copartners in sin, and advised a gentlemen of character, that came to visit him in these words: O remember that you contemu God no more. He is an avenging God, and will visit you ́ for your sins; and will, I hope, in mercy, touch your conscience as he hath done nine. You and I have been friends and simmers together a great while, therefore I am the more free with you. We have heen all mistaken in our conceits and opinions; our persuasions have been false and groundless, therefore God grant you' repentance. And seeing the same gentle-: man the next day, he said, Perhaps you were disobliged by my plainness with you yesterday: I spake the words of truth and soberness; and striking his hand on his breast, added, I hope God will touch your heart.

his death, however easy, had not crowned $219. John Earl of Rochester's dying his life, it might have been doubted whether Socrates, with all his wisdom, was any thing more than a vain sophist. He invented, it is said, the theory of morals. Others, however, had before put them in practice; he had only to say therefore what they had done, and to reduce their examples to precepts. Aristides h4 been just before Socrates defined justice; Leonidas had given up his life for his country before Socrates declared patriotism to be a duty; the Spartans were a sober people before Socrates recommended sobriety; before he had even defined virtue, Greece abounded in virtuous men. But where could Jesus learn, among his competitors, that pure and sublime morality, of which he only hath given us both precept and example? The greatest wisdom was made known amongst the most bigotted fanaticism, and the simplicity of the most heroic virtues did honour to the vilest people on earth. The death of Socrates, peaceably philosophizing with his friends, appears the most agreeable that could be wished for; that of Jesus, expiring in the midst of agonizing pains, abused, insulted, and accused by a whole nation, is the most horrible that could be feared. Socrates in receiving the cup of poison, blessed indeed the weeping executioner who administered it; but Jesus, in the midst of excruciating tortures, prayed for his merciless tormentors. Yes, if the life and death of Socrates were those of a sage. the life and death of Jesus are those of a God. Shall we suppose the evangelie history a He commanded that his profane writmere fiction? Indeed, my friend, ir bersings and obscene pictures should be burnt. not the marks of fiction: on the contrary. the history of Socrates, which nobody presumes to doubt, is not so well attested as that of Jesus Christ. Such a supposi tion, in fact, only shifts the diffienky without obviating it: it is mare inconceiveable that a number of persons should agree to write such a history, than that one only should furnish the subject of it. The Jewish authors were incapable of the diction, and strangers to the morality conrained in the Gospel, the marks of whose truth are so striking and inimitable, that he inventor would be a more astonishing haracter than the hero,

Rouseau.

He condemned that foolish and absurd philosophy which the world so much admired, propagated by the late Thomas Hobbs; which, he said, had undone him, and many more of the best parts in the nation.

He wished his son might never be a wit; which is, as he explained it, one of those wretched creatures, who pride themselves in abusing God and religion.

He protested be would not commit any known sin to gain a kingdom.

And for the admonition of others, he subscribed the following recantation, and ordered it to be published, (viz.)

For the benefit of all those whom I may have drawn into sin by my example and encouragement, I leave to theworld this my last declaration, which I deliver in the presence of the great God, who knows the secrets of all hearts, and before whom I am now appearing to be judged: That' from the bottom of my soul, I detest and abhor the hole course of my former

wicked life: that I think I can never sufficiently admire the goodness of God, who has given me a true sense of my pernicious opinions and vile practices, by which I have hitherto lived without hope, and without God in the world; have been an open enemy to Jesus Christ, doing the utmost despite to the Holy Spirit of grace; and that the greatest testimony of my charity to such, is, to warn them, in the name of God, as they regard the welfare of their immortal souls, no more to deny his being or his providence, or despise his goodness; no more to make a mock of sin, or contemn the pure and excellent religion of my ever blessed Redeemer, thro' whose merits alone, I, one of the greatest of sinners, do yet hope for mercy and forgiveness. Amien.

Declared and signed in the presence of Anu Rochester, Robert Parsons, June 19, 1680.

J. ROCHESTER.

$220. To the Biographer of Hume.

Upon the whole, Doctor, your meaning is good; but I think you will not succeed, this time. You would persuade us, by the example of David Hume, Esq., that athe ism is the only cordial for low spirits, and the proper antidote against the fear of death. But surely, he who can reflect, with complacency, on a friend thus misemploy ing his talents in his life, and then, amus, ing himself with Lucian, Whist and Charon, at his death, may sinile over Babylon in ruins; esteemn the earthquake, which destroyed Lisbon, an agreeable occurrence;" and congratulate the hardened Pharaoh, on his overthrow in the Red Sea. Drollery in such circumstances, is neither more nor less than

Moody madness, laughing wild,
Amid severest woe.

Would we know the baneful and pestilential influences of false philosophy on the human heart? We need only contemplate them in this most deplorable instance of Mr. Hume. These sayings, Sir, may appear harsh; but they are salutary. And if departed spirits have any knowledge of what is passing upon earth, that person will be regarded by your friend as rendering him the truest services, who by energy of expression, and warmth of exhortation, shall most contribute to prevent his writings from producing those effects upon

mankind which he no longer wishes they should produce. Let no man deceive himself, or be deceived by others. It is the voice of eternal Truth, which crieth aloud, and saith, to you, Sir, and to me, and to all the world. He that believed on the. "Son, hath everlasting life; and he that "believed not the Son, shall not see life; "but the wrath of God abideth on him.'

By way of contrast to the behaviour of Mr. Hunie, at the close of a life, passed without God in the world, permit me, Sir, to lay before yourself, and the public, the last sentiments of the truly learned, judicious, and admirable Hooker, who had spent his days in the service of his Maker and Redeemer.

After this manner, therefore, spake the author of the Ecclesiastical Polity, immediately before he expired;

I have lived to see, that this world is made up of perturbations; and I have been long preparing to leave it, and gathering comfort for the dreadful hour of making my account with God, which I now apprehend to be near. And though I have, by his grace, loved him in my youth, and feared him in mine age, and laboured to have a conscious void of offence towards him, and towards all men; yet, "if "thou, Lord, shouldest be extreme to "mark what I have done amiss, who "can abide it ?". And therefore, where I have failed, Lord, shew mercy to me, for I plead not my righteousness, but the forgiveness of my unrighteousness, through his merits, who died to purchace pardon for penitent sinners. And since I owe thee a death, Lord, let it not be terrible, and then take thine own time; I submit to it. "Let not mine, O Lord, but thy will be "done"-God hath heard my daily petitions; for I am at peace with all men, and he is at peace with me. From such blessed assurance I feel that inward joy, which this world can neither give, nor take from me. My conscience beareth me this witness, and this witness makes the thoughts of death joyful. I could wish to live, to do the church more service: but cannot hope it; for "my days are past, as a shadow that returns not." His worthy biographer adds—

More he would have spoken, but his spirits failed him; and, after a short conflict between nature and death, a quiet sigh put a period to his last breath, and so, he fell asleep-And now he seems to rest like Lazarus in Abraham's bosom. Let me

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PHYSICO-THEOLOGICAL REFLECTIONS.