having disobliged hima, By expressing a contempt of his art, the fellow, but 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 he not been deterred by the notion that God Almighty 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 eruelty of his intention, he 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; bat, dying in innocence, would go immediately to heaven. In consequence of these iders, he actually murdered an infant of his mas ter'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 fortuné 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' crawling 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 consequences, ought to be punished in a more severe manner.

..I

Mr

Mr Fowler, of Rollright, near Chipping Norton, a very respectable farmer, and a very eminent breeder of sheep and black' cattle, particularly of the. Hishley kind, had in his possession a beautiful ball and cow, for which he refused last year (1790) 1000 guincas, Gent. Magaz. Obit. January, 1791, But several of his heifers were

sold at 260 and £30 guineas a piece.

Though we know nothing of the ornaments of the Israelites, yet, looking upon the entient talismans, the abraxas, the annuli, and other gems, that are still preserved, which are full of inseriptions and hieroglyphical figures, of which we can make no 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 memoran, dums 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 hieroglys phics, we see injunctions that the people should wear the law, or parts of it, as signs upon their hunis, and FRONTLETS between their eyes, Deut. vi. 8. Which the later Jews understanding literally, wrote passages, as they conceived the most remarkable, of the law on velium, which they rolled up in phylucteries, and wore on their arms and foreheads, with a superstitious regard, in the days of Christ; and it is for the ostenta→ tious hypocritical use of them, making broad their phylacteries, the Pharisees are reprøved, 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 evis dence 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 institus 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 frequently to men's view the most signal articles of the original revelation. Forbes's Account of Frontlets.

FRIGGA, 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.

7

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 diffe rence so considerable will probably be accompanied by other differencies in our constitution, perhaps with respect to food and nourishment, 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 supposed 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 Hin doos (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 disappointinent, 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

of persons who it is known must be absent from their house at the time fixed upon, and the laugh is always in proportion to the trouble given." Maurice's Ind. Antiq. vol. vi. p. 71,. &c.

The great similitude between the Scripture phrases, which treat of the destruction of Sodom, and those of Ovid in his description of the FLOOD in Deucalion's days, which seems to be the same with Noah's, makes it probable that the latter are taken from the former. The words in Gen. xviii, 21, are: "I will go down and see whether they have done according to the cry of it which is come unto me, and, if not, I will know."

Contigerat nostras infamia temporis aures
Quam cupiens falsam, summo delabor Olympo,
Et Deus humanâ lustro sub imagine terras."

1

Ov. lib. i. line 213, &c.

Stillingfleet's arguments for a partial and local flood are not sufficient to prove it; for, as we read in Genesis that all the animals passed before Adam to be named, it is as difficult to account for any of those animals going into America, supposing it an island, as it is to account for their return at the flood.

It is to be allowed that the prescience of God implies an exact FOREKNOWLEDGE both of his own and of our actions, and consequently a foresight, or, if you will, a predetermination, of the final allotments of men. But this cannot be conceived by us in a manner consistent with the divine justice, unless we suppose the latter to be grounded on the former, and that God has, therefore, from all eternity, determined the final portion of men; because he has, from all eternity, known how they would determine their own free and voluntary choice of good or evil: whether they would comply with or refuse the offers of his grace, whether they would serve God or not: so that the ultimate allotment of God to men is really a consequence of their own voluntary choice in doing good or evil. But the choice of men, and the allotments of the divine justice consequent to it, being foreknown and foreseen by the prescience of God from all eternity, the final period of every man's conduct is properly said to be predestined or predetermined by God. Rogers's Serm. on Gal. vi. 7, and on Heb. ii.

13.

Whitby supposes, that by FORNICATION, Matt. xix. 9, is to be understood fornication committed before matrimony and found out after cohabitation.

For every one (that thus offends) shall be salted with fire, (so as to endure for ever in a state of torment); and every sacrifice, (saith the Scripture, even the whole burntoffering,) shall be salted with salt, (the symbol of incorruption). Salt is good (to make things savoury and to preserve them from corruption); but, if the salt have lost its saltness, wherewith will you season it? (if by keeping these offending members, 42,

45,

45, &c. or corrupt affections, you corrupt yourselves and become unsavoury, and, like a sacrifice without salt, you can never be acceptable to God). Have (therefore) salt in yourselves, and have peace (the bond of unity) one with another. Whitby on Mark ix. 49, 50.

Quid sali cum igne? Ut prophetæ eos qui a Deo aut hîc, aut post mortem, puniuntur victimas vocare solent (ut a Grotio notatum) Christus de damnatis, tanquam de victimis loquitur, quos proinde ex lege Levit. ii. 13, saliendos dicit; sed pro sale ignem illis futurum. Sensus ergò versus est, sicut omnis victima ex lege sale salietur; ita omnis damnatus salietur igne. Maldonatus, Daubuz, &c.

Hic sensus mihi perplacet, "Quicunque meus discipulus esse vult, ille hoc sibi faciendum esse cogitet, ut sibi suisque affectibus renunciet, et non dubitet diligenti curâ ac studio, veluti igne quodam quicquid in se est malorum affectuum exurere. Sic enim erit grata Deo Hostia, quia omnis Hostia, &c." Episcopius.

Sensus est, Quemadmodum (nam et pro ut ponitur) omnis victima sale condire solebat, sine quo Deo accepta non erat; sic sine tribulatione nemo Deo gratus." Vatabus. And Bishop Hurd adopts this sense, as most agreeable to what follows; and observes, that this metaphorical sense of fire, to denote afflictions, may be proved from 1 Cor. iii. 13, 1 Pet. i. 7, 4, 12, &c.

Bishop Pearce thinks that these two verses may be an interpolation, as they are not to be found in four MSS. of Wetstein. But I do not see any reason for this supposition, as they very aptly illustrate the doctrine of eternal punishments, which are so emphatically and so péremptorily declared three different times, to put the certainty of them past all doubt.

The GENTILES acknowledge one supreme God; but their error was this, that they imagined many inferior gods, and they seem to have been led into this error not so much by false reasonings as by old tradition. Their ancestors had believed so for many ages backward, and this depravation arose from the corruption of a true doctrine of one God, and of many angels who under him had the care of human affairs and who were his messengers and ministers. But, when men proceeded to pay divine honours to these, inferior spirits and to forget their Creator, God gave them up to illúsions and they fell lower and lower to the grossest idolatries. Jortin's Serm. vol. vii. p. 118.

King Ina, as the antient records of GLASTENBURY 'affirin, employed' · 15,984 pounds weight of gold, in decorating the church of that monastery, in vessels for the altar, in images, &c. besides silver and precious stones. Campbell's Pol. Survey, vol. ii. p. 335.

And this, according to the present value of money at four pounds per ounce, would come to £767,232; but, if we make a difference for the value of money, it would come to a much greater sum.

The