have been made to drink of it;-which if it can poifon all earthly happiness when exercised barely upon our bodies, what muft it be, when it comprehends both the flavery of body and mind?— To conceive this, look into the hiftory of the Romish church and her tyrants (or rather executioners), who seem to have taken pleafure in the pangs and convulfions of their fellow-creatures.Examine the inquifition, hear the melancholy notes founded in every cell.Confider the anguifh of mock trials, and the exquifite tortures confequent thereupon, mercilessly inflicted upon the unfortunate, where the racked and weary foul has fo often wifhed to take its leave, -but cruelly not fuffered to depart.Confider how many of thefe helpless wretches have been haled from thence. in all periods of this tyrannic usurpation, to undergo the maffacres and flames to which a falfe and a bloody religion has condemned them.

If this fad hiftory and detail of the more public caufes of the miferies of

Man comes forth, fays Job, like a flower, and is cut down; he is fent into the world the fairest and noblest part of God's works,-fashioned after the image of his Creator with respect to reafon and the great faculties of the mind; he cometh forth glorious as the flower of the field; as it furpaffes the vegetable world in beauty, fo does he the animal world in the glory and excellencies of his nature.

The one-if no untimely accident oppress it, foon arrives at the full period of its perfection,-is fuffered to triumph for a few moments, and is plucked up by the roots in the very pride and gayest ftage of its being:-or if it happens to efcape the hands of violence, in a few days it neceffarily fickens of itself and dies away.

Man likewife, though his progress is flower, and his duration fomething longer, yet the periods of his growth and declenfion are nearly the fame both in the nature and manner of them.

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If he escapes the dangers which threaten his tenderer years, he is foon got into the full maturity and strength of life; and if he is fo fortunate as not to be hurried out of it then by accidents, by his own folly and intemperance-if he efcapes thefe, he naturally decays of himself;-a period comes fast upon him, beyond which he was not made to laft.-Like a flower or fruit which may be plucked up by force before the time of their maturity, yet cannot be made to outgrow the period when they are to fade and drop of themfelves; when that comes, the hand of nature then plucks them both off, and no art of the botanift can uphold the one, or skill of the phyfician preserve the other, beyond the periods to which their original frames and constitutions were made to extend. As God has appointed and determined the feveral growths and decays of the vegetable race, fo he seems as evidently to have prescribed the fame laws to man, as well as all living creatures, in the first rudi

ments of which there are contained the fpecific powers of their growth, duration and extinction; and when the evolutions of thofe animal powers are exhaufted and run down, the creature expires and dies of itself, as ripe fruit falls from the tree, or a flower preferved beyond its bloom drops and perishes upon the ftalk.

Thus much for this comparison of Job's, which though it is very poetical, yet conveys a just idea of the thing referred to." That he fleeth alfo as a fhadow, and continueth not,”—is no lefs a faithful and fine reprefentation of the fhortnefs and vanity of human life, of which one cannot give a better explanation, than by referring to the original, from whence the picture was taken.With how quick a fucceffion, do days, months and years pafs over our heads? -how truly like a fhadow that departeth do they flee away infenfibly, and scarce leave an impreffion with us? when we endeavour to call them back by reflection, and confider in what

manner they have gone, how unable are the best of us to give a tolerable account?-and were it not for fome of the more remarkable ftages which have distinguished a few periods of this rapid progrefs-we should look back upon it all as Nebuchadnezzar did upon his dream when he awoke in the morning;

he was fenfible many things had paffed, and troubled him too, but had paffed on fo quickly, they had left no footsteps behind, by which he could be enabled to trace them back..

Melancholy account of the life of man! which generally runs on in fuch a manner, as fcarce to allow time to make reflections which way it has gone.

How many of our firft years fide by in the innocent fports of childhood, in which we are not able to make reflections upon them!-how many more thoughtlefs years efcape us in our youth, when we are unwilling to do it, and are fo eager in the purfuit of pleafure, as to have no time to fpare, to top and.confider them!