Изображения страниц
PDF
EPUB

God in the face of Jesus Christ.

And vastly different

this was from all the notions I had before had of the same truths. It shone from heaven: it was not a spark kindled by my own endeavours, but it shone suddenly about me: it came by a heavenly means, the Word: it opened heaven and discovered heavenly things; and its whole tendency was heaven-ward. It was a true light, giving true manifestations of the one God, the one Mediator between God and man, and a true view of my state with respect to God, not according to my foolish imaginations. It was a distinct and clear light, not only representing spiritual things, but manifesting them in their glory, and in their comely order. It set all things in their due line of subordination to God, and gave distinct views of their genuine tendency. It was a satisfying light: the soul absolutely rested upon the discoveries it made: it was assured of them; it could not doubt if it saw, or if the things were so as it represented them. It was a quickening, refreshing, healing light: it arose with healing in its wings. It was a powerful light: it dissipated that thick darkness which overspread my mind, and made all those frightful temptations that before tormented me, instantly flee before it. Lastly, it was a composing light: it did not, like a flash of lightning, fill the soul with fear and amazement, but it quieted my mind, and gave me the full and free use of all my faculties. I need not give a larger account of this light, for no words can give a notion of light to the blind: and he that has eyes (at least while he sees it) will need no words to describe it."

This is a high mystic strain. But in the account of his death there are passages of the truest and finest feeling. When a long illness had well nigh done its work, he said, "I could not believe that I could have borne, and borne cheerfully, this rod so long. This is a miracle, pain without pain! Blessed be God that ever I was born. I have a father, a mother, and ten brothers and sisters in Heaven, and I shall be the eleventh! O blessed be the day that ever I was born!"- A few hours before he

[ocr errors][ocr errors][ocr errors]

breathed his last, he said, "I was just thinking on the pleasant spot of earth I shall get to lie in beside Mr. Rutherford, Mr. Forrester, aad Mr. Anderson. I shall come in as the little one among them, and I shall get my pleasant George in my hand, (a child who was gone. before him,) and oh! we shall be a knot of bonny dust!" I hope there are but few readers whose hearts are in so diseased a state as not to feel and understand the beauty and the value of these extracts.

[blocks in formation]

Ravings of the persecuted Hugonots.

ONE of the Camisards is said to have "declared that God had revealed to him that a temple of white marble, adorned with gold fillets, and the tables of the law written on it, would drop down from Heaven in the midst of the valley of St. Privet, for the comfort of the faithful inhabitants of the upper Cevennes."- Hist. of the Camisards,

1709.

education

Burnet says (vol. iv. p. 15.) they had many among them who seemed qualified in a very singular manner to be the teachers of the rest. They had a great measure of zeal without any learning; they scarce had any at all. I spoke with the person who by the Queen's order sent one among them to know the state of their affairs. I read some of the letters which he brought from them, fuli of a sublime zeal and piety, expressing a courage and

One instance of

confidence that could not be daunted. this was, that they all agreed that if any of them was so wounded in an engagement with the enemy that he could not be brought off, he should be shot dead rather than be left alive to fall into the enemy's hands.

He

of

says also that a connivance at their own way worship was offered them, but "they seemed resolved to accept of nothing less than the restoring their edicts to

them."

NOTE XXV. Page 307.

The Druidical Superstition cherished in a later Age.

THE Druids are spoken of in Irish hagiology as possessing great influence in Ireland in St. Patrick's time. Bad as this authority is it may be trusted here:- but the reader may find proofs, as convincing as they are curious, of the long continuance of the superstition in Wales, in Mr. Davies's Mythology of the Druids.

NOTE XXVI. Page 307.
Preaching at a Cross.

-Mos est Saxonicæ gentis, quod in nonnullis nobilium bonorumque hominum prædiis, non ecclesiam sed sanctæ crucis signum, Domino dicatum, cum magná honore almum, in alto erectum, ad commodam diurne orationis sedulitatem, solent habere.

Hodoeporicon S. Willibaldi, apud Canisium. t. 2. p. 107.

"The ancient course of the clergy's officiating only pro tempore in parochial churches, whilst they received maintenance from the cathedral church, continued in England till about the year 700. For Bede plainly intimates that at that time the bishop and his clergy lived together and had all things common, as they had in the primitive church in the days of the apostles."

Bingham, book 5. ch. 6. § 5.

NOTE XXVII. Page 311.

The Papal System.

THERE is a most fantastic passage upon this subject in Hobbes's Leviathan, one of the last books in which any thing so whimsical might be expected.

"From the time that the Bishop of Rome had gotter to be acknowledged for Bishop Universal, by pretence c succession to St. Peter, their whole hierarchy, or king dome of darkness, may be compared not unfitly to the kingdome of fairies; that is, to the old wives' fables in England, concerning ghosts and spirits, and the feats they play in the night; and if a man consider the original of this great ecclesiastical dominion, he will easily per ceive, that the Papacy is no other than the ghost of the deceased Romane empire, sitting crowned upon the grave thereof; for so did the Papacy start up on a sudden out of the ruines of that heathen power.

"The language, also, which they use, both in the churches, and in their publique acts, being Latine, which is not commonly used by any nation now in the world, what is it but the ghost of the old Romane language?

“The fairies in what nation soever they converse have but one universal king, which some poets of ours call King Oberon; but the Scripture calls Beelzebub, Prince of dæmons. The ecclesiastiques, likewise, in whose dominions soever they be found, acknowledge but one universall king, the Pope.

"The ecclesiastiques are spirituall men, and ghostly fathers. The fairies are spirits and ghosts. Fairies and ghosts inhabite darkness, solitudes, and graves. The ecclesiastiques walke in obscurity of doctrine, in monasteries, churches, and church-yards.

"The ecclesiastiques have their cathedrall churches; which, in what town soever they be erected, by virtue of holy water, and certain charmes called exorcismes, have the power to make these townes and cities, that is to say, seats of empire. The fairies also have their enchanted castles, and certain gigantique ghosts, that domineer over the regions round about them.

"The fairies are not to be seized on, and brought answer for the hurt they do; so also the ecclesiastiques vanish away from the tribunals of civill justice.

"The ecclesiastiques take from young men, the use of T reason, by certain charmes compounded of metaphysiques, and miracles, and traditions, and abused Scripture, whereby they are good for nothing else, but to execute what they command them. The fairies likewise are said to take young children out of their cradles, and to change them into natural fools, which common people do therefore call elves, and are apt to mischief.

"In what shop, or operatory, the fairies make their enchantment, the old wives have not determined. But the operatories of the clergy are well enough known to be the universities, that received their discipline from authority pontifical.

"When the fairies are displeased with any body, they are said to send their elves, to pinch them. The ecclesiastiques, when they are displeased with any civil state, make also their elves, that is, superstitious, enchanted subjects, to pinch their princes, by preaching sedition or one prince enchanted with promises, to pinch another.

"The fairies marry not; but there be amongst them incubi, that have copulation with flesh and blood. The priests also marry not.

"The ecclesiastiques take the cream of the land, by donations of ignorant men, that stand in awe of them, and by tythes: so also it is in the fable of fairies, that they enter into the dairies and feast upon the cream, which they skim from the milk.

"What kind of money is currant in the kingdome of fairies, is not recorded in the story. But the ecclesiastiques in their receipts accept of the same money that we doe; though when they are to make any payment, it is in canonizations, indulgencies, and masses.

"To this, and such like resemblances between the Papacy and the kingdome of fairies may be added this; that as the fairies have no existence, but in the fancies of ignorant people, rising from the traditions of old wives or old poets, so the spiritual power of the Pope without the

« ПредыдущаяПродолжить »