For my part, Mr. Urban, who, like most other people, affect to be fuperior to vulgar prejudices, I fhall enter upon the Doctor's tranflation without any prepoffeffion, if he can but fatisfy my mind as to one point, which, I think, is of effential confequence in a tranflation of the Sacred Text, namely, that he holds this text to be infpired, and that he confiders Paul of Tarfus to be fomething more than a very extraordinary man. For, I own that the very free manner in which the Doctor is known frequently to exprefs himself on this fubject, his reprefenting the hiftory of the creation as the mythology of the Hebrew people, and his profeffion to treat the Sacred Text with as little ce mony as he would do the text of Homer, Virgil, Milton, or Shakspear, naturally breeds in my mind a jealousy, which will not permit me to trust the tranflator any farther than I can fee him. Yours, &c. J. M. Mr. URBAN, Lincolnshire, June 23. I What remains of this bed is yet at Wrigholt, or Rigbolt, a farm belonging to the Duke of Ancaster, fituated in a very obfcure place by the fide of Gof berton fen. There are thirty-fix pannels left of it, with carved work upon them nearly fimilar to the fpecimen here fent (g. 2), which contains four. They are 18 inches by 9, except one, with the arms of France and England quarterly. Mrs. Cape, the prefent tenant, remembers it when complete (about forty years fince), and defcribes it to have been very large, fhut up on all fides with wainscot, and two holes left at the bottom end, each big enough to admit a grown person. The old part of the houfe is built of ftone, and fome of the windows have ftone mullions arched over. The walls near four feet thick. Upon the walls, in the room where I faw the bedstead, are fome paintings, but fo whitewashed GENT. MAG. O&ober, 1793. over that it is impoffible to form any Speech before the Right Rev. Father in Jam minæ fævi excidere bello, Arma quadrigis." CASIMIR, Lyric Ode I. The Bishop came on four bay borfes. ND if the menaces of war be cea A fed, why should not the danger of their return be banished too? If peace and piety be reftored to our island, why fhould we not use our utmost endea vours to bound them within it still, even to the clipping of their wings (as it is faid the Romans did by victory), to keep them from flying from us, at least by clipping the wings of thofe, or fending them flying out of our island, who would reingarboyle our peace, or ununiform our piety. For, moft reverend Præful,, that late combuftion, whereby thefe three kingdoms were but one great bonfire, hath yet many embers left, and there wants neither bellows nor fuel (neither follis nor follies); there are priefs enough who are nothing but wind fit to blow up new lights, and filly people, dry as tinder, ready to catch fire, inflame, and confume the nation of a fecond cinder-heap. But let your ecclefiaftical power, my lord of the clergy, Atop their airophyfe; and, if they hall fill be blowing and venting wind, there will not be wanting either a civil magiftrate to tie a ftring about the bladder's neck, or a military officer to fit the bagpipes and fpoil the blaft, forcing this wind another way; - nam quis. Temperet a gladiis? Whe Who can forbear when that king refifting doctrine, which first conventicfed in corners, thus by degrees, fenfim non fenfu, afcended the pulpit, until about five Ouftars ago, in aperto campo, throughout England and Scotland, difplayed its colours in the Hefteyan enfigns and the Smectymnian paper ban ners, thus marching to Weftminster did fit and vote in that difgraceful parliament wherein a Pim and a Kim*, more Phaeton-like than Phoebus, nay, against the commands and demands of Phoebus, drove the chariot-wheels of Lords and Commons, till, by the Edgehill fire (nam cinis aquat omnes), we learned the leffon to unlearn all ftate diftinctions between King, Lords, and Commons; and for the churches hierarchy, God being first dishonoured when his bishops were made unhonourable, next muft enfue the putting the heads of colleges under deck, by which fact, I dare aver, they plucked out the right eye of learning in our nation; then covering up the elevated hollow with a sheep-fkin hypocritical plafter of Calvin's maftick, rheam'd on by the thumbs of the mixed affembly; they wiped the face of the whole academy with that difhclout of divinity the Covenantt, which, forfooth, must be fo univerfally taken, that a Columella ufque ad Mediafinum, for fmiting the nofe of the Speaker of the Houfe of Peers pro tempore, it must gather up the fnot of the whole kingdom, even to the kitchen-boy of a lay elder. Thus were the people cuckolded of their allegiance by a ram-headed general, and milked of their treafures by the public deceit of the public faith, that frapping baftard brat of the legiflative whore, while the legitimate fon of the king and the laws of the land muft be found again beaten, banished, and undone, arraigned and executed; and that either by public affizes or committees, or republic courts of juftice, from whence neither the goods nor blood of king and nobles (I may add, and plebeian too) could efcape the difpofition of the fequeftring ape, or the piercing knives of Haberdashers hall. By the first and worst of these fell that fately * A Kimbolton, meaning Lord Maundeville, of Kent. The Covenant, why dishclout? because any one that took it might wring it any way he pleafed, and fqueeze out nothing but fwillings. Court of justice. Prince, who died honourable, though upon the ignominious fcaffold, who for perfonal ftrength and fymmetry, for external courtefie, and innate clemency, for the just offices of a husband, father, mafter, and king, to wife, children, fervants, and fubje&s, for his fcience in the liberal arts, his practice of the mo ́ral virtues, for his exact observance of the laws of the land, and unparalleled feverity of himself, that rather would pay too little than play his confcience. Befides, his piety towards God, both frequent and fervent, lived and died an example fo immutable, that, though we have a king adorned with all the pearls of price fit to bedeck a throne, yet I hope to obtain his pardon while I unfold my confcience, which is, that, let him exercife all thofe virtues to the very height of Graces, he can no otherwife be but King Charles the Second to fuch a father. And that I am as fure as he is, I am confident not prince ever did, or ever fhall, come near him by many furlongs; witnefs the Act of Oblivion, that ftupendous bulk of indemnity, for the iffuing out of which he even provoked that parliament wherein there were many finners for no fmall crimes, to the penning their own pardon. For, though that prodigious fcene was acted [the murder of my fovereigu], a deed engendering fuch amazement that, beyond the virtue of Medufa's head, Thunder and Lightning! the very meditation thereof charcoals my fappy body into carcafs, and I ftand an aftonifhed ftatue. And, although prefently after his Majefty appeared portrayed abroad, clarior e tenebris, in that most illuftrious book of his folitudes, where his intense looking for Heaven afcertains us of his crown of glory there, wherein is that wonderful prayer of mercy, repent be their impunity; when, I Tay, fuch a legacy was bequeathed, and that to fuch enemies, could flesh and blood imagine that ever any men fhould have executed the teftator's will? But, behold, admire, and tremble, in the admiration! Our most gracious fovereign, as if he had taken letters of adminiftration from his father's hand in heaven, hath fatisfied his father's legacy, and, over and above both, found affets enough of his own to pay (id eft, to pardon) the injuries of his own 12 years banishment, wherein he had exceded his being God's deputy, and gone beyond divine benignity (I intend no blafphemy in it), he hath (when God's juftice will not permit God's mercy to do fo much) pardoned unrelenting finners, and is foully belied if not preferred them too. And now his father rejoyceth that he enjoyed his wishes, here Charles le grand is Charles le bon; why, I fay, after all these miferies, nay, after all these mercies too, the Skewbol clergy are ftill employed, or rather employing them felves, filenced minifters ufurping the pulpit, and unlicenced preachers feducing whole families upon the old fcore too. Quis temperet, &c. Hence fuch blafpheming, calumniating, reviling, nay venting, even by tumults, of our Common Prayer Book, the Public Confeflion wherein (like canon and mufquet-fhot) in two well-ordered battalias, forcing even Heaven's gates with violence, and make a battery the bigger when it comes from broken hearts. Poor innocent, and therefore fuffering, book, which must be burnt by the Papifts for being Schifmatical, and torn by the Schifmatics for being Popish! Hence fuch belching against Epifcopacy, whofe antiquity is coeval, hath ever run parallel with the profeffion of Chrift, whofe dignity all the foregoing ages, and the fages of thofe ages, either confirmed, accepted of, or conformed unto: yet muft our fottifh Scottish divines make it the matterpiece of their national religion to extirpate that go vernment which firft brought religion into our nation; nay, to abjure them as Anti-chriftian who first introduced Christianity; for, if bishops be Antichriftian, then Antichrift hath ruled in God's church thefe 1600 years, which is the gamut of flat impiety tuned to the Ela of highest blafphemy. Yet, if the government may not be changed, what ftraining is there even to fpewing! A moderator, a fuperintendant, nay, an independant, rather than a bishop; and truly, my Lord, chattering Fame (which, magpie-like, underftands not what it prattles) made our ears to glow; that one of that conftitution, a lifping, mutinous Ephramite, fhould have been Tiphys of this fea, who, in all probability, would have proved to this dio cese, what he hath been eisewhere, Calamy-ty. But, bleffed be God! and our king, who have given us a fhepherd whole Theephook is a crofier, the ore of whole foul was digged from the mine of Heaven, and, being fmelted in the furnace of tryal, hath run pure metal, received the ftamp of orthodox, and fo fhall pafs fterling to all eternity: one who hath whipt Loyola into loyalty, and kept St. Andrew's in Holborn (whilft you could be kept in St. Andrew's in Holborn) in ecclefiaftical obedience, and is able to preach and difpute St. Andrew's in Scotland into conformity: one who, being a man after God's own heart, hath lived to the years wherein the man after God's own heart inftalls perfection. And may you, my Lord, live on, Levi like, the longeft of your brethren. You have, my Lord, if lying Fame tell any truth, for thefe 70 years breathed the public air. And though Ecclefall caftle be pulled down, and the trees pulled up, yet the ground is left, there is earth. And, being a bishop in your own fea too, you cannot well want water. What now remains, my Lord, is to make you completely elemented; but that poor military munufcula, the foldiers, facrifice their Prefent-tation of their 4th. Soldiers, give fire. [Here they fired, and cried,, God fave the king and the bishop!] Againft him may hake the arrows, ground; And believeth not, that is the found of the *Here they presented. The bead of the fpear. Why should the expreflion in our Bible be altered here? Our trauflators render it the GLITTERING word," not without reafon; the original verb 27 fignifies to glitter, and is applicable to any bright weapon. EDIT. When |