Paul,* "that after the way which they call herefy, so worship I the God of my fathers, believing all things which are written in the Law and the Prophets:" to which I add, whatever is written in the New Testament. Any other judges or chief interpreters of the Chriftian belief, together with all implicit faith, as it is called, I, in common with the whole Proteftant Church, refuse to recognize. With good and religious reason, therefore, all Proteftant Churches with one confent, and particularly the Church of England, in her thirty-nine articles, Article 6th, 19th, 20th, 21ft, and elsewhere, maintain these two points, as the main principles of true religion; that the rule of true religion is the Word of God only and that this faith ought not to be an implicit faith, that is to believe, though as the Church believes, against or without exprefs authority of Scripture. MILTON.

*Acts xxiv. 14.

Heroes.

T were well if there were fewer Heroes; for I fcarcely ever heard of any, excepting Hercules, but did more mischief than good. These overgrown mortals commonly use their will with their right hand, and their reason with their left. Their pride is their title, and their power puts them in poffeffion. Their pomp is furnished from rapine, and their scarlet is dyed with human blood. If wrecks and ruins and defolation of kingdoms are marks of greatness, why do we not worfhip a tempeft, and erect a ftatue to the plague? A panegyric upon an earthquake is every jot as reasonable, as upon fuch conquefts as thefe.-JEREMY COLLIER.

Hefiod's Theogony.

HE fables of Homer I value nottheir beginning and end is woman. The theogony of Hefiod is no better. Saturn ufurps the throne

of his father, and Jupiter does the fame by Saturn, and divides the empire of the universe with Neptune and Pluto. Pluto ravishes Proferpina, and Neptune Melanippa and the Nereids, and Jupiter Antiope, as a fatyr, Danae as gold, Europa as a bull, and Leda as a fwan; and Semele and Ganymede prove his impurity and wake the jealousy of his wife. Apollo the prophet was a liar, Minerva a virago, Bacchus effeminate, and Venus a courtezan. Read over to Jupiter the laws against disrespect to parents and against adultery; to Minerva and Diana, those describing female duties to females, to Bacchus those for men. Look at Hercules and his labours and his loves and his being shamefully * whipped by Lyde, and his death by his own hand. Vulcan's well-grounded jealousy too, shows what these gods were.

JUSTIN MARTYR.

* 66 κατὰ γλουτῶν τυπτόμενος.”HES.

man's

Hollow Church-Papifts.

OLLOW Church-papifts are like the roots of nettles, which themfelves fting not; but bear all the ftinging leaves.-LORD BACON.

Hollowness.

EOPLE young and raw and foftnatured, think it an eafy thing to gain love; and reckon their own friendship a fure price of any but when experience fhall have shown them the hardness of moft hearts, the hollowness of others, and the baseness and ingratitude of almost all, they will then find that a true friend is the gift of God, and that He only who made hearts can unite them. DR. SOUTH.

Home.

OMETHING like Home, that is not home, is to be defired; it is to be found in the house of a friend.-SIR WILLIAM TEMple.

Homer's Religion.

T gives us pleasure to trace in Homer the important doctrine of a fupreme God, a Providence, a free agency in man supposed to be confiftent with fate or deftiny; a difference between moral good and evil, inferior gods or angels, fome favourable to men, others malevolent; and the immortality of the foul. But it gives us pain to find these notions fo miferably corrupted, that they must have had a very weak influence to excite men to virtue and to deter them from vice.-DR. JOR

TIN.

2. The Grecian poets are cenfurable because of their ridiculous Theogonies. Homer, for instance, afcribing the origin of the gods to water, making them arbiters of war: