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The Church.

NDER the name of Church, I understand a body or collection of human perfons, profeffing faith in Chrift, gathered together in feveral places of the world, for the worship of the fame God, and united into the fame Corporation.-BISHOP PEARSON.

2. THE Church, being a fupernatural fociety, doth differ from natural focieties in this; that the perfons unto whom we affociate ourselves, in the one are men, fimply confidered as men, but they to whom we be joined in the other, are God, angels and holy men.-HOOKER.

Church-Mufic.

HE end of Church-mufic is to relieve the wearinefs of a long attention, to make the mind more cheerful and compofed, and to

endear the offices of religion. It should therefore imitate the perfume of the Jewish

tabernacle, and have as little of the compofition of common use as poffible. There must be no voluntary maggots, no military tattoos, no light and galliardizing notes; nothing that may make the fancy trifling or raise an improper thought; which would be to profane the fervice and to bring the playhouse into the Church. Religious harmony must be moving but noble withal-grave, folemn and seraphic; fit for a martyr to play and an angel to hear. It should be contrived fo as to warm the best blood within us, and to take hold of the finest part of the affections; to transport us with the Beauty of Holiness, to raise us above the fatisfactions of life, and make us ambitious of the glories of Heaven. And, without doubt, if the morals of the choir were fuitable to the defign of the mufic it were no more than requifite. To come reeling from a tavern, or a worse place, into a Church, is a monstrous incongruity. Such irregular people are much fitter for the exercises of penance than of exultation. The use of them diffevers the interefts of Religion; and in effect, is little

better than finging the praises of God through the organ of the Devil.-JEREMY COLLIER.

Church and State.

OME men there are, the pefts of fociety I think them, who pretend a great regard for religion in general, but who take every opportunity of declaiming publicly against that fyftem of Religion, or at least against that Church-establishment, which is received in Britain. Juft fo them, of whom I have been fpeaking, affect a great regard to liberty in general; but they diflike fo much the fyftem of liberty established in Britain, that they are inceffant in their endeavours to puzzle the plaineft thing in the world, and to refine and diftinguish away the life and ftrength of our conftitution, in favour of the little, present, momentary turns, which they are retained to ferve. What now would be the confequence, if all these endeavours fhould fucceed? I am perfuaded that the great philofophers, divines, lawyers and politicians, who

exert them, have not yet prepared and agreed upon the plans of a new religion and of new conftitutions in Church and State. We fhould find ourselves therefore, without any form of religion or civil government. The firft fet of thefe miffionaries would take off all reftraints of religion from the governed; and the latter fet would remove, or render ineffectual, all the limitations and controls, which liberty hath prescribed to those who govern; and disjoint the whole frame of our conftitution. Entire diffolution of manners, confufion, anarchy, or, perhaps, abfolute monarchy would follow: for it is poffible, nay probable, that in fuch a state as this, and amidst fuch a rout of lawless favages, men would choose this government, absurd as it is, rather than have no government at all.-LORD BOLINGBROKE.

Church Union.

HE Church being a fociety, hath the felf-fame original grounds, which other focieties have; the natural inclination which all men have

unto focial life, and confent to some certain bond of affociation, which bond is the law that appointeth what kind of order they shall be affociated in.-HOOKER.

Claffic Ground.

O tread on claffic ground is a pleafing fource of gratification to the Traveller. He has it in his power to adopt the most direct method of illuftrating the allufions to manners, cuftoms and places, found in his favourite authors, and to fupply the defects of commentators and critics by his actual obfervations. He who relishes the beauties of a Virgil or a Horace, will be eager to vifit the spots, either marked by their footsteps, or immortalized by their poems. What delight will he experience, when he fees the Po flowing through the meadows of Mantua and afterwards rufhing by various ftreams into the gulph of Venice; or, when he traverses the fhores of Baie and wanders amid the groves of Umbria! The Anio dashing its foaming