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PREFACE.

JR. FRANCIS QUARLES' Emblems first printed about the Year 1630, have been long esteemed, d much admired by the sober, virtuous and pious in ery Denomination. There is not a single circumstance human Life to which some Part of them does not lude; the Explanations of the Figures are in easy greeable Verse; to each of them is added a striking luotation from one of the Fathers of the Church, and he Whole is briefly summed up in a general Inference. THE SCHOOL OF THE HEART is also an excellent erformance; for it unfolds all the Springs of Action the human Mind, and points out what are the Priniples upon which the Generality of Mankind act; a ubject that can never be too much attended to.

This excellent Work has been long out of Print, which occasioned its being sold at an exorbitant Price; o the great loss of many worthy Persons who would ave been glad to purchase it. With respect to the present Edition, it exceeds all that ever went before; he Cuts are engraved at a vast expence, all the Larin Mottos are translated, so that it will be found one of the nost agreeable Works that can be offered to the Public; specially to the rising Generation. Here they will meet with no distracting Controversy; no doubts concerning Religion; but Entertainment and Improvement go hand hand together.

Ir is hoped that this Edition will meet with that reeption which the merit and utility of such an original

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work demands and which is not only calculated to convey the most important lessons of instruction into youthful minds, but to convey them in the most pleasant and entertaining manner; by hieroglyphics, or figurative signs and symbols of divine, sacred, and supernatural things by which mode of communicating knowledge, the fancy is charmed, the invention is exercised, the mind informed, and the heart improved.

The peculiar excellency of this Piece (a fair and elegant copy of which is now printed) is, that it contains a sort of wisdom in which young and old, learned and unlearned, are equally concerned; and without which, the greatest philosopher is an arrant fool. For, however highly we may esteem human arts and sciences in their proper place, it will ever be true, that "the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God."

Various and elaborate means are pursued, in order to furnish the minds of our youth with fabulous knowledge, and to fill them with the frivolous tales of heathenish science; the very perfection of which deserves but little, if any praise. And it is, no doubt, a sad proof of universal degeneracy, that the Metamorphoses of an Ovid are preferred, in our schools, to the sacred Realities of Moses and the Prophets and that a young person is taught to be as much affected with the recital of the dismal fate of Phaeton's sisters, as by that of Isaac, or of a greater than Isaac, when offersd up a sacrifice to the God of Heaven.

Let us, however, hope for better times and better things: when every human science shall be made subservient to divine; when the invaluable knowledge of the sacrd writings shall have its due place and due honour; and when QUARLES' EMBLEMS shall, at least be preferred to the comparative nonsense of the Pantheon and Ovid's Epistles. THE EDITOR.

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