nified the purifying ourselves from all defilements. And certainly the presence of the Son of God is more peculiar in that sacred mysterious ordinance than it was in the burning-bush: accordingly we should sanctify ourselves, and approach with holy fear.

"Her religion was not confined to the chapel, but every day she had chosen hours for communion with God; of which He is the only discerner and rewarder. Some who are high in the world think it sufficient to pay a complimental visit to God once a week, and content themselves with the external service, though destitute of holy affections, which are the life of religion; or, at best, are satisfied with a few expiring acts of devotion: but the good queen's conversation was in heaven. She was constant in those duties in which the soul ascends to God in solemn thoughts and ardent desires; and God descends into the soul by the excitations and influences of his Spirit.

"Her religion was not only exercised in divine worship, but was influential into practice. The law of God was written in her heart, and transcribed in her life, in the fairest characters.

"She had a sincere zeal for the healing our unhappy divisions in religious things, and declared her resolution upon the first address of some ministers, that she would use all means for that blessed end. She was so wise as to understand the difference between matters doctrinal and ritual; and so good as to allow a just liberty for dissenters in things of small moment. She was not fettered with superstitious scruples; but her clear and free spirit was for the union of Christians in things essential to Christianity. The holiness of her life was universal. She was born and lived in a court that shines in pomp, and flows in pleasures, and presents charming temptations to all the distempered appetites. Pride, that destroyed both worlds, and cleaves so close to human nature, reigns there. The love of pleasure is a soft seducer that easily insinuates itself through the senses, and captivates the soul. It is an observation of St. Chrysostom, that the preserving the three Hebrew martyrs unpolluted in the court of Babylon, was a greater miracle than the preserving them unsinged in the firy furnace. In the absence of temptations the corrupt nature is sometimes so concealed that it is hardly known to itself; but when tempting objects, armed with allurements, offer themselves, the corrupt nature is presently discovered, especially if a person comes to the license of a sceptre, that swells pride, and authorizes the exorbitant desires. To be humble in such a high elevation, to be temperate in the midst of the freest fruitions, is the effect of powerful grace. But who ever saw in the queen an appearance of pride and disdain? How grateful was the condescendence of her greatness! Who ever saw any disorder in her countenance, the crystal wherein the affections are visible? Her breast was like the Pacific Sea that seldom suffers, and is disturbed by a storm. She was so exempt from the tyranny of the angry passions, that we may have some conjecture of the felicity of the state of unstained innocence, of

which one ray is so amiable. She had such an abhorrence of the sensual passions, that nothing impure durst approach her presence. "She had an excellent understanding, that qualified her for government. Of this her presiding in council in times of danger, and preserving the tranquility of the kingdom, were real proofs.

"Her charity, that celestial grace, was like the sun: nothing within her circuit was hid from its refreshing heat. Love is the clearest notion we have of the Deity. God is Love. A prince in no perfection resembles God more than in his communicative goodness. I will mention one act of her pious charity, and the noble manner of her doing it. A lord of great honor and piety proposed to her a very good work that was chargeable. She ordered an hundred pounds should be paid to him for it. Some time interposing before the receipt of the money, he waited upon the queen, and pleasantly told her, that interest was due for the delay of payment. She presently ordered that fifty pounds more should be given, which was done accordingly. If it were known what this good queen did, and what she designed to do, among all her resplendent virtues, Charity would be illustrious.

"Her wise redemption of time from unconcerning vanities for domestic affairs, was the effect and indication of her tender and vigilant conscience. She considered her glass was continually running, and all the sands were to be accounted for. How should this great example correct those who are lavish of nothing so much as of time, which being lost, is irrecoverable! The sun returns every day but time never returns.

In her sickness, patience had its perfect work. Her disease was uncomfortable, yet with resigned submission she bore it. When the danger of it was signified to her, she had no fearful thoughts about her future state. It is a cruel respect to sick persons, especially to princes, to conceal from them their danger till death steals insensibly upon them. Indeed considering their past lives, and their present anxieties, the advice of approaching death is an anticipation of it. But the spirit of this excellent saint was not afraid of evil tidings, but was fixed, trusting in the Lord. Her care had been to secure the love of God in the best time of her life; and this mixed cordial drops in the bitterness of death.

"In short, all the blessed virtues were eminently seen in her that might render her government an entire happiness to the kingdom. This erected her a throne in the hearts of her subjects, and the honor the wise poet attributes to the Emperor Augustus,

-Victorque volentes
Per populos dat jura-

that she ruled a willing people, may more truly be said of this excellent princess. She was queen of the affections of the people, and governed them without constraint. Her praiseworthy actions will

eternize her memory, when other princes, divested of their secular pomp, shall either be buried in dark oblivion, or condemned in history."

There is a point of light in which we have not as yet considered this most excellent princess; her affection and conduct as a wife to that great man, the Prince of Orange, afterwards King William the Third, to whom she was married about seventeen years. Such as have given an account of her character have bestowed, and we doubt not with sufficient reason, the highest praises upon her in this relation. "She was" says Bishop Burnet, "so tender and so respectful a wife, that she seemed to go beyond the most perfect idea to which wit or invention has been able to rise. The lowest condition of life, or the greatest inequality of fortune, has not afforded so complete a pattern. Tenderness and complacency seemed to strive which of them should be the more eminent. She had no higher satisfaction in the prospect of the greatness that was descending on her, than that it gave her an occasion of making her husband a present worthy of himself; nor had crowns or thrones any charm in them that was so pleasant to her, as that they raised him to a greatness which he so well deserved, and could so well maintain. She was all zeal and rapture, when any thing was to be done that could either express affection, or shew respect to him. She obeyed with more pleasure than the most ambitious could have when they command." That the bishop's account of her in this view, and other such representations of her in the same exalted strain by other writers that might be mentioned, do not surpass the truth, but are only a justice to her memory, we may well conclude from what both the king said and did during her sickness, and after her decease. When Dr. Tennison, upon her death, went to comfort the king, his majesty answered, "That he could not but grieve, since he had lost a wife who in seventeen years, had never been guilty of an indiscretion."-" On the third day of her illness," says Bishop Burnet, "the king called me into his closet, and gave a free vent to a most tender passion. He burst out into tears, and cried out, that there was no hope of the queen, and that from being the happiest, he was now going to be the miserablest creature on earth." He said, "that during the whole course of their marriage he had never known one single fault in her; that there was a worth in her that nobody knew beside himself; though," he added, "I might know as much of her as any other person did." Presently after, the same historian adds, "that the king's affliction for her death was as great as it was just. It was greater than those who knew him best thought his temper capable of. He went beyond all bounds in it. During her sickness he was in an agony that amazed us all, fainting often, and breaking out into most violent lamentations. When she died, his spirits sunk so low, that there was great reason to apprehend that he was following her. For some weeks after he was so little master of himself, that he was not capable of minding business, or of seeing company."

MRS. ELIZABETH BURNET.

THE subject of our Memoirs was born November 8th, in the year 1661. She was the eldest daughter of Sir Richard Blake, Knight, the fifth son of Thomas Blake, of Earontoun, in the county of Southampton, Esquire, of an eminent family, and of Elizabeth, daughter of Doctor Bathurst, a physician in London, a person of distinguished piety, and among the most considerable men of his profession in his

time.

At eleven years old she began to have a true sense of religion, and read, with great application, the books that were put into her hands, but was not entirely satisfied with them, aspiring after more solid and sublime sentiments than what she met with in them. On this account it was that more than ordinary care was taken to make her think meanly of herself, she being bred up in the greatest privacy possible. When she was but a little more than seventeen years of age she was married to Robert Berkely, of Spetchly, in the county of Worcester, Esquire, grandson of Sir Robert Berkely, who was a judge in the reign of Charles the Second. The match between this young gentleman and her was principally procured by the means of Doctor Fell, then Bishop of Oxford, who was Mr. Berkely's guardian, and had taken the care of his education. The bishop thought that the assisting his friend in that match was the greatest service he ever performed for him.

When the young lady came into the family, she found her husband's mother a zealous papist, and a woman of a good life. This put her upon taking particular care to study her own religion in a larger compass, in order to understand the controversies between the protestants and papists, that she might be able to preserve her husband and herself from the artifices and insinuations of the popish priests, and the influence of his mother, who had great interest in him. But yet, considering the particular turn of her husband's mind, and the great deference she owed to his mother, she found herself obliged to be very tender and careful, that she might not be disturbed with unnecessary disputes about religion; in which, and in her whole management in this respect, there appeared a discretion admired by

all who knew her.

At the same time, this young lady obliged herself to a more than ordinary strictness in all the offices of piety, and in her whole conduct, that she might adorn her own profession by a suitable practice, constantly governing herself by the rules of true religion, and the severest virtue. Accordingly, living in the country, where she enjoy

ed much leisure, she spent great part of her time in devotion and reading. When she was inclined to divert herself with work, she generally had some persons to read to her; and when her poor neighbors came to visit her, which, upon her encouragement, they often did, she would frequently read good books to them herself, that she might instruct them without seeming to take too much upon her. In this manner she lived for six years, being esteemed and loved by all who knew her, even by those who, on account of different opinions in religion, were likely to be most prejudiced against her.

In King James's time, when the fears of popery began greatly to increase, and Bishop Fell died, who had great influence over Mr. Berkely, to prevent his being wrought upon by his relations, at the time they conceived mighty hopes of the popish religion being settled in these kingdoms, Mrs. Berkely prevailed upon her husband to go to Holland; and accordingly they travelled together over the seventeen provinces. In the popish provinces, on the account of his relations, they met with an unusually kind reception, letters being sent, without their knowledge, to Brussels, Ghent, Liege, and other considerable places, recommending Mrs. Berkely in a very particular manner, as one whose piety and virtue, had she been of the catholic church, as they called it, were great enough to entitle her to the character of a saint.

After these journeys, Mr. and Mrs. Berkely fixed at the Hague, where she was soon known, and grew into the esteem and friendship of persons of the highest rank. Here they continued till about the time of the Revolution, when they returned into England, and went to Spetchly, their country seat.

Here Mrs. Berkely went on in the happy course of life she had at first engaged in, making continual increases in knowledge and good works. She had generally some young persons in her family, whom she well improved both by her instructions and example, so that there was quickly a visible alteration made in them.

Her knowledge and virtue made her every day more and more taken notice of in that country. She contracted an intimate friendship with the eminent Doctor Stillingfleet, Bishop of Worcester, who to his death maintained an high esteem of her; and upon several occasions has been often heard to say, "that he knew not a more considerable woman in England than she was." Thus she continued to live with Mr. Berkely till the year 1693, when it pleased God to remove him from her by death.

In her widowhood, as she had more leisure than in her married state, so she applied it wholly to devotion, to reading, to acts of charity, and the offices of friendship; particularly she took upon her the care of her late husband's protestant relations, as if they had been her own; and indeed she was a mother to them all, as long as she lived, and shewed a great concern and kindness for them at her death. She was also very good, and obliging to all the rest of his family.