"I said, the blessed Redeemer"-Hold! Hold! you wound me! That is the rock on which I have split! I denied his name." tr Refusing to hear any thing from me, or take any thing from the phycisian, he lay silent, as far as sudden darts of pain would permit, till the clock struck; then he cried out with vehemence, "Oh time! time! It is fit thou shouldst thus strike thy murderer to the heart. How art thou fled forever?-A month ?-Oh for a single week! I ask not for years, though an age were too little for the much I have to do." "On my saying we would not do too much; that heaven was a blessed place." So much the worse. 'Tis lost! 'Tis lost! Heaven is to me the severest part of hell!" "Soon after I proposed prayer." Pray you that can: I never prayed: I cannot pray.-Nor need I. Heaven is on my side already; it closes with my conscience; its severest strokes but second my own." "His friend being much touched, even to tears at this (for who could forbear? I could not) he, with a most affectionate look said, " Keep these tears for thyself. I have undone thee.-Dost thou weep for me? That's cruel. What can pain me more?" "Here his friend, too much affected, would have left him. "No, stay. Thou still may'st hope ;-therefore hear me. How madly have I talked? How madly hast thou listened and believed? But look on my present state as a full answer to thee and to myself. This body is all weakness and pain; but my soul, as if stung up by tor ment, to greater strength and spirit, is full powerful to reason; full mighty to suffer. And that which thus triumphs within the jaws of mortality, is doubtless im mortal. And as for a Deity, nothing less than an Almighty could inflict the pains I feel." "I was about to congratulate this passive, involuntary confession, in his asserting the two prime articles of his creed, extorted by the rack of nature: when he thus very passionately added, "No, no! let me speak on. I have not long to speak.-My much injured ' friend! my soul as my body, lies, in ruins, in scattered fragments of broken thought: remorse for the past throws my thoughts on the future: worse dread of the future strikes it back on the past. I turn, and turn, and find no ray.-Didst thou feel half the mountain that is on me, thou wouldst struggle with the martyr for his stake, and bless heaven for the flames;-that is not an everlasting flame; that is not an unquenchable fire." "How were we struck? Yet, soon after still more. With what an eye of distraction, what a face of despair he cried out," My principles have poisoned my friend: my extravagance has beggared my boy; my unkindness has murdered my wife! And is there another hell? Oh! thou blasphemed, yet most indulgent Lord God! Hell itself is a refuge if it hides me from thy frown.” "Soon after, his understanding failed; his terrified imagination uttered horrors not to be repeated, or ever forgotten; and before the sun (which I hope has seen few like him) arose, this gay, young, noble, ingenuous, accomplished, and most wretched mortal expired." It sometimes happens, we confess, that men who have led very wicked lives have gone out of the world as they lived in it, defying conscience, and deriding a future judgment as an idle fiction: but these instances are very rare, and only prove that there are monsters in the moral as well as in the natural world, who have sported with their own deceivings, and have even dared to lift their puny and rebellious arm against Omnipc tence: But it will perhaps be said, that the sons of vice and riot have pleasure in sensual indulgences. Allowed: but it is altogether of the lower kind, empty, fleeting and transient; like the crackling of thorns under a pot, so is the mirth of the wicked. It makes a noise and a blaze for the present, but soon vanishes away into ⚫ smoke and vapour. On the other hand, the pleasure of religion is solid and lasting, and will attend us through all, even the last stages of life. When we have passed the levity of youth, and have lost our relish for the gay entertainments of sense; when old age steals upon us, and bends us towards the grave, this will cleave fast to us, and give us relief. It will be so far from terminating at death, that it then commences perfect, and continually improves with new additions, and ever-blooming joys. If our souls are clad in this immortal robe, we need not fear the awful summons of the king of terrors, nor regret our retiring into the chambers of the dust. Our immortal part will wing its way to the arms of its Omnipotent Redeemer, and find rest in the heavenly mansions of the Almighty. And though our earthly part, this tabernacle of clay, return to its original dust, it is only to be raised in a more beautiful and heavenly form. If it retires into the shadow of death, and visits the gloomy habitations of the grave, it is only to return from a short confinement to endless liberty; for our great master will lead his redeemed from the chambers of the grave, and guide them in his strength to his holy habitation: he will plant them in the mountain of his inheritance, in the place he hath prepared for them, even the sanctuary which his hands hath established; and we shall be with the Lord for ever and ever, to serve him day and night in his temple, where the inhabitant shall never say, I am sick; where the wicked shall cease from troubling, and where the weary soul, will be for ever at rest. We shall here subjoin a copy of a letter, sent by Publius Lentulus, governor of Judea, to the senate of Rome, respecting the person and action of our blessed Lord and Saviour, JESUS CHRIST; which may serve as a strong testimony and evidence in favour of the divinity of the Lord's person and doctrines, against the stale objections of the Deists, as the authenticity of the ancient manuscripts, from which it was translated, is founded on the best authority. Tiberius Cæsar was then emperor, and caused the extraordinary intelligence contained in this letter, to be published throughout all the Roman provinces. One would have thought this confirmation issued by the Roman governor, might have convinced the generality of the Romans, as well as Jews concerning the divinity of our Lord's mission; but such was the universal prejudice of the people, that nothing would satisfy those who had not given credit to the words of CHRIST himself. The epistle runs as follows; A "There appeared in these our days a man of great virtue, named JESUS CHRIST, who is yet living amongst us, and of the Gentiles is accepted as a Prophet of Truth, but by his own disciples called the Son of GOD. He raiseth the dead and cureth all manner of diseases. man of stature somewhat tall and comely, with a very reverend countenance, such as the beholders may both love and fear his hair is the colour of a filbert full ripe, and plain almost down to his ears, but from his ears downward somewhat curled, more orient of colour, and waving about his shoulders. In the midst of his head goeth a seam or partition of his hair, after the manner of the Nazarites; his forehead very plain and smooth; his face without spot or wrinkle, beautified with comely red; his nose and mouth so formed as nothing can be reprehended; his beard somewhat thick, agreeable in colour to the hair of his head, not of any great length, but forked in the midst; of an innocent, mature look; his eyes grey, clear, and quick. In reproving he is terrible; in admonishing courteous and fair spoken; pleasant in speech, mixed with gravity. It cannot be re |