we cannot exceed; here we must fall short. Another reason, of nearly equal force with the former, for the utmost religious warmths in a clergyman, arise from the lamentable coldness, observable at present in all ranks of people, to both the principles and practice of Christianity. For this paralytic disorder, not cooling, or relaxing medicines, but bracers and stimulants, are called for; and if not at hand, death must ensue. Not a lulling, but a rousing sermon, should be applied to a dozing congregation. One in a lethargy (not your case I hope, madam), may fret at the blistering plaister, or actual cautery, that awakes him to pain, and may cry out for his former soporific emollients; but his physician must be either very ignorant, or unfaithful, if he yields to the wish of his unhappy patient. So much, madam, for my manner of preaching. Now, as to the hypocrisy whereof you seem to form some suspicion in me, and to avoid the offence that suspicion might excite in my mind, join yourself in the censure; I solemnly protest, there is nothing I abhor so much, as putting on a greater shew of religion, than one feels within, that some worldly, ambitious, or sinister, or even good purpose, may be thereby promoted. I never asked, or employed any one to ask, any of the ecclesiastical emoluments, I have successively enjoyed; have declared, they were a great deal more than I deserved; and confessed myself the vilest and most unworthy of all God's servants, and that publicly as well as privately. If my not publishing a full list of my secret sins, and wearing clothes to cover my nakedness, as well as to keep out the cold, make me a hypocrite, I am then a hypocrite; but so is every man living, and every woman, you, madam, among the rest of your sex, a great deal more so. If this is not absolutely the naked truth, a very little stripping would complete the exposure by shewing the despicable vanity which too deeply blotted the fairer part of my life and conversation. Your definition of hypocrisy, sir, I close with, as better than my own; and am rejoiced to find, that I have little or none of it in me. Having been your mother-confessor on this occasion, be assured, whenever I am disposed to be as open with any one living, you shall be my father-confessor. 175. There are few words which have degenerated farther from their original meaning, than the word competency. This term, at first, signified nearly the same with competition, or the pretensions of two or more, who stood candidates, or competentes, for some post of honour, power, or profit. In somewhat a like sense it is still taken among the great ones, who, sensible that wealth gives precedency and titles, never think they have enough, till they can outshine their competitors in splendour; and if their funds are insufficient for this purpose, they attempt it by running in debt. But among the lower classes of mankind, it now simply signifies enough. A very sensible poor man, being asked, What he took to be a competency, satirically answered, I believe it is a little more than one has.' Who indeed thinks he hath enough? It is true, there are men who abound on twenty pounds a year; and others, who are reduced to indigence on as many thousands; yet both wish for more. Plain it is therefore, that neither hath enough. How few have enough, if another hath any thing! Let us suppose Pompey and Cæsar, when infants, the former with a rattle, and the latter with a pipe; little Pompey must have the pipe, and little Cæsar the rattle, or both will fall to crying. The adorers of nature would do well to consider this. When these two grew up to be men, little Pompey (still little) could not bear an equal, nor little Cæsar a superior. Nothing less than the whole world, perhaps hardly that, could furnish either with a competency. The world abounds with little Pompeys and Cæsars, struggling to be uppermost, though in a poor village, of but ten cottages; and wealth is all they have to rise on. It is a maxim, vouched by experience, that no sum can make a man rich; for, be it as great as you please, he is poor if he wants more, and who does not want more? One, habituated to the luxury, the pomp, and splendour of high life, must inevitably be poor, for his wants are innumerable, and infinitely above his fortune. Besides, he feels through every want, with a keenness to which he is a stranger, who can be satisfied with a pound of bread, and four ounces of butter. The latter can walk thirty miles a day, and whistle as be goes; the former cannot get to the next street without a gilded coach, and half a dozen lacquies to attend it; and grows miserable if, in his way, he sees another carriage a little higher gilded than his own. The stupid walker however would be glad to exchange conditions with him. With people of either sort it is impossible to define a competency, because it lies entirely in opinion, and that opinion so vague, and so ill founded, that the throw of a die, or a blast of wind, is far more stationary. In reality, there is no such thing to be found among the men of this world. To investigate this fugitive idea, we must have recourse to religion, where it is precisely defined. Our religion tells us, that having food and raiment,' we have enough, and are therewith to be contented.' Dare not to grumble, ye great ones, at this, for howsoever inadequate it may be to your wishes, it is a great deal too much for the merits of such ungrateful abusers of all you possess above that scantling. If your pride and vices of a thousand kinds, do but grow out of the root of all evil; if the higher they rise, they do but the more expose you to storms and thunders; and if they do but aggravate your black account in the sight of God, you would do well to fling them from you among such as have neither food nor raiment. If you do this, it will divert you to see the scramble,, and possibly pain you a little, to see some of them grasping at more than is made necessary in the definition, consecrated by the word of God. A lord, raised but from a moderate fortune, to twice the wealth of any man I ever was acquainted with, assured me, that riches were the heaviest curse that ever fell upon any man. Then, my lord, said I, you are greatly cursed. I am, replied he, but I will soon make my riches fly in such a manner as no man ever did. What a world of good will you then do, my lord! Good! said he, no, but mischief. I will not fling a shil-ling to any mortal but him I hate. What a phenomenon will your shower of gold be, among those of blood, stones, &c. when recorded in natural history. I wish to see it, though I will not catch up a single farthing's worth of your curses, having already more than enough by my little parish, which pays me 1507. a year, and makes me richer than your lordship, who owes a large sum on your last purchase. This reminds me of the Plutus of Aristophanes. The god of wealth, hearing in the infernal regions perpetual complaints, made by the descending shades, of the poverty they had suffered in the upper world, while others had wallowed in riches, was seized with an extraordinary fit of benignity for a sort of devil, and came up hither to enrich all mankind. No sooner had proclamation been made of his arrival and intention, than the whole species crowded about, and were within a little of tearing him, and one another, to pieces, every one eager to be first served, and not sure that his wealth would hold out for the enormous wishes of so many. However, having soon satisfied all, every one was grown vastly too rich to work, and consequently ali were in immediate danger of being starved, for who, worth 100,000l. would plough, or do any thing. Here was competency with a vengeance, and not more acceptable, at first, to the receivers, than consonant, in the event, to the malignity of the giver. 176. An elderly barrister and young lady, happening to meet in a drawing-room, had time for the following conversation, before other company came in. B. You are in the fashion, madam, I see. L. I am; and why not? B. If it set you off to more advantage, I should think you in the right; but I am humbly of opinion, you would look a great deal handsomer, if dressed a little nearer to those attractions which nature hath given you. Why you should powder a fine head of hair into greyness, I cannot guess, unless it is that you may look more like your grandmother. L. Yet you yourself are powdered up to the fashion, as high as I am. Is it to look more like your grandfather, and to be thought learned in the law, in proportion to the whiteness of your head? B. I am growing old; and my attempt to look wiser than I am is as pardonable in me, as it is in you to endeavour to look handsomer than you are, especially as you are grossly mistaken in the opinion, that the present fashion helps you to do so. L. If the younger gentry of your sex thought in this matter as you do, it would be but reasonable that I should think with you too. But as neither they, nor I, have feed you, it is but reasonable that I should dress for your juniors. B. They are puppies, and you ought rather to dress for men of sense. L. That I doubt. What hath a woman, fond, now and then, of her own way, to do with a wise husband? B. Very little, I believe. That gauze net is put on to catch a man, and shews a man to be a much greater fool than any bird or fish. There is no satire upon the understanding of a man so severe as a gauze handkerchief. L. Except your's in the marriage settlement of my mother, on thirty skins of parchment, which supposed the parties who paid for it to be most egregious fools, and, to point the satire, to be slippery knaves too. B. Had I foreseen the issue of that business, I should not have been concerned in it. L. Me only you mean; but you ought much rather with shame to regret the unhappy issue of my mother's suit for her jointure, which depended on that settlement, whereof the judges and jury could make nothing after a long trial, fatal to the life of poor Tunbelly, one of the jurors, who contracted his fever by sitting up all night. 177. A great deal of theory and speculation hath been published on the subject of a universal deluge; some of which hath pretty well stood the test of philosophical criticism, and some sunk under it. There is no part of sacred history more frequently, nor indeed more speciously attacked by infidels, than the account given us of this extraordinary transaction by Moses. They say, the ark was not large enough to hold the contents assigned it by that writer, together with their food for one hundred and fifty days. That the water, partly salt, and partly fresh, could not have furnished a proper element either for sea-fish, or those of lakes and rivers. And above all, they insist, there could not be found water enough to cover the whole globe fifteen cubits above the tops of the hills and mountains, or if there could, it was impossible to carry it off again. Before these objections are considered, it will be proper previously to observe, that this piece of history was not written for philosophers; and that the Mosaic account of the creation, the fall of man, and the universal deluge, are succinctly written, as making altogether an introduction to the history intended, beginning with Abraham, to the law, the prophets, and more especially to the redemption of mankind by Jesus Christ. So much premised, it would be absurd to look, in so short a detail, for a philosophical rationale, or any thing more than the plain truth of facts. In the first place, it hath been satisfactorily proved in the first volume folio of the Universal History, to which I refer, that the ark was large enough to hold all the several species, said to have been received into it, two and two, and of clean beasts, seven, that there might be some for sacrifices, and a quicker propagation of these, as animal food was to be licensed immediately after the deluge. As to food, many species of animals, and almost all the insect tribes, could subsist for a longer time without any. Beasts of prey live upon one bellyful for a long time; aud the granivorous kinds, having no exercise, might be well enough kept alive by very moderate quantities of grain. We have instances of human beings, who have lived very well forty, fifty, and sixty days, without any food, solid or liquid; and all this without a miracle. The animal nature is capable of, and sometimes liable to, very extraordinary suspensions of digestion, without a total stoppage of circulation. We know that all sorts of flies and creeping things are well preserved in their eggs for four, five, or six months. Secondly, as to the subsistence of all sorts of fish in water, partly salt, partly fresh, it will be no great difficulty with him who knows there are several species of them, such as salmon, eels, &c. that live commodiously, one part of the year in the sea, and the other, in our lakes and rivers; and that other species, purely marine, seem insensible of any great inconvenience in mixed water at the mouths of great rivers. The sea is not every where |