selves, you will discover these and many other important truths, which will console your hearts under every distress.

10. Whithersoever you direct your attention, the precept of the text will be in a high degree beneficial. For one more example, does anger overcome your reason? Are your inflamed passions ready to burst out in opprobrious words and barbarous deeds? if you take heed to yourselves, you will be enabled to calm your minds, to bridle your tongues, and to withhold your hands from him, who has provoked you to wrath. Take heed therefore to yourselves and know, that you are composed of an intellectual and rational mind, and of affections and passions. It is for the former to command, and for the latter to obey. Never suffer your mind to be led captive by your affections; nor permit your passions to conquer your

reason.

11. Finally, an accurate and diligent consideration of yourselves will lead you to the knowledge of God: for if you take heed to yourselves, you will require no other means to render you acquainted with your Maker. In yourselves, as in a world in miniature, you can contemplate the wisdom of the supreme Being. As you cannot see your mind with your corporeal eyes, but doubt not that it exists, so you will not doubt that God exists, although he is invisible. The mind cannot be painted as of any color, shape or size; but is known by its activity only in like manner you cannot discern God with the eye, but you can apprehend him with the spiritual sense. Admire the wonderful art with which your Creator has constructed your mind, and in what close union he has connected it with your body. Observe how they mutually sympathize. Consider with what readiness your limbs obey the motion of your will. Inquire in what storehouses of the brain is deposited the knowledge, which you acquire; whence it is that new ideas do not exclude the ideas, which you before obtained; but that your memory preserves them all without confusion, and distributed into regular classes, as if they were engraved on brazen columns.

After this contemplation of your mind, take heed to yourselves, and observe with what admirable skill your body is con

* Vid. Ovid. Metamorph. I. 81-86.

stituted. See what an elegant habitation your great Creator has provided for your soul. To you only he has given an erect stature whilst the eyes of other animals are fixed on the ground, you only look upward to heaven.* Your head, in which the senses are placed, crowns the summit of your body. There are the sight, the hearing, the taste, and the smell. Their organs are near, that they may afford mutual assistance; but whilst they are crowded into a narrow space, they do not interrupt each other. The eyes, shaded and adorned with the graceful brows, are seated in the upper part of the head, that they may command a more extensive prospect, and that no part of the body may intercept their view. The apertures of the hearing are placed on each side, consisting not of straight, but winding passages, which convey without danger the sounds, that are formed by the undulating air. The tongue is soft and flexible, and accurately adapted to the formation of the great variety of articulations, of which language consists. In this operation it is aided by the teeth, which guard it like a strong palisade. I might proceed to mention other parts of the human body; such as the lungs, so skilfully fitted for the respiration of the air; and the heart, the fountain of life: but time would fail me to enumerate all these wonders. I would conclude therefore the discourse with saying, that an attention to your frame will convince you of the existence of the Supreme Being: so that you will not forbear to exclaim with the Psalmist, I will praise thee, O Lord, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made: marvellous are thy works, and that my soul knoweth right well. Take heed then to yourselves, and you will take heed to God: you will believe that he is infinitely powerful, infinitely wise, and infinitely good. To him be glory and dominion for ever and ever. -- · Basil's Works, I. 293. Paris, 1638.

* Vid. Ovid. Metamorph., I. 84-86.

For this passage Basil was indebted to Cicero, as Ovid was before him. Vid. Cic. De Natura Deorum. II. 55, 56, 57.

NOTE.

THE preceding discourse is an abridgement of one of the homilies of St Basil. This renowned father of the church, who is called Basil the Great, but who, in the opinion of Erasmus, was entitled to the surname of The Very Great, was created archbishop of Cæsarea in Cappadocia, A. D. 369. He was a strenuous opponent of the Arians, and of the emperor Valens himself, who patronized that sect. The ancients, particularly the two Gregories, and Jerom, and Theodoret, extol him in the highest terms of panegyric. Erasmus, Du Pin, Cave, and other modern writers, bestow on him not less extravagant praise. Their testimony may be found in Blount's Censura, p. 170. I have room for nothing more than a short extract from Du Pin: "The eloquence of St Basil is sublime; his style pure, elegant, and persuasive; natural, flowing, and unaffected. There is no author, whose writings make a deeper impression on the heart; and it is impossible to read them, without feeling a love for virtue and a hatred against vice." Dr Priestley, in his IIistory of the Christian Church, period x. sect. 3, supposes that Basil, Gregory of Naziansum, and Gregory of Nyssa, were the three fathers who carried the doctrine of the Trinity to its present height, by teaching that the Son is in all respects equal to the Father; in which opinion, says Priestley, they went further than Athanasius himself. But whilst Basil and his coadjutors completed the doctrine of the Trinity, they seem to have known little or nothing of several other points, which have been reputed orthodox in later times, and the invention of which was reserved for a future age. A similar observation may be made on many of their successors and predecessors among the Christian fathers. This fact has been acknowledged and lamented by modern authors. Thus Daillé complains of Chrysostom, who flourished about eighteen years after Basil, that "he appears to be ignorant of the doctrine of original sin; for he denies that sin is inherent in us by nature, and he affirms that infants are free from it; he gives also a weak interpretation of Rom. v.

19. By one man's disobedience many were made sinners; as if the Apostle meant to say, that by the offence of Adam men were subjected, not to sin itself, but to death." Daillé, On the use of the Fathers, p. 273. Of Jerom, who was a few years later than Basil, Flaccius Illyricus, a Lutheran divine of the sixteenth century, says: "He was well skilled in the languages, and endeavored to explain the Scriptures by versions and commentaries; but after all he was able to do very little, being ignorant of the human disease, and of Christ the physician, and wanting both the key of Scripture, and the Lamb of God to open it to him." A learned writer of the same period observes concerning Eusebius, bishop of Cæsarea, who flourished fifty years before Basil, that "it is a very low and imperfect description, which he gives of a Christian, making him only a man, who by the knowledge of Christ and his doctrine, is brought to the worship of the one true God, and the practice of sobriety, righteousness, patience, and other virtues. But he hath not a word about regeneration, or imputed righteousness." The same Flaccius, in one sweeping sentence, censures the whole body of fathers, who flourished at the beginning of Christianity: "The Christian writers, who lived soon after Christ and his Apostles, discoursed like philosophers of the law and its moral precepts, and of the nature of virtue and vice; but they were totally ignorant of man's natural corruption, the mysteries of the gospel, and Christ's benefit." See Priestley's Hist. of the Corr. of Christianity, part ii. sect. 6. The three last quotations are derived from the Credibility of the Gospel History; and Lardner subjoins to them: "Poor, ignorant primitive Christians! I wonder how they could find the way to heaven. They lived near the times of Christ and his Apostles. They highly valued, and diligently read the holy Scriptures, and some of them wrote commentaries upon them; but yet, it seems, they knew little or nothing of their religion, though they embraced and professed it with the manifest hazard of all earthly good things; and many of them laid down their lives rather than renounce it. Truly we of these times are very happy in our orthodoxy; but I wish that we did more excel in those virtues, which they, and the Scriptures likewise, I think, recommend, as the distinguishing properties

of a Christian. And I am not a little apprehensive, that many things which now make a fair show among us, and in which we mightily pride ourselves, will in the end prove weeds only, on which the owner of the ground sets no value." From the specimen, which is given in this abridgement of St Basil's topics and his manner of treating them, it is evident that he is entitled to his share of the censure, which has been thrown on the primitive fathers for their want of orthodoxy. With the exception of a few doctrines, he might be classed among the liberal preachers of the present age: his discourses are moral and practical.

In the abridgement, the introduction of the discourse and several other passages are omitted, not because they contain anything different from the paragraphs which are preserved, but merely for the sake of accommodating the homily to the prevailing taste for short sermons. I have been careful however to retain the passages, relating to doctrines which are the subjects of controversy among Christians, and which they who espouse them would confirm by the authority of St Basil: such as, "God appeared among men :" "Sinners are tempted by the devil :" "They, who have committed great crimes, stand in need of confession and of continual fasting." In sect. 6, for the hunter, the shepherd, and the professor of the athletic art, whom Basil addresses, is substituted the mariner. In sect. 7, the language is somewhat more diffuse than in the original homily.