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the thought of mis-spending, in our mutual animosities, accusations, and complaints, the time that was given us for ends so much nobler, and which is capable of being employed to the honour of our common Lord, and for the benefit of the Church and the World.

Epigram on his family motto 'Dum vivimus vivamus.'

Live while you live, the epicure would say,
And seize the pleasures of the present day;
Live while you live, the sacred preacher cries,
And give to God each moment as it flies.
Lord, in my view let both united be;
I live in pleasure when I live to thee.

Uncertainty and Brevity of Life.

To-morrow, Lord, is Thine,
Lodged in Thy sovereign hand;
And, if its sun arise and shine,
It shines by Thy command.
The present moment flies,
And bears our life away:

Oh, make thy servants truly wise,
That they may live to-day.

Since on this winged hour

Eternity is hung,

Waken by thine Almighty Power
The aged and the young.

One thing demands our care;
Oh, be it still pursued!
Lest, slighted once, the season fair
Should never be renewed.

To Jesus may we fly

Swift as the morning-light, [die Lest life's young golden beams should In sudden endless night.

162. Abraham Tucker, 1705-1774. (Handbook, par. 440.)

The Search Family.

The Knowalls, confident in their abilities, soon think themselves masters of whatever they undertake: they scorn to examine their principles minutely as betraying a want of genius and penetration, so they commonly take up their tenets at haphazard and then please themselves with showing how dexterously they can maintain them: more solicitous to gain the applause than promote the benefit of mankind: assuming, peremptory, overbearing, proving everything by demonstration, or expecting that their word should be taken in lieu of demonstration, impatient of contradiction themselves, and delighted to overthrow all who

but seemed to differ from them. This branch produced the Sophists of Greece, the Academics of after times who would maintain the pro and con upon any subject proposed, the schoolmen and popish doctors in the dark ages.

The Search branch, not fond of putting themselves forward, have scarce ever composed a visible church, but lie dispersed up and down minding their own business quietly according to their several talents and stations. To this branch belong those who have made any real improvement, not only in philosophy, but in any art or science conducive to the benefit of mankind, and those who, wanting ability to strike out improvements of their own, endeavour fairly to understand and make a good use of those imparted to them by others. For many of the Searches have very moderate parts, but then they do the best that is to be done with them; on the other hand, we often find shining talents among the Knowalls, but then they seek no more than to shine with them, and 'tis well if they do not turn them to mischievous purposes.

The Light of Nature, by JOHN SEARCH, chap. 23.

The Nature of Things.

This expression has been employed by the orthodox Cudworth, in particular, building largely upon it as upon the sole stable foundation; but it seems now to be chiefly in use among the freethinkers, who are very forward to tell you precisely what God can or cannot do; he cannot work a miracle, cannot give a revelation, cannot guide motions of a free agent, nor make such a one impeccable, nor annex rewards to an assent of the mind, nor make all his creatures of equal degree without continued gradation from his own perfections down to nothing; for these are contrary to the nature of things. If you ask what things they mean, or what by the nature of them, they will not vouchsafe, or rather cannot give an explanation, but are angry with you, as a captious person, for putting the question; yet still go on to lay a mighty stress upon those words without having any clear or settled idea of their import. It seems extraordinary that persons who are so severe upon others for using expressions they do not understand, should fall into the like absurdity themselves, and pretend to build demonstrations upon principles whereof they have no clearer or more adequate idea than the vulgar they affect

to ridicule have of their mysteries: both lay an implicit dependence on words without a meaning, and both expect that a constant repetition of positive assertions chimed into their ears by others, should pass for proof and explanation.

The Light of Nature, chap. 24, iii. 4.

163. Henry Fielding 1707-1754. (Handbook, par. 518.)

Jonathan Wild-his Principles.

Jonathan Wild had every qualification necessary to form a great man. As his most powerful and predominant passion was ambition, so nature had, with consummate propriety, adapted all his faculties to the attaining those glorious ends to which this passion directed him. He was extremely ingenious in inventing designs, artful in contriving the means to accomplish his purposes, and resolute in executing them; for as the most exquisite cunning and most undaunted boldness qualified him for any undertaking, so was he not restrained by any of those weaknesses which disappoint the views of mean and vulgar souls, and which are comprehended in one general term of honesty, which is a corruption of HONOSTY, a word derived from what the Greeks call an ass. He was entirely free from those low vices of modesty and good-nature, which, as he said, implied a total negation of human greatness, and were the only qualities which absolutely rendered a man incapable of making a considerable figure in the world. He laid down several maxims as the certain methods of attaining greatness to which, in his own pursuit of it, he constantly adhered. As

1. Never to do more mischief to another than was necessary to the effecting his purpose; for that mischief was too precious a thing to be thrown away.

2. To know no distinction of men from affection; but to sacrifice all with equal readiness to his interest.

3. Never to communicate more of an affair than was necessary to the person who was to execute it.

4. Not to trust him who hath deceived you, nor who knows he hath been deceived by you.

5. To forgive no enemy; but to be cautious, and often dilatory in revenge.

6. To shun poverty and distress, and to ally himself as close as possible to power and riches.

Alone,... they lived the rural day.... and talked

Or sighed and looked unutterable things.

Needs not the foreign aid of ornament,

But is when unadorned, adorned the most.

Summer.

Autumn.

160. John Dyer, 1699-1758. (Handbook, par. 197.)
View from Grongar Hill.

Now I gain the mountain's brow,
What a landscape lies below!
No clouds, no vapours intervene :
But the gay, the open scene,
Does the face of nature show,
In all the hues of Heaven's bow!
And, swelling to embrace the light,
Spreads around beneath the sight...
Below me trees unnumbered rise,
Beautiful in various dyes:

The gloomy pine, the poplar blue
The yellow beech, the sable yew,
The slender fir that taper grows,
The sturdy oak with broad-spread
boughs.

Ever charming, ever new,
When will the landscape tire the
view!

The fountain's fall, the river's flow,
The woody valleys, warm and low;
The windy summit, wild and high,
Roughly rushing on the sky!
The pleasant seat, the ruined tower,
The naked rock, the shady bower;
The town and village, dome and
farm,

Each give each a double charm,
As pearls upon an Ethiop's arca.

Grongar Hill.

161. Philip Doddridge, 1702-1751. (Handbook, pars. 474, 485.) Author of the Family Expositor, the Rise and Progress of Religion in the Soul, etc.: one of the most learned, pious, and catholic-hearted men of his age. Reading the New Testament the readiest way to Conviction and Holiness.

I have long been convinced that if anything can stop that progress of infidelity and vice, which every wise man beholds with sorrow and fear, that if anything can allay those animosities, which (unnatural as they are) have so long inflamed us, and pained the heart of every generous Christian; in a word, that if anything can establish the purity and honour, the peace and glory of the Church, or spread the triumphs of personal and domestic religion among us, it must be an attentive study of the Word of God, and especially of the New Testament, that best of books; which, if read with impartiality and seriousness, under the influences of that blessed Spirit by whom it was inspired, would have the noblest tendency to enlighten and adorn the

mind, and not only to touch but to animate and transform the heart.

The New Testament is a book written with the most consummate knowledge of human nature; and though there are a thousand latent beauties in it, which it is the business and glory of true criticism to place in a strong point of light, the general sense and design of it is plain to every honest reader, even at the very first perusal. It is evidently intended to bring us to God through Christ, in a humble dependance on the communication of his sanctifying and quickening Spirit; and to engage us to a course of faithful and universal obedience chiefly from a grateful sense of the riches of divine grace, manifested to us in the Gospel. And though this scheme is indeed liable to abuse, as everything else is, it appears to me plain in fact, that it has been, and still is, the grand instrument of reforming a very degenerate world; and, according to the best observations I have been able to make on what has passed about me, or within my own breast, I have found, that in proportion to the degree in which this evangelical scheme is received and relished, the interest of true virtue and holiness flourished, and the mind is formed to manly devotion, diffusive benevolence, steady fortitude, and, in short, made ready to every good word and work. . .

It must be universally granted, that the excellence of any performance is to be estimated by considering its design, and the degree in which it is calculated to answer it. The design of the Gospel history is summed up in the words which I have placed for my motto; which, though they are taken from the conclusion of St. John's Gospel, are applicable, not only to all the other Evangelists, but likewise to the Acts of the Apostles, that invaluable appendix to them. 'These things are written, that ye might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing ye might have life through his name.'

I shall beg leave then to show how admirably the history before us is calculated to answer both these ends: viz. to produce a conviction of the truth of Christianity, and to make those good impressions on the heart, which may secure the eternal life and happiness of the reader. . . .

First, every intelligent reader of this Evangelical History must have seen, that it is admirably adapted to produce and support, in all attentive and impartial minds, a strong conviction

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