The dews, and soft-descending show'rs,
Nurse the new-born tender flow'rs.
Hark! the birds melodious sing,
And sweetly usher in the spring.

Close by his fellow sits the dove,
And billing whispers her his Love.
The spreading vines with blossoms swell,
Diffusing round a grateful smell.
Arise, my fair one, and receive
All the blessings Love can give:
For Love admits of no delay,
Arise, my fair, and come away.

VIII.

"As to its mate the constant dove

Flies through the covert of the spicy grove,
So let us hasten to some lonely shade,
There let me safe in thy lov'd arms be laid,

Where no intruding hateful noise

Shall damp the sound of thy melodious voice; Where I may gaze, and mark each beauteous graces For sweet thy voice, and lovely is thy face.

IX.

"As all of me, my Love, is thine,

Let all of thee be ever mine.

Among the lilies we will play,

Fairer, my LOVE, thou art than they;

Till the purple morn arise,

And balmy sleep forsake thine eyes;
Till the gladsome beams of day
Remove the shades of night away;

Then when soft sleep shall from thy eyes depart,
Rise like the bounding roe, or lusty hart,

Glad to behold the light again

From Bether's mountains darting o'er the plain.

NOTHING has more surprised the learned in England, than the price which a small book, intitled Spaccio della Bestia triomfante, bore in à late auction. This book was sold for thirty pounds. As it was written by one JORDANUS BRUNUS, a professed atheist, with a design to depreciate religion, every one was apt to fancy, from the extravagant price it bore, that there must be something in it very formidable.

I must confess, that happening to get a sight of one of them myself, I could not forbear perusing it with this apprehension; but found there was so very little danger in it, that I shall venture to give my readers a fair account of the whole plan upon which this wonderful treatise is built.

The author pretends that Jupiter, once upon a time, resolved upon a reformation of the constellations: for which purpose having summoned the stars together, he complains to them of the great decay of the worship of the gods, which he thought so much the harder, having called several of those celestial bodies by the names of the heathen deities, and by that means made the heavens as it were a book of the Pagan theology. Momus tells him that this is not to be wondered at, since there were so many scandalous stories of the deities. Upon which

the

the author takes occasion to cast reflections upon all other religions, concluding that Jupiter, after a full hearing, discarded the deities out of heaven, and called the stars by the names of moral virtues.

The short fable, which has no pretence in it to reason or argument, and but a very small share of wit, has however recommended itself wholly by its impiety, to those weak men who would distinguish themselves by the singularity of their opinions.

There are two considerations which have been often urged against atheists, and which they never yet could get over. The first is, that the greatest and most eminent persons of all ages have been against them, and always complied with the public forms of worship established in their respective countries, when there was nothing in them either derogatory to the honour of the Supreme Being, or prejudicial to the good of mankind.

The PLATOS and CICEROS among the antients; the BACONS, the BOYLES, and the LOCKES, among our own countrymen, are all instances of what I have been saying; not to mention any of the divines however celebrated, since our adversaries challenge all those, as men who have too much interest in this case to be impartial evidences.

But what has been too often urged as a consideration of much more weight, is not only the opinion of the better sort, but the general consent of mankind to this great truth; which I think could not possibly have come to pass, but from one of the three following reasons: either that the idea of a God is innate and co-existent with the mind itself; or that this truth is so very obvious, that it is discovered by the first exertion of reason of persons of the most ordinary capacities; or lastly, that he has been delivered down to us through all ages by a tradition from the first man.

The atheists are equally confounded, to whichever of these three causes we assign it; they have been so pressed by this last argument from the general consent

VOL. VI.

D

of

of mankind, that after great search and pains they pretend to have found out a nation of atheists, I mean that polite people the Hottentots.

I dare not shock my readers with the description of the customs and manners of these barbarians, who are in every respect scarce one degree above brutes, having no language among them but a confused gabble, which is neither well understood by themselves or others.

It is not however to be imagined how much the atheists have gloried in these their good friends and allies.

If we boast of a SOCRATES or SENECA, they may now confront them with these great philosophers the Hottentots.

Though even this point has, not without reason, been 'several times controverted, I see no manner of harm it could do to religion, if we should entirely give them up this elegant part of mankind.

Methinks nothing more shows the weakness of their cause, than that no division of their fellow-creaturés join with them, but those among whom they themselves own reason is almost defaced, and who have but little else but their shape which can entitle them to any place in the species.

Besides these poor créatures, there have now and then been instances of a few crazy people in several nations, who have denied the existence of a deity.

The catalogue of these is however very short: evén Vanini, the most celebrated champion for the cause, professed before his judges that he believed the existence of a God; and taking up a straw which lay before him on the ground, assured them, that alone was sufficient to convince him of it; alledging several arguments to prove that it was impossible nature alone could create any thing.

I was the other day reading an account of CASIMIR LYSZYNSKI, a gentleman of Poland, who was convicted and executed for this crime. The manner of his punish

ment

ment was very particular. As soon as his body was burnt, ashes were put into a cannon, and shot into the air towards Tartary.

I am apt to believe, that if something like this method of punishment should prevail in England (such is the natural good sense of the British nation), that whether we rammed an atheist whole into a great gun, or pulverized our infidels, as they do in Poland, we should not have many charges.

I should however premise, while our ammunition lasted, that instead of Tartary, we should always keep two or three cannons ready pointed towards the Cape of Good-Hope, in order to shoot our unbelievers into the country of the Hottentots.

In my opinion a solemn judicial death is too great an honour for an atheist, though I must allow the method of exploding him, as it is practised in this ludicrous kind of martyrdom, has something in it proper enough to the nature of his offence.

There is indeed a great objection against this manner of treating them. Zeal for religion is of so effective a nature, that it seldom knows where to rest; for which reason I am afraid, after having discharged our atheists, we might possibly think of shooting off our sectaries; and as one does not foresee the vicissitude of human affairs, it might one time or other come to a man's own turn to fly out of the mouth of a demiculverin.

If any of my readers imagine that I have treated these gentlemen in too ludicrous a manner, I must confess for my own part, I think reasoning against such unbelievers upon a point that shocks the common sense of mankind, is doing them too great an honour, giving them a figure in the eye of the world, and making people fancy that they have more in them than they really have.

As for those persons who have any scheme of religious worship, I am for treating such with the utmost tender