A curions EDICT of CONSTANTINE THE GREAT.

O all

"Th our fubjects throughout the provinces of the Roman empire.-If there be an individual, of what place, condition, or quality soever, who can fairly and substantially convict any of our judges, generals, favourites, or courtiers, guilty of any undue or corrupt practices in the difcharge of their respective trusts, let him with all poffible freedom and fecurity approach the throne, and appeal to us. We ourselves will hear his accufations with condescension and patience; and if he make good his allegations we shall be happy and eager to do ourselves and our people justice on the man who shall be found to have thus impofed on us by specious but deceitful counsels. And for his encouragement who shall make so useful a discovery, we will amply reward him with honours and riches. So may Divine Providence ever protect our royal person, and make us happy in the profperity of the empire." - This, fays one of the ablest politicians that ever wrote, is a most righteous law, and worthy to be engraved on the gates of all royal palaces, as it too often happens that the best of princes fuffer grievously in their characters by their favourites, their ministers, and their viceroys.

Anecdote of the late GENERAL OTWAY.

This officer had been many years in the service with the rank of colonel, during which time several junior colonels had got regiments over his head. His friends frequently intreated him to state his fervices, and petition the King: he refifted their importunities for a confiderable time; but being at length prevailed upon, he defired the chaplain of the regiment he served in to draw him a petition, which being done and fent to the colonel, he took notice that it concluded with the words, and your petitioner shall

ever pray." He fent for the chaplain, and told him that he had made a miftake, and imagined he was presenting a petition for himself by the manner he had concluded it. He defired the petition to be altered from the usual conclusion: he infisted that the word pray was unfit to come from an officer. It was to no purpose that he was informed of the usual mode of drawing the prayer of all petitions; he would not give up his opinion upon the mate ter; it should run thus, and your petitioner shall ever fight. He took the petition to court, and presented it to the late King, who was pleased with the novelty of the conclufion, and the

honest bluntness of the officer: and in the course of a few weeks a regiment became vacant, which he gave to Otway, in opposition to his minifters, who had promised to provide for a friend that had fome intereft in parliament.

Anecdote of VOLTAIRE.

This extraordinary genius, in his younger life, wrote a very biting fatire against a man of quality in France. The nobleman, on meeting the poet one day in a narrow lane where it was impossible to escape, gave him a severe drubbing. Voltaire made his complaint to the regent, who very shrewdly replied " What would you have me do? justice has been done already."

Anecdote of the present EMPEROUR of

GERMANY.

When Prince Piccolomini, who poffefsses great estates in Bohemia and Naples, was at Venice, he was very fond of driving a phaeton and four furiously about the city; and coming near the guard, the latter turned out his men to falute the Prince. A puddle of water happened to be just before the officer, who was at the head of his guard, and had on a new fuit of white regimentals. The Prince drove, however, with such rapidity, that the of

ficer's clothes were covered with mud; he called out, therefore, to the Prince to move more cautiously, who upon that held in his horses, and at the fame time whipped them, so as to increase the dirty infult. The officer, now lofing all temper, got upon the wheel, pulled the Prince out, and caned him foundly; but, upon cool reflection of what he had done, and fearing the difpleasure of the Emperour, he waited upon the latter, and, stating

the provocation, begged leave to observe, that his clothes were new, his pay small, and the provocation great, and, therefore, entreated his Imperial Majesty to forgive him.

Jofeph, like an Emperour, took the officer by the arm, and faid, " My good foldier, you are under a mistake, it was not the Prince you caned, but the coachman; and dismissed him with the utmost good humour.

V.

MR

R. PETER STERRY was one of Oliver Cromwell's chaplains, and attended the Protector in his last hours, who, as the fatyrical author of Hudibras says,

-Was detain'd in Stygian ferry

Until he was reliev'd by Sterry. This eminent preacher was a particular friend and affociate of the celebrated Sir Harry Vane. The luxuriancy of his imagination led him to adopt some vifionary notions in religion, and to express himself in a style so highly metaphorical as to approach too near the bombaft. Mr. Richard Baxter, quoting an expreffion of Sir Benjamin Rudyard's, whose curiofity would sometimes lead him to attend at Mr. Sterry's church, faid of his preaching, that "it was too high for this world, and too low for the next." The remark had more ill-nature than wit in it: and favoured more of petulance than Chritian wisdom or candour. Mr. Baxter was too full of controversy to listen to the milder lessons of a meek and lowly mind: and befides he must have felt Mr. Sterry's preaching to be the most poignant of all reproofs to dogmatitts of all fects, and polemics of every description.

In my idea there are passages wonderfully striking and beautiful in a preface to a posthumous work of his, known perhaps to few, if any of your readers, entitled, A Discourse on the Freedom of the Will. (1675.) I have extracted from it the following Maxims of Charity (I cannot give them a better title, as they do not confift of a chain of logical argument) and though I have taken some liberty with the language, by lopping off some of its more luxuriant shoots, yet I have fcrupulously preserved the author's fentiments and allufions; and the general tone of expression and cast of style; convinced that any alteration in these respects would have been injurious to the eriginal.

The writer was a strict neceffitarian, and believed in the reftitution of all things, like his colleague Jeremy White.

The reader will perceive in these extracts the sublimity of a platonic mind, foftened by the gentler breathings of Chriftian humility and love. They foothe while they elevate; and in raising the imagination to first good, first perfect, and first fair." they dilate the heart in ftreams of mercy to mankind.

CHARITY.

"the

TERMOLENSIS.

finity of Divine love. If "God is love," his work is the work of lovea love unmixed and unconfined-infinite and fupreme in wisdom and pow

er, not limited in its workings by any pre-exiftent matter, but bringing forth freely and entirely from itself its whole work, both in matter and form according to its own inclination and complacency in itself.

Leo Hebræus enflamed with the beauty of the heavenly Sophia-the Divine wifdom which is the first and fairest of all beauties in one form, immortal and ever-flourishing, is instructed to charm her to his embraces by inquiring into the nature of love. Pursuing his enquiries by the bright conduct of her illustrious beams he is led through the whole nature of things, above and below, with all their changes and varieties as manifold streams of Divine love, in divers breadths and depths, with innumerable sportful windings and turnings, flowing forth from its own ocean of eternal goodnefs, and through all its channels hastening thither again. Campanella teaches us that all fecond causes are so many modifications of the first cause so many forms and appearances under which it acts. There 1s a "diversity of manifeftations" there are " diversities of operations" which compose and fettle the whole frame of the creation, which are like various persons acting various parts on a ftage; but there is " one fpirit which worketh all in all."

If, my reader, thou wouldst be led to that fea which is the confluence of all the waters of life and truth, follow the stream of divine love as it holdeth on its course from its fpringhead in eternity, through every work and in every creature of God. Thus thou shalt be not only happy in thine end but in thy way; whilst this stream shall not be thy guide only, but shall carry thee along in its foft, delicious bofom, bearing thee up by its divine power, and in its own pure floods washing thee white as snow.

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Plato faith, that three forts of perfons are led to God: "the musician

by the power of harmony, the philofopher by the beam of truth, and the lover by the light of beauty." All these conductors to the Supreme Being

Let no differences in principle or practice divide thee in thy affections from any one. He who seems to me like a Samaritan to a Jew, most worthy of contempt and hatred, most prepared to wound or kill me, may hide under the shape of a Samaritan a generous, affectionate neighbour, brother, and friend. When I lie wounded and dying, neglected by those who are dearest to me and most esteemed by me, this perfon may pour wine and oil into my wounds with tender and constant care, and at his own expence bring me back to life and joy. How evident hath it been in the histories of all times that in parties most remote from one another, and most opposed to each other, persons have been found of equal excellencies in all times, and of equal integrity and goodness. Our most orthodox divines who have been most heated and heightened with the zeal of oppofition to the Pope as the Anti-Christ, yet have believed that a Pope hath afcended from a papal chair to a throne in heaven.

Had my education, my acquaintance, my circumstances been the same to me as to this perfon from whom I now most of all diffent, that which is now his sense and state might have been mine. Have therefore the fame just and tender refpect, with the fame allowances of another that thou requirest from him for thyfelf. Two oppofing parties or persons by reason of their oppofition, for the most part look through the fame disturbed and coloured medium, and behold each other under the fame uncomely form. But hath there not been frequent experience of those who by being of different parties, alienated from and exafperated against one another, having their fancies filled with strange images of each other, yet when they have been