bravely dare, at any time, to cut off a right-hand fin, and with patience fteer right onwards for the glorious realities of eternity. Beholding, I fay, fuch things, and meeting with nothing like them in this vale tears and faction, this vale of irreligion and orthodoxy, could you not almost imagine you were come to that diftant region, where the wills of the fpirits made perfect are influenced by the dictates of an unerring understanding, and the worship of God is founded on the principles of reafon ; where popish priests and Athanafian theologers can no longer plague us with their church-laws, nor perplex us with their fhocking inventions; but true piety and boundless benevolence for ever prevails, and the happy disciples of the holy Jefus worship the Father only, and fing the fong of the lamb for never-ending ages? For my part I confefs, that I could not help thinking fo for a while, when I joined those ladies in their devotions in the rotunda, and heared them fing beyond all mortals finely. Great and wonderful are thy works, O Lord God almighty; juft and righteous are thy ways, O king of faints. Who would not fear thee, O Lord, because all na tions fhall come and worship before thee. The performers, the place, the fong, did tranfport me: A fong, let me obferve by the way, that is an unexceptionable, yea, a most excellent form form and pattern of the worship of the one Jupreme Being; who is worshipped for his works of creation, and his ways of providence; in two characters incommunicable to any other being; that is, as the Almighty; and as the only abfolutely boly Being. An account a monafte. Green found But it is time to defcribe fome other things, and to this purpose, I lead you from the Ely- of the fian Fields through a delightful lawn to the ruins of ruins of a once grand monaftery of Bene ry on the dictine nuns of the order of Cluny; an order Inland, an instituted under the rule of St. Benoit, in the curiofitys year 910, by Berno, abbot of Gignac, in there. the Masconnois, in Burgundy. This faint Benoit, the patriarch of the western monks, was founder of the famous monastery of Mont-Caffin in the kingdom of Naples, and there established A. D. 542, an order that spread itself in a little time all over Europe. This great cloyfter-faint dyed, according to Mabillon, in the year 543, according to Pagi in 544; but the more accurat Lancelot fays in 547, aged 67; and his carcafs, after various removes, lies at prefent at Fleury, in Orleans in France, and at Mont-Caffin in Italy. It does wonders at both places. The French monks ran away with it in 660; but the Caffin-men affured me, that they difcovered the holy body in their garden, A. D. 1066, and have it fnug in their fhrine. to Berno, the abbot, he is not among the faints, As faints, but the hiftorians of his life tell us, that he was an admirable man; for he outdid all the faints in faftings and lacerations of his flesh,and dyed en odeur de Sainteté, Jan. 1, 927. It is a pity they did not make the poor fellow a faint after all this. As to the ruins, they are very grand, and cover more than an acre of ground. There are many fepulchral monuments in a part of the valley that was once the dormitory of the house, and several curious infcriptions on the tombs and ftones. The following lines are ftill legible over an arched entrance to this cæmetery--- Quidnam fibi faxa cavata, Quid pulchra volunt monumenta; These verses were taken from the chri ftian poet Prudentius (a), and very juftly placed (a) Prudentius was a Spaniard. He was born in the year 348, and lived many years in the most honourable employments; fous l'empire de Theodofe le Grand, et fous ce lui de fes enfans. When he dyed we know not. The placed where I found them, as they inform the reader, that the still folitary retreats, the tombs of a church-yard, were not The best edition of his hymns, and other poems, is that of Paris 1687, in ufum Delphini; to which is prefixed his life. Chamillard, the jefuit, who put out this edition, hath well paraphrafed fome paffages; and whimfically done feveral others: but the Amfterdam edition of 1667, you ought likewife to have, on account of the notes of Nicolas Heinfius. As to the lyrics and heroics of Prudentius, they are far from being excellent. He was not born for poetry, and yet would write no other way. In heroic verfe he anfwers the most eloquent orator of his time, Symmachus, a pagan, and præfect of the city of Rome; but in this, as well as in all his other poems, the ftyle is low and profaic. He wants the heat and facility of the antient poets. Even his Latinity is often barbarous. He is below Claudian, his contemporary. Yet his poetry is fometimes good, and is always ufeful. We learn from it many curious opinions and cuftoms of his time, and many facts concerning the martyrs. There are likewife feveral valuable thoughts in his works; and many of them pleafing, on account of their fingularity. His prayer, at the end of the poem called the Birth of fin, is very remarkable, on account of the humility of the man, and the oddness of the notion. Let others be gloriously crowned in immenfe light; but when he is dead he can only prefume to pray, that he may be but lightly burnt. Efto; cavernofo, quia fic pro labe neceffe eft Thefe not made for the dead in that Golgotha, but for those who fleep in the Lord Jefus; who will awake, after death and the grave have done their These are good lines, and Chamillard, the jefuit, his editor, fays they prove a purgatory was the doctrine of the church in the fourth century. Upon which I obferve, that it is very probable purgatory was the belief in that age, as were many other antichriftian things; but it is not clear to me, that Prudentius meant this in his prayer; for he does not hope or pray to get out of this hot fpot in the day of the refurrection; but feems to think a leffer degree of heat a kind of happyness, tho it fhould laft for ever. The place where he wished to be, he ranks among the feveral habitations in the houfe of God; Multa in thefauris Patris eft habitatio, Chrifte, As to the judgment and good fenfe of Prudentius, Le Clerc gives the following inftances in his lives of the Primitive Fathers. Symmachus had drawn an argument for the Pagan religion from its antiquity, which he expreffed very elegantly; Si longa ætas authoritatem religionibus faciat, fervanda eft tot feculis fides, et fequendi funt nobis parentes, qui feliciter fecuti funt fuos: If length of time is of fome weight in religion, we ought not to depart from the belief of fo many centuries; we ought to imitate our fathers, who did fo well imitate theirs. This is fo well worded, that the ableft (papift) miffionary cannot preach better against the innovators; (as the church of Rome calls the reformed.) Yet Prudentius anfwers the argument by faying If the manner of living of paft ages, is always to be preferred before that of the time wherein one lives, |