OBSERVATIONS ON WILLS. ticular attentions which tend to cherish expectation, he is perfectly disengaged from the force of the above reasons, and at liberty to leave his fortune to his friends, to charitable and public purposes, or to whom he will; the same blood, proximity of blood, and the like, are merely modes of speech, implying nothing real, nor any obligation of themselves. There is always, however, a reason for providing for our poor relations in preference to others who may be equally necessitous, which is, that if we do not, no body else will; mankind, by an established consent, leaving the reduced branches of good families to the bounty of their wealthy alliances. The not making a will is a very culpable connected with religion, than any other instruments of conveyance. Succession in estates must be regulated by positive rules of law, there being no principle of natural justice whereby to ascertain the proportion of the different claimants, not to mention that the claim itself, especially of collateral kindred, seems to have little foundation in the law of nature. These regulations should be guided by the duty and presumed inclination of the deceased, so far as these considerations can be consulted by general rules. The statutes of Charles the Second, commonly called the statutes of distribution, which adopt the rule of the Roman law, in the distribution of personals, are sufficiently equit omission, where it is attended with the follow-able. They assign one-third to the widow, and ing effects: where it leaves daughters or younger children at the mercy of the eldest son; where it distributes a personal fortune equally amongst the children, although there be no equality in their exigencies or situations; where it leaves an opening for litigation; or lastly, and principally, where it defrauds creditors; for by a defect in our laws, which has been long and strangely overlooked, real estates are not subject to the payment of debts by simple contract, unless made so by will; although credit is in fact given to the possession of such estates. He, therefore, who neglects to make the necessary appointments for the payment of his debts, as far as his effects extend, sins, as it has been justly said, in his grave; and if he omits this on purpose to defeat the demand of his creditors, he dies with a deliberate fraud in his heart. two-thirds to the children: in case of no children, one-half to the widow, and the other half to the next of kin; where neither widow nor lineal descendants survived, the whole to the next of kin, and to be equally divided amongst kindred of equal degrees; without distinction of whole blood and half blood, or of consanguinity by father's or mother's side. The descent of real estates, of houses, that is, and land, having been settled in more remote and ruder times, is less reasonable. There never can be much to complain of in a rule, which every person may avoid by so easy a provision, as that of making his will; otherwise, our law in this respect, is chargeable with some flagrant absurdities; such as that an estate shall in no wise go to the brother or sister of the half blood, though it came to the deceased from the common parent; that it shall go to the remotest relation the intestate has in the world, rather than to his own father or mother, or even be forfeited for want of an an heir, though both parents survive; that the Anciently, when one died without a will, the Bishop of the diocese took possession of his personal fortune, in order to dispose of it for the benefit of his soul; that is, to pious or charitable uses. It became necessary, there-most distant paternal relation shall be preferred to an uncle or own cousin by the mother's side notwithstanding the estate was purchased and acquired by the intestate him. fore, that the Bishop should be satisfied of the authenticity of the will, when there was any, before be resigned the right he had to take possession of the dead man's fortune, in case of intestacy. In this way, wills, and controversies relating to wills, came within the cognizance of Ecclesiastical Courts; under the jurisdiction of which, wills of personal (the only wills that were made formerly) still con tinue; though, in truth, no more now a-days self. Land not being so divisible as money, may be a reason for making a difference in the course of inheritance, but there ought to be no difference but what is founded upon that reasou. The Roman law made none. A. P. MR. EDITOR, A COMPLETION OF THE PROPHECIES WITH RESPECT TO THE PAPAL POWER, OR ANTICHRIST, never did exist; and that what we call preI TRUST it will not be contrary to the dictious are only histories written, in a proplan of your Miscellany to admit some obser-phetic style and manner, after the events had vations upon the late affairs of Europe, which, wonderful and inscrutable as they seem to be, I consider as having been long traced out by the finger of prophecy, and prepared for oc-rities, which the nature of the inquiry admits, currence and action in the present æra of the world. The age in which we live presents one of the scenes of that great and awful drama which was to be expected near its close. The general plan and economy of the Almighty government, which is the fuluess of the Gentiles, happened. To prove this, no one tolerable argument has hitherto been adduced. On the contrary, there are all the proofs and autho that the Prophets prophecied in such and such ages; and you have as much reason to believe these, as you have to believe any ancient matter of fact whatever; and by the same rule that you deny this, you might deny the crediblity of all ancient history. For the most remarkable series of proand the diffusion of Christianity, so as to over-phecies, that in which all Christians are deeply spread the earth like the waters, are in these latter times more fully developed and understood. The foggy vista of the ancient prophecies is now better seen through, and as the plot, originally contrived by divine wisdom and goodness, thickens as it draws near its close, future events are more clearly conjectured by comparing them with the past, and by reasoning upou that harmony and uniformity of purpose which will be always found to prevail in God's moral, as well as in his natural government. interested, we have the joint suffrages of Pagan as well as Christian authors that the predictions were pronouced at least two hundred years before the birth of him to whom they allude. No one will deny the well authenticated fact of history, that the Septuagint translation of the Bible into Greek (out of the original Hebrew), from which the Vulgate copy has chiefly been rendered, was made by the command of Ptolemy Philadelphus, the great Egyptian Mæcenas of his age. We know then, that the prophecies relating to the birth of Christ were written at least two hundred years before his birth, supposing that this Greek copy of the Bible had been the first that ever appeared in the world, and that, contrary to common sense, an original Hebrew text had never existed. One of the strongest evidences for the truth of revealed religion is that series of prophecies preserved in the Old and New Testaments. Many of these prophecies are not yet fulfilled, though uttered some thousand years ago; but this is no argument against their completion. Prophecy is of the nature of its divine Author, with whom a thousand years are but as one day, and therefore they are not fulfilled punctually at once, but, according to a fine remark of Lord Bacon, "they have spring-when they purport to have been written? Is it ing and germinant accomplishments through many ages, though the height and fulness of them may refer to some one age." It is the prerogative of God alone, or of those commissioned by him, to foretel future events; and the consequence is so plain and necessary, from the believing of prophecies to the believing of revelation, that an infidel bas no way of evading the conclusion, bat by denying the premises. So many ages have passed since the spirit of prophecy ceased in the world, that several persons are apt to imagine that such a thing But if we are satisfied that these prophecies were published two hundred years before the birth of their objcet, why should we hesitate to grant that they were actually written in the age easier to predict an event which shall occur two hundred years hence, than to predict one which shall occur within eight hundred years? If the darkness of future events can be penetrated by the eye of prophecy at all, why should we bound the vision by the arithmetic of centuries? It is one great excellency of the evidence drawn from prophecy for the truth of reli. gion, that it is a growing evidence; and in this respect we, who live in these latter times, have eminently the advantage of those who lived even in the days of Moses and the Prophets of whom I consider as another Cyrus; a special agent and instrument of the divine will con Christ and his Apostles. They were happy indeed, in hearing their discourses, and seeing their miracles, and doubtless "many righte-ducted, visibly, by the Almighty hand, and al lowed the use and enjoyment of a large share of temporal prosperity, as one of the incidental consequences upon acts concurring with his own ultimate desigus. The temporal exaltation of such an agent, and the seeming consequent irregularity in the economy of rewards and punishments, signifies nothing when brought in comparison with the good of the general purpose. The felicity and glory are personal; they are those of the man and the individual whilst the good, to be wrought by his instrumentality, is perhaps, a change in the whole system of the moral and the Christian world. ons men have desired to see those things which they sue, and have not seen them, and to hear those things which they heard, and have not heard them," Matthew, c. 13, v. 17; but we have this advantage over them, that several things, which were then only foretold are now foifilled; and what were to them ouly matters of faith, are become facts and certainties to us, upon whom the latter ages of the world have come. God, in bis goodness, has provided for, and meted out to every age its portion of evidence wherupon to establish his truth. Miracles were the great proofs of revelation in the first ages who saw them performed; prophecies are the great proofs of revelation to the last ages who see them fulfilled. All pretence, too, for denying the truth of Scripture is by those means absolutely precluded; for how can it be pretended that the prophecies were written after the events, when it ap-throw of the Papal power. If there be any Permit me, Sir, impressed with these ideas, to call the attention of your readers to the prophecies of Scripture which this man seems more especially appointed to fulfil. I mean those prophecies which relate to the overthing replete with truth, curiosity and interest, it is this subject. Your female readers, Sir, will find it, even in point of entertain pears that the latest of the prophecies were written and published near eighteen hundred years ago, and the events have many of them been accomplished several ages after the pre-ment, as full of interest as any story they ever dictions, and are accomplishing in the world at this present time; that in respect of the overthrow of the Papal power in particular, which is the subject of this discussion. We are therefore reduced to this necessity, that we must either renounce our senses, and deny what we read in our Bibles, together with what we may see or observe in the world: or else we must acknowledge the truth of prophecy, and, in consequence of that, the truth of divine revelation. Let us then take hold of this sacred thread, as a clue to guide us through those mazes of divine wisdom which we may be suffered to explore; and let us console ourselves, that if the shine of the temple, the glorious Sheckinab, the mark of the visible presence of God under the Jewish economy, be withdrawn from us, we have the more certain and stedfast light of prophecy; we have a Temple of our own in the holy Scriptures, in which the mysteries of God are enshrined, and sealed up || in his holy repository. We have a Mount Sinai which, though wrapt in clouds and darkness, emits, every now and then, a ray of light and glory, to cheer us on our journey, and direct us in our path. We have lately seen an end of the Papal power; to the extinction of which the prophecies of Revelations have been applied upwards of five hundred years. The destructive blow has been dealt by a great conqueror, read of mere imiagintion; and when they consider that it is the voice of truth and revelation, that the interest embraces the whole compass of created beings; that the author is God and the hero is Christ, and the machinery and the action are those of the moral world; when they consider these things, I expect that they will follow me through this and the next paper with seriousness and attention; my purpose is briefly to trace the rise,. progress, establishment, and destruction of the Papal power of Antichrist. 1 pretend to little originality, and shall freely make use of the assistance and words of others. The foundations upon which the interpretation of prophecy immovably stand, were not the work of one or two hands. In this dark, but rich mine, numbers have toiled, and still toil on; but it may with justice be said of our English interpreters that they have contributed a rock of native granite, to form a pedestal for Christian prophecy, upon which she is so securely mounted, that neither infidelity nor fanatiscim can shake her. As the papal power was the greatest corruption of Christianity, it cannot be thought extraordinay, that more of the prophecies of Revelations are applicable to it than to auy other branch of Antichristian power. As both Mahometanism and Infidelity con. sisted more of open hostility, they were likely to be better distinguished by Christians, F2 |