ligion to this day, and it is upon this I ground my faith and hopes of salvation, not doubting but, if my life and practice have been answerable to them, that I shall be quickly translated out of this kingdom of darkness, out of this world of sorrow, vexation, and confusion, into that blessed kingdom, where I shall cease to grieve and to suffer, and shall be happy to all eternity. As to my principles in religion, to be as brief as I can, I declare myself to be a member of Christ's church, which I take to be a universal society of all Christian people, distributed under lawful governors and pastors into particular churches, holding communion with each other in all the essentials of the Christian faith, worship, and discipline; and among these I look upon the Church of England to be the chief and best constituted. The Church of England is doubtless the great bulwark of the ancient Catholic or Apostolic faith all over the world; a church that has all the spiritual advantages that the nature of a church is capable of. From the doctrine and principles of the Church of England we are taught loyalty to our prince, fidelity to our country, and justice to all mankind; and therefore, as I look upon this to be one of the most excellent branches of the Church Universal, and stands, as it were, between superstition and hypocrisy, I therefore declare, for the satisfaction of you and your friends, as I have always lived so I now die, a true and sincere, though a most unworthy member of it. And as to my discontinuance of my attendance at the public worship, I refer you to my papers, which I have left with my worthy friend, Mr Barlow. And thus, my dear sister, I have given you a short account of my faith and the principles of my religion. I come, in the next place, to lay before you a few meditations and observations I have at several times collected together, more particularly those since my retirement to St Helen's. and enable him to examine maturely the manner of dying; which, if duly abstracted from the terror of the idea, will appear nothing more than an unavoidable appendix of life itself, and a pure natural action. 4. Consider that ill-usage from some sort of people is in a manner necessary, and therefore don't be disquieted about it, but rather conclude that you and your enemy are both marching off the stage together, and that in a little time your very memories will be extinguished. 5. Among your principal observations upon human life, let it be always one to take notice what a great deal both of time and ease that man gains who is not troubled with the spirit of curi osity, who lets his neighbour's affairs alone, and confines his inspections to himself, and only takes care of honesty and a good conscience. 6. If you would live at your ease, and as much manage but a few things at once, and let those, as possible be free from the incumbrances of life, too, be such as are absolutely necessary. By this rule you will draw the bulk of your business into a narrow compass, and have the double pleasure of making your actions good, and few into the bargain. 7. He that torments himself because things do not happen just as he would have them is but a sort of ulcer in the world; and he that is selfish, narrow-souled, and sets up for a separate interest, is a kind of voluntary outlaw, and disincorporates himself from mankind. 8. Never think anything below you which reason and your own circumstances require, and grounded notions of censure and reproach; but never suffer yourself to be deterred by the illwhen honesty and conscience prompt you to say or do anything, do it boldly; never baulk your resolution or start at the consequence. 9. If a man does me an injury, what's that to me? 'Tis his own action, and let him account for it. As for me, I am in my proper station, and only doing the business that Providence has Meditations and Observations relating to the Con- allotted; and withal, I ought to consider that the best way to revenge is not to imitate the injury. duct of Human Life in general. 1. Remember how often you have neglected the great duties of religion and virtue, and slighted the opportunities that Providence has put into your hands, and, withal, that you have a set period assigned you for the management of the affairs of human life; and then reflect seriously that, unless you resolve immediately to improve the little remains, the whole must necessarily slip away insensibly, and then you are lost beyond recovery. 2. Let an unaffected gravity, freedom, justice, and sincerity, shine through all your actions, and let no fancies and chimeras give the least check to those excellent qualities. This is an easy task, if you will but suppose everything you do to be your last, and if you can keep your passions and appetites from crossing your reason. Stand clear of rashness, and have nothing of insincerity or self love to infect you. 3. Manage all your thoughts and actions with such prudence and circumspection as if you were sensible you were just going to step into the grave. A little thinking will show a man the vanity and uncertainty of all sublunary things, 10. When you happen to be ruffled and put out of humour by any cross accident, retire immediately into your reason, and don't suffer your passion to overrule you a moment; for the sooner you recover yourself now the better you'll be able to guard yourself for the future. Il. Don't be like those ill-natured people that, though they do not love to give a good word to their contemporaries, yet are mighty fond of their own commendations. This argues a perverse and unjust temper, and often exposes the authors to scorn and contempt. 12. If any one convinces you of an error, change your opinion and thank him for it: truth and information are your business, and can never hurt anybody. On the contrary, he that is proud and stubborn, and wilfully continues in a mistake, 'tis he that receives the mischief. 13. Because you see a thing difficult, don't instantly conclude it to be impossible to master it. Diligence and industry are seldom defeated. Look, therefore, narrowly into the thing itself, and what you observe proper and practicable in another, conclude likewise within your own power. 14. The principal business of human life is run || 24. Wicked men may sometimes go unpunthrough within the short compass of twenty-fourished in this world, but wicked nations never do; hours: and when you have taken a deliberate because this world is the only place of punishview of the present age, you have seen as much ment for wicked nations, though not for private as if you had begun with the world, the rest being and particular persons. nothing else but an endless round of the same thing over and over again. 15. Bring your will to your fate, and suit your mind to your circumstances. Love your friends and forgive your enemies, and do justice to all mankind, and you'll be secure to make your passage easy, and enjoy most of the comforts that human life is capable to afford you. 25. An administration that is merely founded upon human policy must be always subject to human chance; but that which is founded on the divine wisdom can no more miscarry than the government of Heaven. To govern by parties and factions is the advice of an atheist, and sets up a government by the spirit of Satan. In such a government the prince can never be secure 16. When you have a mind to entertain your- under the greatest promises, since, as men's inself in your retirements, let it be with the goodterest changes, so will their duty and affections qualifications of your friends and acquaintance. Think with pleasure and satisfaction upon the honour and bravery of one, the modesty of another, the generosity of a third, and so on; there being nothing more pleasant and diverting than the lively images and the advantages of those we love and converse with. 17. As nothing can deprive you of the privileges of your nature, or compel you to act counter to your reason, so nothing can happen to you but what comes from Providence, and consists with the interest of the universe. 18. Let people's tongues and actions be what they will, your business is to have honour and honesty in your view. Let them rail, revile, censure, and condemn, or make you the subject of their scorn and ridicule, what does it all signify? You have one certain remedy against all their malice and folly, and that is to live so that nobody shall believe them. 19. Alas, poor mortals! did we rightly consider our own state and condition, we should find it would not be long before we have forgot all the world, and to be even, that all the world will have forgot us likewise. 20. He that would recommend himself to the public, let him do it by the candour and modesty of his behaviour, and by a generous indifference to external advantages. Let him love mankind, and resign to Providence, and then his works will follow him, and his good actions will praise him in the gate. 21. When you hear a discourse, let your understanding, as far as possible, keep pace with it, and lead you forward to those things which fall most within the compass of your own observations. 22. When vice and treachery shall be rewarded, and virtue and ability slighted and discountenanced; when ministers of state shall rather fear man than God, and to screen themselves run into parties and factions; when noise and clamour, and scandalous reports shall carry everything before them, 'tis natural to conclude that a nation in such a state of infatuation stands upon the brink of destruction, and without the intervention of some unforeseen accident, must be inevitably ruined. 23. When a prince is guarded by wise and honest men, and when all public officers are sure to be rewarded if they do well, and punished if they do evil, the consequence is plain; justice and honesty will flourish, and men will be always contriving, not for themselves, but for the honour and interest of their king and country. || likewise. 26. It is a very ancient observation, and a very true one, that people generally despise where they flatter, and cringe to those they design to betray: so that truth and ceremony are, and always will be, two distinct things. 27. When you find your friend in an error, undeceive him with secrecy and civility, and let him see his oversight first by hints and glances; and if you cannot convince him, leave him with respect, and lay the fault upon your own manage ment. 28. When you are under the greatest vexations, then consider that human life lasts but for a moment; and do not forget but that you are like the rest of the world, and faulty yourself in many instances; and withal, remember that anger and impatience often prove more mischievous than the provocation. 29. Gentleness and good humour are invincible, provided they are without hypocrisy and design; they disarm the most barbarous and savage tempers, and make even malice ashamed of itself. 30. In all the actions of life let it be your first and principal care to guard against anger on the one hand and flattery on the other, for they are both unserviceable qualities, and do a great deal of mischief in the government of human life. 31. When a man turns knave or libertine, and gives way to fear, jealousy, and fits of the spleen when his mind complains of his fortune, and he quits the station in which Providence has placed him, he acts perfectly counter to humanity, de serts his own nature, and, as it were, runs away from himself. 32. Be not heavy in business, disturbed in conversation, nor impertinent in your thoughts. Let your judgment be right, your actions friendly, and your mind contented; let them curse you, threaten you, or despise you; let them go on: they can never injure your reason or your virtue, and then all the rest that they can do to you signifies nothing. 33. The only pleasure of human life is doing the business of the creation; and which way is that to be compassed very easily? Most certainly by the practice of general kindness, by rejecting the importunity of our senses, by distinguishing truth from falsehood, and by contemplating the works of the Almighty. 34. Be sure to mind that which lies before you, whether it be thought, word, or action; and never postpone an opportunity, or make virtue wait for you till to-morrow. 35. Whatever tends neither to the improve-|| a pretended secret for the transmutation of ment of your reason nor the benefit of society, metals. Under the umbrage of this mighty secret think it below you; and when you have done any he shall pass upon the world for some time; but considerable service to mankind, don't lessen it at length he shall be detected, and proved to be by your folly, in gaping after reputation and re- nothing but an empiric and a cheat, and so forced quital. to sneak off, and leave the people he has deluded, either to bemoan their loss or laugh at their own folly. N. B. This will be the last of his sect that will ever venture in this part of the world upon 36. When you find yourself sleepy in a morning, rouse yourself, and consider that you are born to business, and that in doing good in your generation, you answer your character and act like a man; whereas sleep and idleness do but degrade you, and sink you down to a brute. 37. A mind that has nothing of hope, or fear, or aversion, or desire, to weaken and disturb it, is the most impregnable security. Hither we may with safety retire and defy our enemies; and he that sees not this advantage must be extremely ignorant, and he that forgets it unhappy. 38. Don't disturb yourself about the faults of other people, but let everybody's crimes be at their own door. Have always this great maxim in your remembrance, that to play the knave is to rebel against religion; all sorts of injustice being no less than high treason against Heaven itself. 39. Don't contemn death, but meet it with a decent and religious fortitude, and look upon it as one of those things which Providence has ordered. If you want a cordial to make the ap. prehensions of dying go down a little the more easily, consider what sort of world and what sort of company you'll part with. To conclude, do but look seriously into the world, and there you'll see multitudes of people preparing for funerals, and mourning for their friends and acquaintances; and look out again a little afterwards, and you'll see others doing the very same thing for them. 40. In short, men are but poor transitory things. To-day they are busy and harassed with the affairs of human life, and to-morrow life itself is taken from them, and they are returned to their original dust and ashes. PART III. Containing prophetic observations relating to the affairs of Europe and of Great Britain, more particularly from 1720 to 1729. 1. In the latter end of 1720, an eminent old lady shall bring forth five sons at a birth; the youngest shall live and grow up to maturity, but the four eldest shall either die in the nursery or be all carried off by one sudden and unexpected accident. 2. About this time a man with a double head shall arrive in Britain from the south. One of these heads shall deliver messages of great importance to the governing party, and the other to the party that's opposite to them. The first shall believe the monster, but the last shall discover the impostor, and so happily disengage themselves from a snare that was laid to destroy them and their posterity. After this the two heads shall unite, and the monster shall appear in his proper shape. 3. In the year 1721, a philosopher from Lower Germany shall come, first to Amsterdam in Holland, and afterwards to London. He will bring with him a world of curiosities, and among them the same errand. 5. Towards the close of this year of mysteries, a person that was born blind shall have his sight restored, and shall see ravens perch upon the heads of traitors, among which the head of a notorious prelate shall stand upon the highest pole. 6. In the year 1722, there shall be a grand congress, and new overtures of peace offered by most of the principal parties concerned in the war, which shall have so good effect that a cessation of arms shall be agreed upon for six months, which shall be kept inviolable till a certain general, either through treachery or inadvertency, shall begin hostilities before the expiration of the term; upon which the injured prince shall draw his sword, and throw the scabbard into the sea, vowing never to return it till he shall obtain satisfaction for himself, and done justice to all that were oppressed. 7. At the close of this year, a famous bridge shall be broken down, and the water that runs under it shall be tinctured with the blood of two notorious malefactors, whose unexpected death shall make mighty alterations in the present state of affairs, and put a stop to the ruin of a nation, which must otherwise have been unavoidable. 8. 1723 begins with plots, conspiracies, and intestine commotions in several countries; nor shall Great Britain itself be free from the calamity. These shall continue till a certain young prince shall take the reins of government into his own hands; and after that, a marriage shall be proposed, and an alliance concluded between two great potentates, who shall join their forces, and endeavour, in good earnest, to set all matters upon a right foundation. 9. This year several cardinals and prelates shall be publicly censured for heretical principles, and shall narrowly escape from being torn to pieces by the common people, who still look upon them as the grand disturbers of the public tranquillity, perfect incendiaries, and the chief promoters of their, former, present, and future calamities. 10. In 1724-5 there will be many treaties and negociations, and Great Britain, particularly, will be crowded with foreign ministers and ambassadors from remote princes and states. Trade and commerce will begin to flourish and revive, and everything will have a comfortable prospect, until some desperadoes, assisted by a monster with many heads, shall start new difficulties, and put the world again into a flame; but these shall be but of short duration. 11. Before the expiration of 1725, an eagle from the north shall fly directly to the south, and perch upon the palace of a prince, and first unravel the bloody projects and designs of a wicked set of people, and then publicly discover the murder of a great king, and the intended assassination of another greater than he. 12. In 1726, three princes will be born that will grow up to be men, and inherit the crowns of three of the greatest monarchies in Europe. pelled to disgorge what they have unjustly pillaged either from the crown or the public. 17. About this time a new scaffold will be erected upon the confines of a certain great city, where an old count of a new extraction, that has been of all parties and true to none, will be doomed by his peers to make his first appearance. After this an old lady, who has often been exposed to danger and disgrace, and sometimes brought to the very brink of destruction, will be brought to bed of three daughters at once, which they shall call Plenty, Peace, and Union; and these three shall live and grow up together, be the glory of their mother, and the comfort of posterity for many generations. This is the substance of what he either writ or extracted from his papers in the interval between the loss of his speech and the return of his fit, which happened exactly at the time he had com 13. About this time the Pope will die, and after a great many intrigues and struggles, a Spanish cardinal shall be elected, who shall decline the dignity, and declare his marriage with|puted. a great lady, heiress of one of the chief principalities in Italy, which may occasion new troubles in Europe, if not timely prevented. 14. In 1727, new troubles shall break out in the north, occasioned by the sudden death of a certain prince, and the avarice and ambition of another. Poor Poland seems to be pointed at; but the princes of the south shall enter into a confederacy to preserve her, and shall at length restore her peace, and prevent the perpetual ruin of her constitution. Upon the approach of his fit, he made signs to be put to bed, which was no sooner done but he was seized with extreme agonies, which he bore up under with the greatest steadfastness, and after a severe conflict that lasted near eight hours, he expired. Thus lived and thus died this extraordinary person; a person, though of mean extraction and obscure life, yet when his character comes to be fully and truly known, it will be read with pleasure, profit, and admiration. | His perfections at large would be the work of a 15. Great endeavours will be used about this || volume, and inconsistent with the intention of I will therefore only add, for a time for a comprehension in religion supported these papers. conclusion, that he was a man of uncommon by crafty and designing men, and a party of mistaken zealots, which they shall artfully draw in thought and judgment, and always kept his apto join with them; but as the project is ill-petites and inclinations within their just limits. concerted and will be worse managed, it will come to nothing; and soon afterwards an effectual mode will be taken to prevent the like attempt for the future. 16. 1728 will be a year of inquiry and retrospection. Many exorbitant grants will be reassumed, and several persons who thought themselves secure will be called before the senate, and com His reason was strong and manly, his understanding sound and active, and his temper so easy, equal, and complaisant, that he never fell out, either with men or accidents. He bore all things with the highest affability, and computed justly upon their value and consequence, and then applied them to their proper uses. A LETTER FROM OXFORD. SIR,-Being informed that you speedily intend to publish some memoirs relating to our dumb countryman, Dickory Cronke, I send you herewith a few lines, in the nature of an Elegy, which I leave you to dispose of as you think fit. I knew and admired the man, and if I were capable, his character should be the first thing I would attempt. Your's, &c. AN ELEGY, IN MEMORY OF DICKORY CRONKE, THE DUMB PHILOSOPHER. Vitiis nemo sine nascitur; op Qui minimis urgetur.-HORACE. If virtuous actions emulation raise, Of nature, justice, and morality; A mind not subject to the frowns of fate, But calm and easy in a servile state. And feared no harm, because he knew no ill. No gainful views his bounded hopes could sway, Exeter College, August 25th, 1719. J. P. |