N° 8. "My conduct, my connections and my hopes in "life will bear the fcrutiny: Suffer me to fay

you will have a protector, whofe character can "face the world, and whofe fpirit cannot fear it, "As for worldly motives, I renounce them; "give me yourself and your affections; give me "poffeffion of this hand, these eyes, and the foul "which looks through them; let your father "withhold the reft. Now, lovelieft and moft "beloved, have you the heart to fhare a foldier's "fortune? Have you the noble confidence to "take his word? Will you follow, where his "honour bids him go, and whether a joyful 6C victory or a glorious death attends him, will << you receive him living, or entomb him dying "in your arms?"

Whilft Lionel was uttering these words, his action, his emotion, and that honeft glow of paffion, which nature only can affume and artifice cannot counterfeit, had fo fubdued the yielding heart of Sappho, that he must have been dull indeed, if he could have wanted any stronger confirmation of his fuccefs, than what her looks bestowed: Never was filence more eloquent; the labour of language and the forms of law had no fhare in this contract: A figh of speechless ecftafy drew up the nuptial bond; the operations of love are momentary: Tears of affection in

2

terchangeably

terchangeably witnessed the deed, and the contracting parties fealed it with an inviolable embrace.

Every moment now had wings to waft them to that happy spot, where the unholy hand of law has not yet plucked up the root of love: Freedom met them on the very extremity of her precincts; Nature held out her hand to welcome them, and the Loves and Graces, though exiled to a defart, danced in her train.

Thus was Sappho, when brought to the very brink of deftruction, rescued by the happy intervention of Providence. The next day produced an interview with Clemens, at the house to which they returned after the ceremony in Scotland: The meeting, as might well be expected, was poignant and reproachful; but when Sappho, in place of a fuperannuated sentimentalist, prefented to him a fon-in-law, in whose martial form and countenance he beheld youth, honour, manly beauty, and every attractive grace that could justify her choice, his tranfports became exceffive; and their union, being now fanctified by the bleffing of a father, and warranted by love and nature, has fnatched a deluded victim from mifery and error, and added one conjugal inftance to the scanty records of unfashionable felicity.

P4

Let

Let not my young female readers believe that the extravagance of Sappho's conduct is altogether out of nature, or that they have nothing to apprehend from men of Mufidorus's age and character; my obfervation convinces me to the contrary. Gravity, fays Lord Shaftesbury, is the very effence of impofture; and fentimental gravity, varnished over with the experienced artifice of age and wifdom, is the worst of its pecies.

N° LXXXIII.

T

HE deiftical writers, who would fain perfuade us that the world was in poffeffion of as pure a system of morality before the introduction of Christianity as fince, affect to make a great difplay of the virtues of many eminent heathens, particularly of the philofophers Socrates, Plato, and some others.

When they set up these characters as examples of perfection, which human nature with the aids of revelation either has not attained to, or not exceeded, they put us upon an invidious task, which no man would voluntarily engage in, and challenge

challenge us to discuss a question, which, if thoroughly agitated, cannot fail to ftrip the illuftrious dead of more than half the honours which the voice of ages has agreed to give them.

It is therefore to be wished that they had held: the argument to its general terms, and fhewn us where that system of ethics is to be found, which they are prepared to bring into comparison with the moral doctrines of Chrift. This I take to be the fair ground whereon the controverfy should have been decided, and here it would infallibly have been brought to iffue; but they knew their weapons better than to trust them in fo close a conflict.

The maxims of some heathen philofophers, and the moral writings of Plato, Cicero and Seneca, contain many noble truths, worthy to be held in veneration by posterity; and if the deift can from these produce a fyftem of morality as pure and perfect as that which claims its origin from divine revelation, he will prove that God gave to man a faculty of diftinguishing between right; and wrong with fuch correctnefs, that his own immediate revelation added no lights to thofe, which the powers of reafon had already discovered. Let us grant therefore for a moment, that Christ's religion revealed to the world no new truths in morality, nor removed any old errors, 9 and

and what triumph accrues to the deift by the admiffion? The moft he gains is to bring reafon to a level with revelation, as to its moral doctrines; in fo doing he dignifies man's nature, and fhews how excellent a faculty God gave his creatures in their original formation, to guide their judgments and controul their actions; but will this diminish the importance of revealed religion? Certainly not, unless he can prove one or both of the following pofitions; viz.

Firft, That the moral tenets of Christianity either fall fhort of, or run counter to, the moral tenets of natural religion; or,

Secondly, That Chrift's miffion was nugatory and fuperfluous, because the world was already in poffeffion of as good a fyftem of morality as he imparted to mankind.

As to the firft, I believe it has never been attempted by any heathen or deiftical advocate to convict the Gospel fyftem of falfe morality, or to alledge that it is fhort and defective in any one particular duty, when compared with that fyftem which the world was poffeft of without its aid, No man, I believe, has controverted its truths, though many have difputed its difcoveries: No man has been hardy enough to fay of any of its doctrines-This we ought not to practife; though many have been vain enough to cry out-All