peror, nor the solitary retreats to which he retired, could shield him from the accusations of his conscience, but he himself was forced to confess the mental agonies he endured as a punishment for his crimes.-Antiochus Epiphanes was another tyrant remarkable for his cruelty and impiety. He laid siege to the city of Jerusalem, exercised the most horrid cruelties upon its inhabitants, slaughtered forty thousand of them in three days, and polluted, in the most impious manner, the temple, and the worship of the God of Israel. Some time afterwards, when he was breathing out curses against the Jews for having restored their ancient worship, and threatening to destroy the whole nation, and to make Jerusalem the common place of sepulture to all the Jews, he was seized with a grievous torment in his inward parts, and excessive pangs of the colic, accompanied with such terrors as no remedies could assuage. "Worms, crawled from every part of him; his flesh fell away piece-meal, and the stench was so great that it became intolerable to the whole army; and he thus finished an impious life, by a miserable death."* During this dis. order, says Polybius, he was troubled with a perpetual delirium, imagining that spectres stood continually before him, reproaching him with his crimes.-Similar relations are given by historians, of Herod who slaughtered the infants at Bethlehem, of Galerius Maximianus the author of the tenth persecution against the Christians, of the infamous Philip II. of Spain, and of many others whose names stand conspicuous on the rolls of impiety and crime. It is related of Charles IX. of France, who ordered the horrible Bartholomew massacre, and assisted in this bloody tragedy, that, ever after, he had a fierceness in his looks, and a colour in his cheeks, which he never had before ;— that he slept little and never sound; and waked frequently in great agonies, requiring soft music to compose him to rest; and at length died of a lingering disorder, after having undergone the most exquisite torments both of body and mind. D'Aubigne informs us that Henry IV. frequently told, among his most intimate friends, that eight days after the massacre of St. Bartholomew, he saw a vast *Rollin's An. Hist. number of ravens perch and croak on the pavilion of the Louvre; that the same night Charles IX. after he had been two hours in bed, started up, roused his grooms of the chamber, and sent them out to listen to a great noise of groans in the air, and among others, some furious and threatening voices, the whole resembling what was heard on the night of the massacre; that all these various cries were so striking, so remarkable, and so articulate, that Charles believing that the enemies of the Montmorencies and of their partisans had surprised and attacked them, sent a detachment of his guards to prevent this new massacre.—It is scarcely necessary to add, that the intelligence brought from Paris proved these apprehensions to be groundless, and that the noises heard, must have been the fanciful creations of the guilty conscience of the king, countenanced by the vivid remembrance of those around him of the horrors of St. Bartholomew's day. King Richard III. after he had murdered his innocent royal nephews, was so tormented in conscience, as Sir Thomas More reports from the gentlemen of his bed chamber, that he had no peace or quiet in himself, but always carried it as if some imminent danger was near him. His eyes were always whirling about on this side, and on that side; he wore a shirt of mail, and was always laying his hand upon his dagger, looking as furiously as if he was ready to strike. He had no quiet in his mind by day, nor could take any rest by night, but, molested with terrifying dreams, would start out of his bed, and run like a distracted man about the chamber.* This state of mind, in reference to another case, is admirably described, in the following lines of Dryden. "Amidst your train this unseen judge will wait, Examine how you came by all your state; Upbraid your impious pomp, and in your ear Will hollow, rebel! traitor! murderer! Your ill-got power, wan looks, and care shall bring, Of crowds afraid, yet anxious when alone, * Stow's Annals, p. 460. Bessus the Pæonian being reproached with ill-nature for pulling down a nest of young sparrows and killing them, answered, that he had reason so to do, "Because these little birds never ceased falsely to accuse him of the murder of his father." This parricide had been till then concealed and unknown; but the revenging fury of conscience caused it to be discovered by himself, who was justly to suffer for it.--That notorious sceptic and semi-atheist, Mr. Hobbes, author of the "Leviathan," had been the means of poisoning many young gentlemen and others with his wicked principles, as the Earl of Rochester confessed, with extreme compunction, on his death-bed. It was remarked, by those who narrowly observed his conduct, that "though in a humour of bravado he would speak strange and unbecoming things of God; yet in his study, in the dark, and in his retired thoughts, he trembled before him." He could not endure to be left alone in an empty house. He could not, even in his old age, bear any discourse of death, and seemed to cast off all thoughts of it. He could not bear to sleep in the dark; and if his candle happened to go out in the night, he would awake in terror and amazement,- -a plain indication, that he was unable to bear the dismal reflections of his dark and desolate mind, and knew not how to extinguish, nor how to bear the light of "the candle of the Lord" within him. He is said to have left the world, with great reluctance, under terrible apprehen. sions of a dark and unknown futurity. "Conscience, the torturer of the soul, unseen, Your crimes, and your own Conscience be your Hell. Many similar examples of the power of conscience in awakening terrible apprehensions of futurity, could be brought forward from the records of history both ancient and modern ;-and there can be no question, that, at the present moment, there are thousands of gay spirits immersed in fashionable dissipation, and professing to disre gard the realities of a future world, who, if they would lay open their inmost thoughts, would confess, that the secret dread of a future retribution is a spectre which frequently haunts them while running the rounds of forbidden pleasure, and embitters their most exquisite enjoyments. Now, how are we to account for such terrors of conscience, and awful forebodings of futurity, if there be no existence beyond the grave? especially when we consider, that many of those who have been thus tormented have occupied stations of rank and power, which raised them above the fear of punishment from man? If they got their schemes accomplished, their passions gratified, and their persons and possessions secured from temporal danger, why did they feel compunction or alarm in the prospect of futurity? for every mental disquietude of this description implies a dread of something future. They had no great reason to be afraid even of the Almighty himself, if his vengeance do not extend beyond the present world. They beheld the physical and moral world moving onward according to certain fixed and immutable laws. They beheld no miracles of vengeance-no Almighty arm visibly hurling the thunderbolts of heaven against the workers of iniquity. They saw that one event happened to all, to the righteous as well as to the wicked, and that death was an evil to which they behoved sooner or later to submit. They encountered hostile armies with fortitude, and beheld all the dread apparatus of war without dismay. Yet, in their secret retirements, in their fortified retreats, where no eye but the eye of God was upon them, and when no hostile incursion was apprehended, they trembled at a shadow, and felt a thousand disquietudes from the reproaches of an inward monitor which they could not escape. These things appear altogether inexplicable if there be no retribution beyond the grave. We are, therefore, irresistibly led to the conclusion, that the voice of conscience, in such cases, is the voice of God declaring his abhorrence of wicked deeds and the punishment which they deserve, and that his providence presides over the actions of moral agents, and gives intimations of the future destiny of those haughty spirits who obstinately persist in their trespasses. And, consequently, as the peace and serenity of virtuous minds are preludes of nobler enjoyments in a future life, so those terrors which now assail the wicked may be considered as the beginnings of that misery and anguish which will be consummated in the world to come, in the case of those who add final impeni. tence to all their other crimes. SECTION VIII. On the disordered state of the Moral World, when contrasted with the regular and systematical order of the Material. The disordered state of the moral world, contrasted with the regular and systematical order of the material, affords a strong presumption of another state in which the moral evils which now exist will be corrected. When we take a general survey of the great fabric of the universe, or contemplate more minutely any of its subordinate arrangements, the marks of beauty, order and harmony, are strikingly apparent. Every thing appears in its proper place, moving onward in majestic order, and accomplishing the end for which it was intended. In the planetary system, the law of gravitation is found to ope rate exactly in proportion to the square of the distance, and the squares of the periodic times of the planets' revolutions round the sun are exactly proportionate to the cubes of their distances. Every body in this system finishes its respective révolution in exactly the same period of time, so as not to deviate a single minute in the course of a century. The annual revolution of the planet Jupiter was ascertained two centuries ago, to be accomplished in 4330 days, 14 hours, 27 minutes, and 11 seconds, and his rotation round his axis in 9 hours, 56 minutes, and these revolutions are still found to be performed in exactly the same times. The earth performs its diurnal revolution, from one century to another, bringing about the alternate succession of day and night, in exactly the same period of 23 hours, 56 minutes, and 4 seconds. Throughout the whole of this system, there is none of the bodies of which it is composed that stops in its motion, or deviates from the path prescribed. No one interrupts another in its course, nor interferes to prevent the beneficial influences of attractive power, or of light and heat, * |