life which is in Christ Jesus. Upon thee our God, we call for that help which is never wanting, and beseech thee to give us thy heavenly assistance, that we may recover our reasonable nature, refine our spirits by goodness, and purify ourselves even as the Lord Jesus is pure. O thou Father of Lights, and the God of all comforts, inform our understandings with truth, and give us one ray of that divine wisdom which sitteth on the right hand of thy throne. O let us be always under thy communication and influence, and enable us, through the recommendation of thy Son, our mediator and redeemer, to lay aside all passion, prejudice, and vice, to receive thy truth in the love of it, and to serve thee with ingenuity of mind, and freedom of spirit: that we may pass through a religious life to a blessed immortality, and come to that eternal rest, where we shall behold thy face in righteousness, and adore and bless thee to eternity, for our salvation through him who hath redeemed us by his blood. "We praise and magnify thy goodness, O Lord God Almighty, for our maintenance and preservation, by thy constant providence over us, and we beseech thee to take us into thy special care aud protection this night. Defend us from all the powers of darkness, and from evil men and evil things, and raise us in health and safety. Do thou, most great and good God, protect us and bless us this night, and when we awake in the morning, let our hearts be with thee, and thy hand with us. And the same mercies we beg for all mankind; that thy goodness and power may preserve them, and thy direction and influence secure their eternal salvation, through Jesus Christ our Lord, by whom thou hast taught us to call upon thee as our Father, &c." By the way, I cannot help observing, that these disciples of Ivon are much reformed in respect of what his cloistered followers were in his time. It appears from Ivon's books, that he was as great a visionary and tritheist as his master Labadie, or any of our modern mystics now are. But these Regulars I found among the fells, though on Ivon's plan, are as rational Christians as ever adorned the religion of our Master by a purity of faith. You see by their prayes, that their devotions are quite reasonable and calm. There is no rant, nor words without meaning, no feeling instead of seeing the truth; nor expectation of covenant mercy on the belief of a point repugnant not only to the reason and nature of things, but to the plain repeated declarations of God in the Christian religion. Their prayer is a calm address to the great Maker, Governor, and Benefactor of the universe; and honour and obedience to Christ as Mediator, according to the will and appointment of God the Father. Upon my asking one of these gentlemen, how they came to differ so much from Ivon, their founder, and cease to be the patrons of vision, and an implicit incomprehensible faith? He told me, they had read all the books on both sides of the question, that had been written of late years, and could not resist the force of the evidence in favour of reason and the divine unity. They saw it go against mechanical impulse, and strong persuasion without grounds, and therefore they dismissed Ivon's notions of believing without ideas, as they became sensible it was the same thing as seeing without light or objects. Without dealing any longer in a mist of words, or shewing themselves orthodox, by empty, insignificant sounds, they resolved, that the object of their worship, for the time to come, should be, that one supreme self-existent being, of absolute, infinite perfection, who is the first cause of all things, and whose numerical identity and infinite perfections are demonstrable from certain principles of reason, antecedent to any peculiar revelation ; and confessed that the blessing, with which Jesus Christ was sent by God to bless the world, consists in turning men from their iniquities. They now perceived what the creed-makers, and Ivon, their founder, could not see, to wit, that it is against the sacred texts, to ascribe to Each Person of Three the nature and all essential attributes and properties of the One only true God, and yet make the Three the One true God only, when considered conjunctly; for if Each has all possible perfections and attributes, then each must be the same true God as if and when conjoined; and of consequence, there must then be Three One true Gods, or One Three true Gods; Three One Supreme Beings, or One Three Supreme Beings, since to each of the three must be ascribed, as the orthodox say, any thing and every thing, that is most peculiar and appropriated to the divine nature, without any difference, In short, by conjobbling matters of faith in this manner, they saw we had three distinct selfs, or intelligent agents, equal in power and all possible perfections, agreeing in one common essence, one sort of species, like a supreme magistracy of distinct persons, acting by a joint exercise of the same power, and so the three are one, not by a numerical but specific identity : three Omnipotents and one Almighty, in a collective sense. This, continued the gentleman on searching the scriptures, we found was far from being the truth of the case. We discovered, upon a fair examination, and laying aside our old prejudices, that there was nothing like this in the New Testament. It appeared to us to be the confused talk of weak heads. In the Bible we got a just idea of one Eternal Cause, God the Father, almighty, all-wise, unchangeable, infinite; and are there taught how to worship and serve him. The greatest care is there taken to guard against the ill effects of imagination and superstition; and in the plainest language, we are ordered to pray to this blessed and only potentate, the King of kings, and Lord of lords, who only, or alone hath immortality; and this in imitation of Jesus, who in the morning very early went out into a solitary place, and there prayed. Who dismissing his disciples departed into amountain to prayt. And he continued all night in prayer to GOD‡: We are ordered to glorify and bless this only wise God for ever §. Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ ||. To God and our Father be glory for ever ¶. And to love him truly by keeping the commandments**. Cui Jesus sic respondit: primum omnium præceptorum est; audi Israelita. Dominus Deus vester dominus unus est. * Mark, ch.i. v. 35. ↑ Mark, ch. vi. v. 46. ch. vi. v. 12. ch. i. v. 3. § Romans, ch. xvi. v. 27. ¶ Phil. ch. iv. v. 20. + Luke, || 2 Cor. ** Mark, ch. xii. |