and all the secrets of his providence. If this was not our case, before corruption begins to lay hold of us, deplorable must we be, when torments come upon us, and we have only hopeless wishes that we had been wiser, as we descend in agonies to our solitary retreat: to proceed from thence to judgment. Language cannot paint the horrors of such a condition. The anguish of mind, and the torture of body, are a scene of misery beyond description. Or, if without torment, we lie down in silence, and sink into the land of forgetfulness, yet, since the Lord Jesus is to raise us from the regions of darkness, and bring us to the sessions of righteousness, where all our actions are to be strictly tried and examined, and every one shall be judged according to the deeds done in the body, whether they have been good or evil; what can screen us from the wrath of that mighty power, which is to break off the strong fetters of death, and to throw open the iron gates of the grave, if injustice, cruelty, and oppression, have been our practice in this world; or if, in the neglect of the distressed and hungry, we have given up ourselves to chambering and wantonness, to gluttony and voluptuousness? It is virtue and obedience, acts of goodness and mercy, that only can deliver us. If we worship in spirit and in truth the most glorious of immortal beings, that God who is omnipotent in wisdom and action, and perform all the offices of love and friendship to every man, then will our Lord pronounce us the blessed of his Father. If we do evil, we shall come forth unto the resurrection of damnation. This merits your attention, reader, and I hope you will immediately begin to ponder, what it is to have a place assigned in inconceivable happiness or misery for ever. Having thus lost Miss NOEL, and my good old friend, her worthy father, I left the university, and went down to the country, after five years and three months absence, to see how things were posited at home, and pay my respects to my father; but I found them very little to my liking, and in a short time, returned to Dublin again. He had lately married in his old age a young wife, who was one of the most artful, false, and insolent of women, and to gratify her to the utmost of his power, had not only brought her nephew into his house, but was ridiculously fond of him, and lavishly gratified all his desires. Whatever this little brute, the son of a drunken beggar, who had been a journey-man glover, was pleased, in wantonness, to call for, and that his years, then sixteen, could require, my Even father's fortune in an instant produced; while scarcely one of my rational demands could be answered. Money, cloaths, servants, horses, dogs, and all things he could fancy, were given in abundance; and to please the basest of women, and the most cruel step-mother that ever the devil inspired to make the son of another woman miserable, I was denied almost every thing. The liberal allowance I had at the university was taken from me. a horse to ride out to the neighbouring gentlemen, was refused me, though my father had three stables of extraordinary cattle; and till I purchased one, was forced to walk it, wherever I had a mind to visit. What is still more incredible, if any thing of severity can be so, when a mother-in-law is sovereign, I was not allowed to keep my horse even at grass on the land, though five hundred acres of freehold estate surrounded the mansion, but obliged to graze it at a neighbouring farmer's. Nor was this all the hard treatment I received. I was ordered by my father to become the young man's preceptor; to spend my precious time in teaching this youngster, and in labouring to make the little despicable dunce a scholar. All this was more than I could bear. My life became insupportable, and I resolved to range even the wilds of Africa, if nothing better offered, rather than live a miserable slave under the cruel tyranny of those unrelenting oppressors. My father, however, by the way, was as fine a gentleman as ever lived, a man of extraordinary understanding, and a scholar; likewise remarkably just and good to all the world, except myself, after I left the university: and to do him all the justice in my power, and vindicate him so far as I am able, I must not conceal, that great as the ascendancy was, which my mother-in-law had over him, and as much as he was henpecked by that low-bred woman, who had been his servant maid, yet it was not to her only that my sufferings were owing. Religion had a hand in my misery. False religion was the spring of that paternal resentment I suffered under. It was my father's being wont to have prayers read every night and morning in his family, and the office was the litany of the common-prayer book. This work, on my coming home, was transferred from my sister to me, and for about one week I performed to the old gentleman's satisfaction, as my voice was good, and my reading distinct and clear; but this office was far from being grateful to me, as I was become a strict Unitarian, by the lessons I had received from my private tutor in college, and my own examinations of the vulgar faith. It went against my conscience to use the tritheistic form of prayer, and became at last so uneasy to me, that I altered the prayers the first Sunday morning, and made them more agreeable to Scripture as I conceived. My father at this was very highly enraged, and his passion arose to so great a height, upon my defending my confession, and refusing to read the established form, that he called me the most impious and execrable of wretches, and with violence drove me from his presence. Soon after however he sent me Lord Nottingham's Letter to Mr. Whiston, and desired I would come over to him when I had carefully read it over. I did so, and he asked me what I thought of the book. I answered, that I thought it a weak piece, and if he would hear me with patience, in relation to that in particular, and to the case in general, perhaps he might think my religion a little better than at present he supposed it to be. " I will hear you," he said, proceed." I then immediately began, and for a full hour repeated an apology I had prepared*. He did |