made dean of St. Paul's, a situation which he continued to fill until his death, which occurred at Hampstead, in Middlesex, on the nineteenth of June, 1707.

In 1691, Dr. Sherlock published a Vindication of the Doctrine of the Holy and Ever-Blessed Trinity, in which he proposed the hypothesis, that 'there were three eternal minds, two of them issuing from the Father, but that they were one by a mutual consciousness in the three to every of their thoughts.' This publication led to the famous controversy with Dr. South, to which we have already alluded. Sherlock's Practical Discourse Concerning Death, published in 1690, is one of the most popular theological works in the English language. He also wrote a treatise On the Immortality of the Soul, in which, while inferring the high probability of a future life from arguments drawn from the light of nature, he maintains that only in revelation can evidence perfectly conclusive be found. From this work we take the following extract :

LONGING AFTER IMMORTALITY.

Let us now consider the force of this argument; how far these natural desires of immortality prove that we are by nature immortal. For [say the objectors] is there any thing in the world more extravagant than some men's desires are; and is this an argument, that we shall have whatever we desire, because we fondly and passionately, and, it may be, very unreasonably desire it? And, therefore, to explain the force of this argument, I shall observe two things; 1st, That all natural passions and appetites are immediately implanted in our nature by God; and 2dly, That all natural passions have their natural objects.

As for the first, it is certain, as I have already shown at large, that our passions and appetites are the life and sense of the soul, without which it would be dead and stupid, without any principle of vital sensation. For what is life without fear, and love, and hope, and desire, and such like passions, whereby we feel all things else, and feel ourselves? Now, whatever fancies men may have about our notions and ideas, that they may come into our minds from without, and be formed by external impressions, yet no man will be so absurd as to say, that external objects can put a principle of life into us; and then they can create no new passions in us, which are essential to our natures, and must be the work of that God who made us.

And, therefore, secondly, every natural desire must have its natural object to answer that desire, or else the desire was made in vain; which is a reproach to our wise Maker, if he have laid a necessity on us of desiring that which is not nature, and therefore can not be had. We may as well suppose that God has made eyes without light, or ears without sounds, as that he has implanted any desires in us which he hath made nothing to answer. There is no one example can be given of this in any kind whatsoever; for should any man be so extravagant as to desire to fly into the air, to walk upon the sea, and the like, you would not call these the desires of our nature, because our natures are not fitted for them; but all the desires which are founded in nature have their natural objects. And can we then think, that the most natural and most necessary desire of all has nothing to answer it? that nature should teach us above all things to desire immortality, which is not to be had? especially when it is the most noble and generous desire of human nature, that which most of all becomes a reasonable creature to desire; nay, that which is the governing principle of all our actions, and must give laws to all our other passions, desires, and appetites. What a strange creature has God made man, if he deceives him in the most fundamental and most universal principle of action; which makes his whole life nothing else but one continued cheat and imposture !

Lecture the Chirty-Third.

THOMAS BURNET-THOMAS

SPRAT-GILBERT

BURNET-ROBERT

BOYLE-JOHN

LOCKE-SIR ISAAC NEWTON-MATTHEW HENRY-WILLIAM WOTTON.

ROM the eminent divines of the established church, who occupied so

FROM eminent ctims during our last remarks, we pass tu, notice

Thomas Burnet, Thomas Sprat, and Gilbert Burnet-three authors who shone with equal splendor in the different departments of literature to which they respectively devoted themselves.

THOMAS BURNET was born at Croft, Yorkshire, in 1635. When in the sixteenth year of his age he entered Clare Hall College, Cambridge, but afterwards removed to Christ's College, of which he was chosen fellow, in 1657. In the following year he took his master's degree, and three years afterwards was chosen senior proctor of the university. From this period he passed many years in the capacity of private tutor to different young noblemen, the last of whom was the Earl of Ossery, grandson to the Duke of Ormond. Through the influence of the duke, Burnet was chosen, in 1685, master of Charter House College, though he was not then in clerical orders. The election was irregular, and was, therefore, strenuously opposed by those bishops who were of the number of the electors; but the influence of Ormond prevailed, and Burnet being soon ordained, all opposition to him was -at once silenced. In this station he took a noble stand against an attempt of James the Second to impose a papist, by the name of Popham, as a pensioner upon the foundation of that house. After the Revolution he was appointed chaplain in ordinary to King William, and also clerk of the closet; and would have succeeded, on the death of Tillotson, to the see of Canterbury, had not some parts of his writings been regarded as skeptical. His death occurred on the twenty-seventh of September, 1715, and he was buried in Charter House chapel.

Dr. Burnet acquired great celebrity by the publication, in 1680, of a work entitled The Sacred Theory of the Earth; containing an Account of the Original of the Earth, and of all the General Changes which it hath already undergone, or is to undergo, till the Consummation of all Things. In a

geological point of view this treatise is, from its want of basis in ascertained facts, totally worthless; but it abounds in fine composition, and magnificent description, and well deserves perusal as an eloquent and ingenious philosophical romance. The author's attention seems to have been attracted to the subject by the unequal and rugged appearance of the earth's surface, which seemed to indicate the globe to be the ruin of some more regular structure. He remarks that in a journey across the Alps and Apennines, ‘the sight of these wild, vast, and indigested heaps of stones and earth did so deeply strike my fancy that I was not easy till I could give myself som tolerable account how that confusion came in nature.' The theory which he formed was as follows:

The globe, in its chaotic state, was a dark fluid mass, in which the elements of air, water, and earth were blended into one universal compound. Gradually, the heavier parts fell toward the centre, and formed a nucleus of solid matter. Around this floated the liquid ingredients, and over them was the still lighter atmospheric air. By and by, the liquid mass became separated into two layers, by the separation of the watery particles from those of an oily composition, which being the lighter, tended upwards, and when hardened by time became a smooth and solid crust. This was the surface of the antediluvian globe. In this smooth earth,' he proceeds, 'were the first scenes of the world, and the first generations of mankind; it had the beauty of youth and blooming nature, fresh and fruitful, and not a wrinkle, scar, or fracture in all its body; no rocks nor mountains, no hollow caves nor gaping channels, but even and uniform all over. And the smoothness of the earth made the face of the heavens so too; the air was calm and serene; none of those tumultuary motions and conflicts of vapours, which the mountains and the winds cause in ours. 'Twas suited to a golden age, and to the first innocency of nature.' By degrees, however, the heat of the sun, penetrating the superficial crust, converted a portion of the water beneath into steam, the expansive force of which at length burst the superincumbent shell, already weakened by the dryness and cracks occasioned by the solar rays. When, therefore, the appointed time was come that allwise Providence had designed for the punishment of a sinful world, the whole fabric brake, and the frame of the earth was torn in pieces, as by an earthquake; and those great portions or fragments into which it was divided fell into the abyss, some in one posture and some in another.' The waters of course now appeared, and the author gives a fine description of their tumultuous raging caused by the precipitation of the solid fragments into their bosom. The pressure of such masses falling into the abyss,' could not but impel the water with so much strength as would carry it up to a great height in the air, and to the top of any thing that lay in its way; any eminency, or high fragment whatsoever: and then rolling back again, it would sweep down with it whatsoever it rushed upon-woods, buildings, living creatures and carry them all headlong into the great gulf. Sometimes a mass of water would be quite struck off and separate from the rest,

and tossed through the air like a flying river; but the common motion of the waves was to climb up the hills, or inclined fragments, and then return into the valleys and deeps again, with a perpetual fluctuation going and coming, ascending and descending, till the violence of them being spent by degrees, they settled at last in the places allotted for them; where bounds are set that they can not pass over, that they return not again to pass over the earth.'

We deem it unnecessary to follow our author any farther, or to attempt to analyze the ingenious, though fallacious reasoning by which he endeavors to defend his theory from the inseparable objections which the plainest facts of geology and natural philosophy furnish against it. The concluding part of his work relates to the final conflagration of the world, by which, he supposes, the surface of the new chaotic mass will be restored to smoothness, and 'leave a capacity for another world to rise from it.' Here the style of the author rises into a magnificence worthy of the sublimity of the theme, and he concludes with impressive and appropriate reflections on the transient nature of earthly things. The following is the passage, and it is appropriately termed, by Addison, the author's funeral oration over the globe :

THE FINAL CONFLAGRATION OF THE GLOBE.

But 'tis not possible, from any station, to have a full prospect of this last scene of the earth, for 'tis a mixture of fire and darkness. This new temple is filled with smoke while it is consecrating, and none can enter into it. But I am apt to think, if we could look down upon this burning world from above the clouds, and have a full view of it in all its parts, we should think it a lively representation of hell itself; for fire and darkness are the two chief things by which that state or that place uses to be described; and they are both here mingled together, with all other ingredients that make that tophet that is prepared of old (Isaiah xxx.). Here are lakes of fire and brimstone, rivers of melted glowing matter, ten thousand volcanos vomiting flames all at once, thick darkness, and pillars of smoke twisted about with wreaths of flame, like fiery snakes; mountains of earth thrown up into the air, and the heavens dropping down in lumps of fire. These things will all be literally true concerning that day and that state of the earth. And if we suppose Beelzebub and his apostate crew in the midst of this fiery furnace (and I know not where they can be else), it will be hard to find any part of the universe, or any state of things, that answers to so many of the properties and characters of hell, as this which is now before us.

But if we suppose the storm over, and that the fire hath gotten an entire victory over all other bodies, and subdued every thing to itself, the conflagration will end in a deluge of fire, or in a sea of fire, covering the whole globe of the earth; for, when the exterior region of the earth is melted into a fluor, like molten glass or running metal, it will, according to the nature of other fluids, fill all vacuities and depressions, and fall into a regular surface, at an equal distance everywhere from its centre. This sea of fire, like the first abyss, will cover the face of the whole earth, make a kind of second chaos, and leave a capacity for another world to rise from it. But that is not our present business. Let us only, if you please, to take leave of this subject, reflect, upon this occasion, on the vanity and transient glory of all this habitable world; how, by the force of one element breaking loose upon the rest, all the varieties of nature, all the works of art, all the labours of men, are reduced to

nothing; all that we admired and adored before, as great and magnificent, is obliterated or vanished; and another form and face of things, plain, simple, and everywhere the same, overspreads the whole earth. Where are now the great empires of the world, and their great imperial cities? Their pillars, trophies, and monuments of glory? Show me where they stood, read the inscription, tell me the victor's name? What remains, what impressions, what difference or distinction do you see in this mass of fire ? Rome itself, eternal Rome, the great city, the empress of the world, whose domination and superstition, ancient and modern, make a great part of the history of this earth, what is become of her now? She laid her foundations deep, and her palaces were strong and sumptuous: she glorified herself, and lived deliciously, and said in her heart, I sit a queen, and shall see no sorrow. But her hour is come; she is wiped away from the face of the earth, and buried in perpetual oblivion. But it is not cities only, and works of men's hands, but the everlasting hills, the mountains and rocks of the earth, are melted as wax before the sun, and their place is nowhere found. Here stood the Alps, a prodigious range of stone, the load of the earth, that covered many countries, and reached their arms from the ocean to the Black Sea; this huge mass of stone is softened and dissolved, as a tender cloud into rain. Here stood the African mountains, and Atlas with his top above the clouds. There was frozen Caucasus, and Taurus, and Imaus, and the mountains of Asia. And yonder, towards the north, stood the Riphæan hills, clothed in ice and snow. All these are vanished, dropped away as the snow upon their heads, and swallowed up in a red sea of fire, (Rev. xv. 3.) Great and marvellous are thy works, Lord God Almighty; just and true are thy ways, thou King of Saints. Hallelujah.

THOMAS SPRAT was the son of a clergyman, and was born at Tallaton, Devonshire, in 1636. He studied at a private school until 1651, and then entered Wadham College, Oxford, where he remained to take his master's degree, soon after which he was chosen fellow. In 1659, he first appeared as an author, by the publication of a panegyric on the virtues of Oliver Cromwell, whose death had recently occurred. This poem was dedicated to Dr. Wilkins, under whom Sprat had studied mathematics at Oxford, and at whose house, as we have already observed, the philosophical inquirers who originated the Royal Society, were accustomed, at that time, to meet. Sprat's intimacy with Dr. Wilkins led to his elevation as a member of the society soon after its incorporation; and in 1667, he published the history of that learned body, in order to dissipate the prejudice and suspicion with which it was regarded by the public.

Previous to the publication of his History of the Royal Society, Sprat had been appointed chaplain to the Duke of Buckingham; and he is supposed to have aided that nobleman in writing the 'Rehearsal.' He also became chaplain to the king; and under these circumstances ecclesiastical promotion could hardly fail to follow: accordingly, after several other advancing steps, the see of Rochester was attained, in 1684. During the next year he served the government, by writing and publishing an account of the Ryehouse plot; but for this work he found it convenient, after the Revolution, to send forth an apology: and having submitted to the new government, he was allowed, notwithstanding his well-known attachment to the abdicated monarch, to remain unmolested in his bishopric. In 1692, how