Confcience and Imposition: which prospects having been once realized in this Church and Kingdom, cannot be deemed altoge ther chimerical. Such popular reafonings as I have now been contending with, have already produced the most fatal confequences, to the triumph of the Papists, and the scandal of the Reformation: they have deceived you once and unless you are upon your guard, they will deceive you again: and the laft error fhall be worse than the firft; worse in itself, and worse in its confequences. It pleafed God to deliver the Church from its captivity under the Puritans, and the people from their infatuation: but if experiments, when they have been tried, leave us no wiser, or, perhaps, not fo wife as they found us, it is much to be queftioned whether we shall again meet with the like indulgence: at leaft, it will be fafeft always to bear in mind that courfe of divine Providence in a fimilar inftance, propofed as a warning to all Chriftians by the apostle St. Jude, How that the Lord having faved the people out of the land of Egypt, afterwards deftroyed them that believed not.

Those authors who would ftir you up to feditious motions, make you so many fair fpeeches, and lay claim to fo much candor and charity, that you may eafily mistake them for your best friends. But I must now leave you to judge for yourselves, whether a writer, who lies fculking in the dark, under a nameless title-page, can really love you better than one who is not afraid to subscribe his name at length to what he has written, and is expofing himself for your fakes to be reviled and perfecuted in the monthly publications of infidel Critics, who on account of the information I have here given you, with a defire to clear away fome of that duft, which they and their friends are perpetually throwing into your eyes, will find, if poffible, fome worse names for me than they have ever done yet. They have expreffed their wrath against me more than once or twice; and probably they will now do it again. But a little more ill language will do me no harm; and if I can do you any good at such an expence, it will all be chearfully taken by your

Very fincere Friend,

And moft affectionate

Brother in Chrift,

PLUCKLEY, Dec. 16, 1766.

WILLIAM JONES.

Humbly recommended to the ferious Confideration of all those who are entrusted with the EDUCATION of YOUTH.

By a PRESBYTER of the CHURCH of ENGLAND.

VOL. II.

ADVERTISEMENT.

THE Reader may be fhocked when he is told, that there is a disposition to Heathenism in an age of fo much improvement, and pronounce the accufation improbable and vifionary; but he is requested to weigh impartially the facts here offered, and then to form his judgment. The following Letter was intended only for the inspection of a friend; but if there is any tendency in the public to fuch a peculiar kind of corruption, as is here pointed out, they ought to have fome warning of it; and therefore it has been judged that the prefent publication can be neither impertinent nor unfeasonable.

The prefent Edition of this Letter, in the year 1794, is more feasonable than the firft; now we have been witnefs to the profane affectation of Heathen manners by the Philofophers of France; with its malignant effects on Religion, Government, and the Peace of the Chriftian world.

REFLEXIONS, &c.

DEAR SIR,

AWORTHY gentleman *, who is a collector of things rare

and curious in their feveral kinds, thewed me a large fhoeing-horn, which as tradition reports had been the property of an ancient abbot of Glaftonbury. This relic of antiquity is very handsomely engraved with figures representing the seven works of charity; which are, the giving of bread to the hungry, drink to the thirsty, cloaths to the naked, lodging to ftrangers, visiting the fick, and prisoners, and burying the dead. On this my learned friend took occafion to remark, that in the ages before the Reformation, the fubjects of the ornamental arts, which are now fo universally taken from the Heathen Mythology, were then generally borrowed from the Holy Scripture, and had some pious relation to the doctrines of Christianity. Of this he fhewed me another remarkable inftance in the powder-horn of King Henry VIII. which is adorned with the hiftory of St. Stephen's martyrdom, ïn elegant figures of ivory. Whereas, had an artist of this age been fet to invent a device for a powder-horn, his imagination would immediately have fuggefted to him the fall of Phaeton, the Cyclops forging thunderbolts, or fome like allufion to the history and effects of fire from the ftores of the Heathen Mythology.

I fhall not stop here to difpute which of these two sources, Paganifm or Christianity, will furnish the best fubjects for poets, painters, and sculptors to work upon: but I cannot help obferv

The late Rev. Mr. Getling, of Canterbury.