foaming billows, in fury dashing themselves against the scornful rocks. Anon, I heard the clinking of chains, the clangor of weapons, and the hideous yellings of persons in exquisite torments. Great was the surprise I was now in; my hair stood erect, and the blood in my veins became cold as the northern ice, my flesh shuddered on my bones, an unusual tremor invaded my once courageous heart, and ghastly fear sat trembling on my astonished countenance. My nerves became lax, and, in my apprehension, the joints of my limbs were unhinged, and dewy sweat issued forth from every pore of my skin. I had neither courage to stand the shock, nor strength to fly from the awful appearances of imminent danger. I would gladly have found the avenue through which I entered this solitary waste; but to no purpose did I look for it, now it was hid from my sight.

In vain I wished that my rambling fancy had been better guarded, and not exposed me to these nocturnal dangers. Long ere now the radiant sun having quenched his fiery beams in the western depths, and left the earth enveloped in darkness, which glooming sat on every beclouded object.---Nor did the heavens. above my head bear a more pleasant aspect; every luminous body having hid its refulgent face in the bosom of a sable extended cloud. All these circumstances concurring to display the horrors of the place, made me conclude that I was certainly got into the gloomy regions of inexorable Pluto; but whether I was dead or alive I knew not. In the mean while I wished, I earnestly wished myself at home, and resolved, that if ever I reached my peaceful habitation, I would henceforth correct my wanderings, and regulate them by the judicious rules of safety.

As I was turning over these resolves, I heard a terrible subterraneous noise, infinitely more horrible than that fabulously ascribed to Vulcan's smiths, in the convulsive bowels of the mounts Ætna and Vesuvius.---Anon, the earth opened her jaws close by the place on which I trembling stood, and belched forth an hideous quantity of curling smoke and streaked fire intermingled with squalid spectres; the fiery smoke lifted up its grizly summit, like the towering head of a cloud-piercing pyramid. When the spectres had reached the middle path of the ærial regions, they sunk downward, and plunged into the belching throat that had just now disgorged them. Still it continued with hideous roarings to vomit up brimstone, smoke, and coals of fire, mingled with the howling ghosts of the accurst to these abysmal flames. Notwithstanding these fearful phænomena were enough to have spread distraction over all my reasonable faculties, I found myself, to my own amazement, in the perfect use of my mind, frightened although I was.

Moveless I stood on the dangerous brink of the issuing pit, nor had power to turn me to the right hand or left. One step forward would have plunged me into these devouring flames

which proceeded from the unquenchable burnings_beneath. Here I stood trembling with fear of the dire event. The eruption beginning to abate, I heard, as I thought, human voices more distinctly; all was howling and sorrowful complaint. Dreadful was the yell that filled my ears. All which I looked on as the most perfect indications of inexpressible torments.--Weepings and wailings which I heard, I concluded were the sure diagnostics of consummate pain.

The eruption being now over, I thought I heard a voice which was familiar to me, and which expressed the most intolerable anguish. Being by this time somewhat inured to this prodigy, I at last ventured to look down to make what discoveries I could. O horrible! here was a discovery that quashed reason itself. Amazement chills my blood even now when I relate it.

I looked down into this frightful cave: but what did I see? No gilded beauties, but the stupendous arches of dread perdition. O! shall the direful idea ever be erased from my mind? A rolling flood of flaming liquid did play in these sable, these frightful vaults. Every revolving billow turned up to the inflammatory surface an innumerable company of floating spectres, and at the same time with its sinking front immerged a number equal to that it turned up. Dreadful was the howl, inexpressible were their direful yellings! I saw likewise standing on this burning lake a numberless company of squalid infernals, armed with flaming instruments of death, with which they exercised the most unaccountable cruelty on the unhappy worldlings, who had involved themselves into unspeakable torment, inextricable ruin.

In the midst of all, I beheld one person who stood for some time on the sulphureous billows, surrounded by an enraged company, who with red hot irons kept pushing against him. He stood aghast, and fearfully stared at me. He looked as if he would fain have spoken, but I perceived that his torments prevented him. He waved his hand to his tormentors, as I took it, begging for respite.

Deep despair and wild distraction lowered on his condemnea countenance. He raved! he foamed! he wrestled! and then sunk down in silent despair; sullen and pensive, whilst the direful floods of omnipotent vengeance rolled upon him.

In this place I perceived no intermission of the incessant floods that rolled along in one continued circle, ever running but never at an end. These discoveries, I trust, will make me ever fearful of landing in this place of torment.

At last he lifted himself up from the flaming bed, waved his hand, and called me by my name; and fixing my eye intently upon him, I knew him to be the learned Doctor, with whom I had lived as a pupil, who died some few years ago.

Amazed to see my venerable tutor in such a deplorable condi

tion, I cried out, "O horrible! What do I see! My learned, my pious tutor in hell! Am I not asleep, deceived by my deluding fancy?---It cannot be he! A man whose doctrine and conversation was so governed by the dictates of reason, cannot be in hell. No, it can never be! Thou tormented ghost, I adjure thee by the greatest of names to undeceive me! Art thou he? Am I in a dream or not? Is that---but I cannot doubt it---Tell me, is that the receptacle of the damned?"

To which the ghost replied: " Deceived mortal, I see you are surprised to find a person in hell, who in life you esteemed as highly as an apostle. You see I am not, as you vainly fancied, in the heavenly mansions of eternal felicity: but, after all my pretensions of sanctity, am swallowed up unhappily, I am plunged into the unfathomable abyss of divine indignation, from whence, alas there is no redemption. No, it ceaseth now! it ceaseth for ever. Ten thousand worlds, if I had them, now, for one twelvemonth's respite. But oh! there is no respite; no intermission of these intolerable pains. Oh! piercing, piercing pain! More violent far than fire, than burning coals of juniper. Here the keen arrows of incensed justice, the irresistible wrath of a holy God do pierce me through with unspeakable sorrows. Oh! that I had never been born! O that I had never been a deceiver ! O that I had been a husbandman, a ploughman, or any thing but a preacher. Alas! a preacher, a false preacher, endureth a double hell! Oh! unhappy, wretched preacher, that is rewarded in this fiery gulph!

"Ye deluded spirits, who by my fallacious deceit have been blinded, and are hither got before me, forbear, O forbear to throw your flaming darts against me. Why, O why do you thus torment me? Have not I torment enough already? Sure I have afflictions enough in sustaining the shocks of omnipotent vengeance, without your malicious piercing arrows being pointed at me. Woeful day!---accursed hour! that ever I denied the Lord, the omnipotent Saviour.

"Bear with me, thou deceived mortal, for my pains force words from me, words that are unknown on earth. Oh for a few moments' respite whilst I speak to a friendly mortal, and make known to him the horrors of this place! Ye my tormentors, allow me time only, so much time, as to recite the journal of one twenty-four hours of my unhappy being; grant me this small favour, it may be the last I shall request of you through the revolving ages of a never-ending eternity. An hour's intermission, O my tormentors! It cannot in any wise prejudice you, whereas to me it may be of great advantage.

"Hold! do hold your hands, whilst I declare unto others what hath befallen a Socinian apostle.

----

"Thus you see, Mr. ----- I cannot by the most pressing intreaties, obtain so long a respite from my torment as to com

municate to you what hath befallen me; but in the midst of unspeakable sorrow am obliged to converse with you, for my tormentors are inexorable.

"I lived, as you know, to advanced years amongst you, and your general opinion was, that I was gathered to my people in a good old age. Oh, the fatal mistake! an old age indeed, but alas! a bad old age it has proved. When the harbinger of my death began to visit me, my anxious pupils ministered unwearied attendance. My fellow teachers paid their most tender regard, by praying for and conversing with me. Both they and I were apprehensive that my sickness was unto death, my dissolution near approaching.

"All proper means were used for my relief, but all in vain. No lengthening out of our days beyond the limits of GoD's decree ; no, for he hath numbered our days, and our months are with him; he hath set bounds to our habitation that we cannot pass over it. Physic afforded no relief; my pupils were disconsolate; they thought I was the most apostolic teacher in the world, and if death should cruelly bereave them of me, they knew not how to repair their loss, nor who was worthy to supply my place, when, as they thought, I should be employed in the more immediate presence of the infinite JEHOVAH.

"My friends miserably comforted me with my supposed good works. O sir! say they, how comfortably may you die, when you consider the great deliverances you have wrought for the church.---You have relieved her reasonable members from the irrational doctrines of Calvinism, overturned original sin, and the doctrine of imputed righteousness, by your valuable books, which no man but yourself could have wrote. Therein you shewed most excellently, how that man is capable to atone for his own sins, and to work out his own salvation from sin and wrath.

"As they said, so I foolishly believed, that these antichristian heresies were meritorious in the sight of GOD. I depended greatly on the opinions of men, and thought that my humility, self-denial, and charity, would be a prevalent plea before the throne of the Almighty. I thought on my death-bed that I felt a great deal of joy and comfort on looking back and viewing a well-spent life, as mine at that time appeared to be. I trusted in my own holiness, and the mercy of GOD; but, alas! I have since learned that I had none of the former, and that the latter doth not flow in the channel I sought for it in.

"In my latter hours I enjoyed composure of mind, from an expectation that my pure nature would soon be translated to the etherial climate, where nothing but holiness can dwell. Not in the least mistrusting a false, a treacherous heart, that has undone me, but vainly fancied I stood in paradisiacal rectitude. O the deceit! O the fallacy of my hope, which lulled me asleep in

delusive fancies. My soul conceived such elevated notions of the divine reward, which I thought I had merited by my labours, that she longed for the dissolving moment of separation, trusting in the clemency of the gospel lawgiver, who I thought would bend his law and justice to suit the circumstances of his reasonable creatures. Ŏ dreadful! how shall I relate it? the hour! the appointed hour, the destined moment of separation drew nigh. My solicitous soul intreated the pale, the ghastly messenger, to cut short his work, and make a speedy dissolution of the mortal union. Reluctant nature struggled against the fermenting poison of the cankered arrow of nature's destroyer.

"Convulsive pangs invaded the nervous fabric, and half persuaded the weary heart to forbear to throb. Anon, nature, which just before seemed to be vanquished by the prevalency of the fever, recruits its strength, and mustereth all its powers to resist, as long as might be, the unfrustrable rage of rapacious death. But alas! the time, the unhappy moment arrives! Vanquished nature doth at last submit, yieldeth to the superior power of all conquering death. Here---the dread surprise! the unexpected, unhappy turn! My deceived ghost came smiling forth, in full expectation of the righteous reward.--- But soon, alas! too soon she was convinced of her fatal mistake. No sooner arrived she at the pale portal of the lifeless lips, but she beheld---Oh! how shall I name it? She beheld---Ö horrible! she beheld a company of devils in the chamber waiting to carry her thence. Precipitately back she turned to seek for sanctuary in the deserted body---but now, alas! the gates of mortality were shut, the body refused to receive its former tenant. She looked to the right hand and to the left for a way to escape, but no avenue was open for retreat. She looked up to heaven, but could not stand the shock. Oh dreadful! she beheld the Omnipotent loosing his engines, and beginning to play his direful vengeance upon her. To avoid the horrible calamity, she looked downward and beheld tempestuous destruction from beneath moved to meet her at her coming.

"In the midst of all her hurry and unspeakable confusion---the sly seducing fiends, who had attended me incognito, and administered false instructions and comfort to me during life, with inconceivable fury, like so many ferocious panthers, leaped upon and seized me with their scorching talons; whose tormenting touch diffuseth hell through the whole being of the unhappy prisoner.

"No longer do they act in disguise: having made sure work of my destruction, they threw off every mask, and appeared devils indeed! Now a tremendous scene was unfolded! The merciless furies forcibly dragged me to appear before the dreadful, the Gaming throne.

"Infinite amazement, horrible astonishment seized

when