not quite five-and-twenty years ago, it was a part of the system of education for boys to stand up in classes, and read the Bible twice in every day. By these means the scripture history became thoroughly impressed in the memory, and the simple beauties of its interesting biography made unresisted claims on the imagination. I find that, in many academies, the wholesome practice is discontinued; the Bible is read on Sundays only, and 'on other day's selections from the British Classics in prose and verse. Sir, I am no fanatic: I do not object to these readings as bad, but as being preposterously preferred. If the style of Addison or of Johnson be worth emulating, their lives are still more so; they derive their greatest beauties of thought and expression from the scripture, and it is an unjustifiable thing, to quit the fountain for the stream, while the former remains in its full purity and inexhaustible plenty. No style is better for the formation of an orator or a poet than the exquisite mixture of the pathetic, the sublime, and the eloquently simple, displayed in the pages of holy writ. This is the book which should, indeed, be given to the pupil, with the Horatian precept "Nocturnâ versate manu, versate diurná.". I cannot, therefore, help blaming that indifference which dismisses the volume" in which we have everlasting life" from daily perusal, and consigns the inspection of it to that day which is not devoted to study, and in which, an innocent and laudable attention to dress, attendance on divine service, the visits of parents and friends, and many minute incidents, are apt to distract the thoughts and prevent undivided attention. But, granting no such impediment shall intervene, it is not easy to suppose that what a boy reads on one Sunday he will remember till the next, in spite of the business and amusements of the week; thus, then, he sees the holy writ by incoherent parts, and does not recollect either narrative or precept as a connected whole. I say again that moral and entertaining readings ought to be occasionally interspersed, but ought by no means to exclude the reading of the scripture. The season of youth is that in which the beautiful narratives, and artless, affecting incidents, of the Bible, are most likely to nake make beneficial impressions; it is also that season in which the grand and solemn displays of the goodness and judgments of the deity will make an impression, undiminished by the efforts of perverseness, to find natural causes for events evidently supernatural. Considering the state of the times, and the endeavours of philosophical speculatists to beat down the barriers of christianity, the tators of youth do not act prudently in diminishing the means of counteracting these baneful exertions: they disarm the citizens when the enemy is at the gate. I am, Sir, Your constant reader, PALINURUS. Description of a Procession and other Roman Catholic Ceremonies, in a letter from Sir CHARLES CORNWALLIS Ambassador at the Court of Madrid to HENRY PRINCE of WALES, son of James the First, dated April 7, 1609, I N this spiritual time, being the holy week, little matter temporal offereth itself worthy your Highness's reading. Only we say here, it hath pleased God, through the force of our spiritual devotions, to give us this week and the last a plentiful rain, whereby we are delivered from the doubt of a fearful famine. Our lady of a church in this town called the Attocha, accustomed in time of necessity to work these effects, was first much served and observed by the Friars, that are there her daily attendants. But their offices having no success (according to custom, when they desire to speed) she was with a solemn procession removed out of her own church to make a novena in another, where she should be sued unto by people of all manner of condi tions. The procession was solemn, honoured with the presence of the Duke of Lerma (guarded with fifty of the king's halberdiers) and of many other of the principal of the nobility, and an infinity of other people, who as the image passed by them, in none other sort, than if God himself had been present in it, honoured it with falling down upon their knees, praying and knocking upon their breasts, most of them desiring it to be good to them, them, but some of them, in the secret of their hearts I doubt not, praying God to pardon their so gross folly and breach of his commandment. "Amongst the Friars there want not some, that understand the elementary: dispositions; and if therein they fail themselves, yet want not the assistance of prognosticators and astrologers; so careful and wary they are, that they never remove their saint in desire of rain, but when they find an inclination in the heavens to perform it to them. With this art the Friars of that monastery are become exceeding rich; for our lady never goeth on such progress, but she returns as well laden with gifis, as solicited with vows and prayers. In this last return to her own home she was attended by the principal of all the councils, and by the chief Ministers of this court and crown, carried under a canopy supported by the Duke of Lerma, the earl of Baraxes, and other noblemen; kneeled, and prayed, and knocked unto as at the going forth, and remunerated for her so special a favour of abundant rain, with a new gown of great cost, many rich jewels, and great tapers of wax, to the value, as is generally esteemed of 40,000 Ducats. Worth the observation (in my judgment) it is, that this Clergy with having the dead and dumb images in their churches, grow rich; and that many of ours in England, with having the living and speaking in their beds, prove poor. The grossness of the first (mine hope is) grows to a ripeness; and that the light of common reason, if not of grace, will in time make them understand, how far they are misled with their own adulterous inventions. And the gravity and good example of the principal amongst ours is, by proof, found a good means to draw many of the inferior to a more observance of what is expedient than what is lawful. "Yesterday the King and the Queen here observed the ceremony of washing the feet of the poor. The King was assisted by the Duke of Lerma and the Pope's Nuncio. The Duke poured the water, the Nuncio washed, and the King dryed, who having made a cross with his finger and thumb, kissed the said cross being laid upon the feet, that were washed. The Queen was in like man ner attended by two of her ladies. At the service of them at the table the King both served and carved: the Grandees brought the meat and wine, and received the dishes from the hand of the King, when he took them from the board, and delivered them to such, as there attended tended to keep them to the use of the several poor, every one having an especial service. And so many and so costly were the dishes, as the guests only tasting of a salad and a little rice, the rest, that appertained to every of them (as I am informed) they presently sold for 18 Ducats. "The furniture of their churches here, and the riches and lustre of the sepulchres made in every monastery (the general poverty of this kingdom considered) are almost incredible. The laity of this nation may say with David, though in another sort, zelus domus tuæ comedit me. For assuredly the riches of the temporal hath in a manner all fallen into the mouths and devouring throats of the spiritual; which if neither grace nor discretion, yet necessity will in time make the other estates see, and remedy." TO THE EDITORS OF THE ORTHODOX CHURCHMAN'S MAGAZINE. GENTLEMEN, AM glad to find that the feelings of your agreeable and most edifying Correspondent, Mr. Evanson, are not yet dead within him. He who " denies" the Deity of "the Lord who brought him," he who denominates the doctrines of the Holy Trinity, and the Incarnation, (O. C. M. March, p. 191,)" Blasphemy, and Idolatry, and more monstrous than paganism;" he who would abrogate the Christian Sabbath; he who asserts three entire gospels, and several chapters of St. Luke's Gospel and the Apocalypse, together with fourteen of the Apostolical Epistles to be forgeries, (and consequently charges the members of the universal Church with being either perpetrators or publishers of forgeries ;) he who denies facts supported by extrinsic evidence, as well as by the historic narrative of an Evangelist, (particularly the murder of the innocents by Herod's order ;) he who in, what he calls, "the dissonance of the four generally received Evangelists," outherods Herod, and is agitated by a Rabies more furious than that which is commonly excited by Socinian slaver; might Vol. VIII. Churchm. Mag. May 1805. Zz be be thought steeled against ordinary strokes, and that a plain-spoken tradesman could not inflict a blow which should make him twinge. But such is the mighty power of TRUTH, that, urged though but by one like Jonathan Drapier, the hardiest adherent of heterodoxy writhes beneath its force; and even Mr. Evanson, who professes to fear but one Being in the universe; (O. C. M.Ap. p.256.) and indeed he has good reason to fear him, after what he has done, spoken, and written; trembles before your untutored correspondent: and in proof that he is under the influence of fear, he loses his self-command, and does that very thing which he least intended to do, admits the charge brought against him. I, too, shall confine myself, chiefly, to the matter which has arisen from the concluding paragraph of my letter in your Magazine for January last. But, first, let me just observe upon one passage in the fallen Socinian's letter. (He fell first from Orthodoxy into Socinianism, and has since fallen lower yet-" beneath that gulph profound, a lower still, &c.") He says, (last Mag. p. 257.) "until I obtained preferment sufficient to afford me a decent competence, I had not the leisure necessary for a studious investigation of the rise and origin of the most important theological doctrines." So this worthy Wight subscribes first, "and after vows to make inquiry." Here is honesty! Here is singleness of heart and intention! What can bind such slipperiness? Can articles? Can Canons? Can oaths? Can Hemp? We have heard much of the difficulty of attaching the consciences of Papists, and of obviating the mental-reservations of Jesuits;-behold, Gentlemen, the shifting spirit of Deists; behold the revolting evasiveness of Socinians! But let that pass: not however unbranded. With regard to all that took place before the Ex-minister of Tewkesbury gave up the perpetual curacy of that place; I re-assert it. Mr. Evanson writes about it and about it, but he by no means, even in the exculpatory letter which I have elicited from him, refutes my assertions. Gentlemen, habetis confitentem rein. I said, he gave directions to the parish-clerk, in saying the Nicene "Creed, to go on without waiting for the minister's first repeating its articles ;-I said, the minister went on snuffling and hemming. Now what says this unhappy man who has lost cast. "There were some words in different parts of the service, to the use of which I could not reconcile |