exhorting them to repentance and conversion. It cannot be said that they acted against their conscience; for if they had believed that Baal was a false God, they would not have submitted to an examination, and by the credit they had with the queen, they might easily have evaded the challenge of the prophet Elijah. Besides, we see they invoked their Deity with the utmost ardour, and cut themselves with knives in honour of him; therefore they were in hope of being heard. In order to excuse Elijah, divines are forced to acknowledge that he had received invisibly, from God, an extraordinary and special mission to put these prophets to death, and that God had revealed to him, that they were reprobates not to be wrought upon by any admonitions to repentance. Peter Martyr indeed alleges the law of Moses against idolators, the law of retaliation, &c; but after all he confines himself to a particular inspiration, which is a thing not to be disputed among Christians. "Omnia hæc privato instinctu Dei agebantur contra legem in communi propositam. Ipse legislator cum aliquid contra suas leges jubet mandatum ejus pro lege habendum est.-All these things were done by a particular inspiration from God, contrary to the law established in common. When the legislator commands any thing repugnant to the laws he has before ordained, his command ought to pass for law."

It is a pretty common opinion, for many ages received among Christians, that Elijah is not dead, and that God preserves him alive either in the terrestrial paradise, or in the heavens, or elsewhere, to employ him at the end of the world against antichrist. There are some who assure us, that then he is to suffer martyrdom, and that he and Enoch are the two witnesses mentioned in the eleventh chapter of the Apocalypse. They also ascribe to him a very exact continence, and conclude that he will be honoured with

three crowns, the crown of doctor, the crown of virginity, and the crown of martyrdom. They pretend that his chastity has far exceeded that of all the other prophets who lived in celibacy; for he was not contented to live chaste, but also ordered his disciples to abstain from women; and it is he that is looked upon as the first founder of the monastic life. The Carmelites boast that he is the founder of their order, and tell a thousand stories which are ridiculed by the other monks. The Apocalypse of Elias has commonly passed among the fathers for a supposititious book; but Origen seems to mention a book of that prophet as a genuine production. There is an old tradition, which they falsely impute to Elijah, that the world shall continue but six thousand years, whereof two thousand were to be before the law, two thousand under the law, and two thousand under the Messiah. The Jews say, that, seven years after he was translated, Elijah wrote a letter from heaven to king Joram, and that he composed in paradise the annals of all ages. Observe that the extraction of this prophet, who is almost equal to Moses, is so little known, that it is yet disputed what country, and also what tribe, he was of. I have cited a Minim, who designed to have written upon the actions of Elijah. This work would have been very long; for what the friends of the author published of it after his death, is one volume of four hundred pages in 4to, which contains only the Prolegomena.

You will find in Baronius, that Basilius, the Macedonian, emperor of Constantinople, erected temples to the honour, and under the name of the prophet Elijah, in his capital city. This was one of the proofs that a Carmelite friar advanced to prove, that father Papebroch had rashly denied mount Carmel to be reckoned among the holy places which were visited by the first Christian pilgrims. Every body may see the impertinence of this proof. It appears

by the book I have cited, that a divine of the order of St Francis confounded the Carmelites in a public He attacked a thesis, in dispute in the year 1594. which it is assured, that Elijah bound himself up by a vow to celibacy. He cited a Jewish doctor, named Rabbenu Haccados, that is, our holy master, and who lived before Jesus Christ. This Rabbi says, the Elijah had a brother, whose wife was barren to the death of Elijah, and consequently the prophet could not devote himself to continency, for the law commanded him to marry his sister-in-law if she became a widow.-Art. ELIJAH.

ELIZABETH (QUEEN OF ENGLAND).

(Some characteristic peculiarities of.)

A YOUNG man, who followed the ambassadors from Holland, expressed in a gross manner, the sentiments with which the sight of so charming a queen inspired him. I shall use Du Maurier's own expressions: "Prince Maurice, (says he,) being one day in a good humour, told my father that Queen Elizabeth of England, through the common weakness of her sex, was so desirous of being thought handsome, that the states having sent a splendid embassy of the chief men of the country, and attended by a great many young gentlemen of the united provinces, a Hollander in the ambassador's retinue, at their first audience, after having earnestly viewed the queen, told an English gentleman he had known in Holland, that he did not know why they should speak so indifferently of the queen's beauty: that they did her the greatest injury; that he thought she was very charming, and if she were his wife, he would convince her she had beauty enough to fire a gentleman's heart; adding other juvenile discourse fitter to be imagined than expressed. As he said this, he often looked towards the queen, and then turned to the English

gentleman. The queen who had her eyes fixed upon these gentlemen, much more than upon the ambassadors, when the audience was over, sent for the English gentleman, and commanded him, upon pain of her displeasure, to tell her what the Dutchman had said to him; being assured by their motions and behaviour, that they spoke of her. The gentleman excused himself a long time, pretending they were trifles not worthy to be told her majesty; but at length the queen pressing him exceedingly, he was forced to tell her ingenuously the whole truth, and to confess the violent passion the Hollander had expressed for her royal person. The conclusion of the matter was, that the ambassadors were presented each with a chain of gold of 800 crowns, and their chief attendants with one of 100 crowns each; but the Hollander, who found the queen so handsome, had a chain of 1600 crowns, that is, double to what the ambassadors had, and he wore it about his neck all his life after." Mr. Fontenelle has inserted this artfully, according to his custom, in his Dialogues of the Dead.

It is impossible to say what vile calumnies were spread abroad concerning this queen; which were not to be avoided considering the severity she was forced, by reasons of state, to use towards Papists. Some lost their lives, a great number of others either suffered the rigours of imprisonment, or the inconveniences of exile; and those were the men who chiefly composed injurious libels against the reputation of Elizabeth. The Protestants of England confess it; they do not deny the fact; but they maintain, that the wicked attempts of the Papists against the government, and against the queen, deserved such a punishment. You will be sure not to find this observation in the libels of the English Roman Catholics. You will indeed find the punishments, with all the rhetorical flourishes that can amplify them, but not a

word of the seditious enterprizes which preceded, and were the cause of them. There are few relations in which the order of the events is not confounded. This confusion is not always produced by fraud a too turbulent zeal is sometimes the cause of it; nature does the rest without designed malice. The constitution of man is such, that he imagines the evils he suffers to be great, and those he inflicts to be small. He perceives not the former, but is sensible of the latter; and even when he knows he has been the aggressor, he pretends to have cause of complaint; making no account of what he has done, but only of what he suffers. All ill-conducted zeal fixes the mind upon the hardships of persecuted virtue, and causes the provocations of the persecutors to be forgotten. If these two causes are not sufficient, dishonesty, which alone would disorder the events, completes the confusion. However it be, I have observed, that the principal difference between the accounts of Catholics and Protestants consists in the order of the facts: each party endeavours to give the first place to the injuries they have endured; making a long detail of these, and passing over slightly what they have done by way of reprisals, or what they have suffered as a just punishment. There is nothing in party recrimination that perplexes the heads of the unprejudiced readers more than this; for in order to know exactly what is blamable and what is excusable in each party, it is absolutely necessary to consider the facts in their true situation. If the Catholics had not laid violent hands on the Protestants till after they had seen them overturn temples, altars, images, and crosses, &c. their cruelties would not have been so criminal; for which reasons it is necessary to give an adversary the precedence in such cases. A modern author has declared that he would not examine whose relations

had transposed the events. This discussion in cer