themselves to be so engrossed by a favourite, that they bestow no place, except upon his recommendation. Present a petition to them yourself; particularise all your services; humbly beg but as a just recompense the government of a town, and they will refuse it you. Let but the favourite speak for you the next day, and they will grant it to you immediately. When things are reduced to this state in a court, much more pains are taken to gain the good graces of the favourite than those of the monarch; and there is a good deal of reason for this conduct; prudence enjoins it. Nay, I will go farther yet, and maintain that both reason and justice require that such as have obtained the government of a town by the method I have been mentioning, should think themselves obliged for it not to the prince their master, but to his favourite, and should reserve all their gratitude and friendship for the favourite as the true cause of their promotion. The prince is only a remote and indirect cause, an accidental, indefinite, and general cause. He is the fountain of authority, but it is another who determines it, and applies it to the benefit and advantage of such and such persons. By this parallel you see that, according to the hypothesis of those doctors who say that no favours are bestowed upon earth, but at the nomination and recommendation of the holy Virgin, it is to her, and not to God, that each private man owes his good fortune, and that it is for her, and not for God, he ought to have a suitable degree of love and gratitude. He could obtain nothing of God if the Virgin did not interest herself in it; consequently it is she who ought to be the object of his devotion: this is founded on good sense, and the reasons of it are demonstrative. Is it to be wondered at, after this, that the acts of religion have taken in the Romish church that turn which we find they have? Is not this a true discovery of their foundation? However it be, the worship of the holy Virgin is grown to such a prodigious height, and maintains itself to so great a degree, that the Jansenists, who would be offering their opinion upon this subject, have gained nothing by it: and for one man who conforms to their limitations, there are two thousand, literally speaking, who follow father Crasset: Consider, I pray, the obstacles met with in the Sorbonne, when the book of a Spanish nun was censured there.* The most proper means to put a stop to the mischief, would be to lay an interdict on panegyrics, and to oblige the votaries who desire to testify their gratitude by their liberalities, to send them not to the Virgin's chapels, but to the Hospitals. A preacher is not ignorant that his auditors have been often present at the panegyrics of our Lady, and have read the finest sermons that have been published upon that subject. If therefore he would be heard and admired, he must take a new flight, and soar higher than all those who went before him; and this is a great cause of errors. The principal thing would be to forbid, under pain of simony, all those who serve privileged altars, and who preside over the worship, to receive so much as the value of a penny from any votary. This would be the way to dry up the sources of the legendaries and preachers, and of pretended miracles; but is not this an impracticable method? "Hoc opus, hic labor est."-Art. NESTORIUS. OATH. (A curious one.) BORGARUTIUS Once swore never to have any thing more to do with the booksellers. The trouble he was involved in, during the printing of his book of Anatomy, and the vexation he met with in the printers' work, made him, in a fret, take such an oath, but * See the article AGREDA. when he was got from under the press, he broke his word. He compares himself in this to those women who, in the pains of childbirth, protest they will never expose themselves to the like any more; yet notwithstanding, when the pain is over, forget their protestations: he adds, that his zeal for the good of the public, obliged him to forget his oath. Every body knows the story of the woman, who made the protestations above hinted at, who notwithstanding was no sooner delivered, than she desired that the blessed candle, which was burning on the table, might be put out: " for," says she "it may serve me another time." One cannot here properly apply the Italian proverb, " passato il pericolo, gabbato il Santo; when the danger is over, send the saint a grazing." It is well known that there are particular and indispensible reasons which very justly discharge a woman from any thing she may have sworn on such an occasion. It is not the same thing in respect to vows made at sea in a storm, which are commonly forgot on shore. There are no authors so subject as poets, to forget that they solemnly promised to print no more. How light and inconstant is man, How apt of his promise to fail ! These are the words of the ingenious La Fontaine, in the beginning of one of his tales. Menage very unnecessarily bestows two chapters to prove that poets, after they have sworn to write no more, still write on. Art. BORGARUTIUS. ODIUM THEOLOGICUM. SOME days before Melancthon died, he wrote upon a piece of paper in two columns the reasons VOL. II. *La Fontaine au Conte de la Clochette. why he ought not to be sorry for leaving this world. One of those columns contained the advantages which death procured him; the other contained the evils from which death delivered him. He put only two articles into the latter;-1. That he should sin no more. 2. That he should be no longer exposed to the vexations and rage of the divines. That nature which gave Melanchthon a peaceable temper, made him a present ill suited with the juncture of time in which he was to live. His moderation served only to vex him. He was like a sheep in the midst of wolves; no person liked his mildness, which exposed him to all sorts of reproaches, and deprived him of the means of answering a fool according to his folly. The only advantage it procured him was to look upon death without fear, by considering that it would secure him from the odium theologicum, and from the infidos agitans discordia fratres. I shall speak hereafter of the slavery wherein he lived. He said in one of his works, that he held his professor's place forty years, without ever having any assurance that he should not be driven from it before the end of the week. "Ego jam sum hic, dei beneficio, quadraginta annos: & nunquam potui dicere aut certus esse me per unam septimanam mansuram esse." OMENS. Art. MELANCTHON. PERICLES learned of Anaxagoras to fear the gods without superstition. The Athenians were alarmed without any reason, as soon as any uncommon phenomenon appeared in the air; they looked upon them as signs of the anger of the gods. The philosopher Anaxagoras freed Pericles from that fear, explaining to him by natural reasons the apparition of those meteors; and having thus inspired him with a more rational religion, he was not disturbed with superstitious fears, but expected heavenly favours with a quiet mind.* *Plut. in Pericle, p. 154, 57. What follows in Plutarch deserves to be taken notice of. It happened one day, that a ram's head had but one horn, which was brought to Pericles. That ram was yeaned in a country house of Pericles. Lampon, the diviner, declared that it was a sign that the power of the two factions which were then, in Athens, would fall into the hands of the person in whose house that prodigy happened. Anaxagoras went another way to work. He dissected that monster, and finding the scull smaller than it should be, and of an oval figure, he explained the reason why that ram had but one horn, and why it came out in the middle of the forehead. That method of giving an account of prodigies was admired; but sometime after Lampon was respected when they saw the faction of Thucydides overthrown, and all the authority in the hands of Pericles. The Historian says thereupon, that the diviner and the philosopher might be both in the right, the one in guessing at the effect, and the other in guessing at the cause. It was the philosopher's business, adds he, to explain whence and how that single horn was formed; but it was the diviner's office to declare why it was formed, and what it portended. For they, who say that as soon as a natural reason is found out, the prodigy vanishes away, are not aware that they destroy artificial as well as celestial signs. Watch-lights upon towers, sun-dials, &c. depend upon certain causes, which act according to certain rules; yet they are appointed to signify certain things. This is the most specious and the strongest reason that can be alleged for the vulgar opinion which Anaxagoras opposed. That a natural phenomenon may be a prodigy, or a sign of a future evil, it is not at all necessary that philosophers should not be able to give any account of it; for though they may explain it by the natural virtues of second causes, yet they may very well be appointed to presage something. Watch-lights are explained by |