have been guilty of the most horrid and prodigious villanies and enormities, revenge and murder, incest and luxury, drunkenness and intemperance, theft, and unnatural rebellion against their parents, and such like; of which their own writings were full almost in every page, which served only to corrupt and debauch the minds and manners of youth; as Octavius tells his adversary, where he pursues this argument at large, with great eloquence and reason. Nay, those among them that were most inquisitive and serious, and that entertained more abstract and refined apprehensions of things than the common people, yet could not agree in any fit and rational notion of a Deity; some ridiculously affirming one thing and some another, until they were divided into a hundred different opinions, and all of them further distant from the truth than they were from one another; the vulgar in the meanwhile making gods of the most brutish objects, such as dogs, cats, wolves, goats, hawks, dragons, beetles, crocodiles, &c. This Origen against Celsus particularly charges upon the Egyp→ tians.

"When you approach (says he) their sacred places, they have glorious groves and chapels, temples with goodly gates and stately porticos, and many mysterious and religious ceremonies; but when once you are entered, and got within their temples, you shall see nothing but a cat, or an ape, or a crocodile, or a goat, or a dog, worshipped with the most solemn veneration!" Nay, they deified senseless and inanimate things, that had no life nor power to help themselves, much less their worshippers, as herbs, roots, and plants; nay, unmanly and degenerate passions, fear, paleness, &c. They fell down before stumps and statues, which owed all their divinity to the cost and folly of their votaries; despised and trampled on by the sorriest creatures, mice, swallows, &c., who were wont to build nests in the very mouths of their gods, and spiders to perriwig their heads with cobwebs; being forced first to make them, and then make them clean, and to defend and protect them, that they might fear and worship them, as he in Minicius wittily derides them : "In whose worship there are (says he) many things that justly

deserve to be laughed at, and others that call for pity and com. passion." And what wonder now, if the Christians were not in the least ashamed to be called atheists, with respect to such deities, and such a religion as this was!

Thirdly, in the strict and proper notion of atheism, they no less truly than confidently denied the charge, and appealed to their severest adversaries, whether those who owned such principles as they did could reasonably be styled atheists. None ever pleaded better and more irrefragable arguments for the existence of a supreme infinite Being, who made and governs all things by infinite wisdom and almighty power; none were ever more ready to produce a most clear and candid confession of their faith, as to this grand article of religion than they. "Although we profess ourselves atheists, with respect to those whom you esteem and repute to be gods, (so their apologist tells the senate,) yet not in respect of the true God, the parent and fountain of wisdom and righteousness, and all other excellences and perfections, who is infinitely free from the least contagion or spot of evil. Him, and His only-begotten Son, (who instructed us and the whole society of good angels in these divine mysteries,) and the spirit of prophecy, we worship and adore, honouring them in truth, and with the highest reason, and ready to communicate these things to any one that is willing to learn them, as we ourselves have received them. Can we then be atheists, who worship the great Creator of this world, not with blood, incense, and offerings, (which we are sufficiently taught He stands in no need of,) but exalt Him, according to our power with prayers and praises, in all the addresses we make to Him; believing this to be the only honour that is worthy of Him, not to consume the creatures which He has given us for our use, and the comforts of those that want, in the fire by sacrifice; but tc approve ourselves thankful to Him, and to sing and celebrate rational hymns and sacrifices, pouring out our prayers to Him as a grateful return for those many good things which we have received, and do yet expect from Him, according to the faith and trust that we have in Him." To the same purpose Athenagoras,

in his return to this charge: "Diagorus indeed was guilty of the deepest atheism and impiety; but we who separate God from all material being, and affirm Him to be eternal and unbegotten, but all matter to be made and corruptible, how unjustly are we branded with impiety! It is true, did we side with Diagorus in denying a Divinity, when there are so many and such powerful arguments from the creation and government of the world to convince us of the existence of God and religion, then both the guilt and punishment of atheism might deservedly be put upon

us.

But when our religion acknowledges one God, the Maker of the universe, who, being uncreate Himself, created all things by His word, we are manifestly wronged both in word and deed: both in being charged with it, and in being punished for it." "We are accused," says Arnobius, "for introducing profane rites and an impious religion; but tell me, O ye men of reason, how dare ye make so rash a charge? To adore the mighty God, the Sovereign of the whole creation, the Governor of the highest powers, to pray to Him with the most obsequious reverence; under an afflicted state to lay hold of Him with all our powers, to love Him, and look up to Him: is this a dismal and detestable religion, a religion full of sacrilege and impiety, destroying and defiling all ancient rites? Is this that bold and prodigious crime for which your gods are so angry with us, and for which you yourselves do so rage against us, confiscating our estates, banishing our persons, burning, tearing, and racking us to death with such exquisite tortures? We Christians are nothing else but the worshippers of the supreme King and Governor of the world, according as we are taught by Christ our master. Search, and you will find nothing else in our religion. This is the sum of the whole affair; this is the end and design of our divine offices; before Him it is that we are wont to prostrate and bow ourselves, Him we worship with common and conjoined devotions, from Him we beg those things which are just and honest, and such as are not unworthy of Him to hear and grant." So little reason had the enemies of Christianity to brand it with the note of atheism and irreligion.

The Literature of the Age of Elizabeth.

HAZLITT.

[WILLIAM HAZLITT, a voluminous writer of the nineteenth century, was born in 1778: he died of cholera in 1830. His father was a Unitarian minister, and he was educated for his father's profession. But he had a determined predilection for the fine arts, and devoted himself for several years to the studies of a painter. There is little doubt that he would have attained con. siderable excellence in this walk, had his fastidiousness allowed him to have been satisfied with his growing mastery over the difficulties of art. He, how. ever, became a writer, and for a quarter of a century he devoted himself to an unremitting course of literary exertion. His political feelings were strong and almost passionate. He became, therefore, an object of unceasing attack, and no man was pursued with more virulence by the party writers who supported the Government of the day. His reputation is now established as a vigorous thinker, and an eloquent critic, who in an age of imitation dared to be original.]

The age of Elizabeth was distinguished beyond, perhaps, any other in our history, by a number of great men, famous in different ways, and whose names have come down to us with unblemished honours,-statesmen, warriors, divines, scholars, poets, and philosophers: Raleigh, Drake, Coke, Hooker, and higher and more sounding still, and still more frequent in our mouths, Shakspere, Spenser, Sydney, Bacon, Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher-men whom fame has eternised in her long and lasting scroll, and who, by their words and acts, were benefactors of their country, and ornaments of human nature. Their attainments of different kinds bore the same general stamp, and it was sterling what they did had the mark of their age and country upon it. Perhaps the genius of Great Britain (if I may so speak without offence or flattery) never shone out fuller or brighter, or looked more like itself, than at this period.

For such an extraordinary combination and development of fancy and genius many causes may be assigned; and we may seek for the chief of them in religion, in politics, in the circum stances of the time, the recent diffusion of letters, in local situa

tion, and in the character of the men who adorned that period, and availed themselves so nobly of the advantages placed within their reach.

I shall here attempt to give a general sketch of these causes, and of the manner in which they operated to mould and stamp the poetry of the country at the period of which I have to treat; independently of incidental and fortuitous causes, for which there is no accounting, but which, after all, have often the greatest share in determining the most important results.

The first cause I shall mention, as contributing to this general effect, was the Reformation, which had just then taken place. This event gave a mighty impulse and increased activity to thought and inquiry, and agitated the inert mass of accumulated prejudices throughout Europe. The effect of the concussion was general; but the shock was greatest in this country. It toppled down the full-grown intolerable abuses of centuries at a blow; heaved the ground from under the feet of bigoted faith and slavish obedience; and the roar and dashing of opinions, loosened from their accustomed hold, might be heard like the noise of an angry sea, and has never yet subsided. Germany first broke the spell of misbegotten fear, and gave the watchword; but England joined the shout, and echoed it back, with her island voice, from her thousand cliffs and craggy shores, in a longer and a louder strain. With that cry, the genius of Great Britain rose, and threw down the gauntlet to the nations. There was a mighty fermentation: the waters were out; public opinion was in a state of projection. Liberty was held out to all to think and speak the truth. Men's brains were busy; their spirits stirring; their hearts full; and their hands not idle. Their eyes were opened to expect the greatest things, and their ears burned with curiosity and zeal to know the truth, that the truth might make them free. The death-blow which had been struck at scarlet vice and bloated hypocrisy, loosened their tongues, and made the talismans and love-tokens of Popish superstition, with which she had beguiled her followers and committed abominations with the people, fall harmless from their necks.