fides this, I fufpect the fellow has got money I am refolved to ftrip him, as a poulterer does a bird's breech, I will not only fleece, but skin the nincompoop; I have no charity for a ninnyhammer, half-witted rafcallion. I fhall return very differently to the generality of Englishmen; for their improvement it fhall be inferted in all our newfpapers on my arrival. The great Metropolitan, Primate of all England, Wales, and Berwick upon Tweed, to his dutiful and lawn lambs all health and fpiritual melody, be -it known, that your lord and father is fafe arrived from his travels, with open arms to communicate to you the plenitude of fpiritual benediction. Be it known I have fought a good fight, as father Abraham returning from his conqueft of the four kings, loaded with fpoils, fo I am like fort, with this double difference in my fcale. Firft difference. He was prince, but no prieft; but I am, in fpirituals, prince and prieft. Second difference. He kept for himself nothing; but I get all and keep all. He vanquished, four, myself four: Hoft one, Mofes two, Calvin three, my fon four; and let me tell you, these four, well fcraped with my three teats, and what I have scratched from one and another, fince my childhood, with what I fhall be upon the watch to catch at, wherever it is to be picked or come at, in the course of feventy years outstanding, will be capable, with the donation of my pretty lambs, make, as the faying is, a Grealy Bifhop. At the end of that period I fhall lack five years of old Par, and fifteen of, I think, one old Gibson, he would more to my purpofe, living high, and an extraordinary of ten years-160. Club of enlightened Philofophers. Hoft. O enlightened, may it please your worfhips, to repair and fet free an enlightened father in God, Lord Archbishop of Canterbury, who, by large ftrides of refinement in our enlightened profeffions, have arrived to the fummit of our new philosophy, rolling and tumbling, if he was not borne down with unwieldinefs, through an enormous quantity of fat, that wallops and hangs about him like a farmer's fwine, ready to receive the knife for being dreffed into bacon, O the prodigy! Club. What is it you would wish to improve yourself and bishop, touching the faculties? Hoft. To fet us free; me from the dread I am frightened with, and him a farm of different animals and different titles, received for ftrength and pleasure; but not having the neceffary evacuations, he is pent up, stuffed and gorged, fo that with his finger he paddles with the glut filled up to his throat, his belly refembles a mountain, and the various hillocks, with an ugly navel, which terrifies me, with many other phenomenons, threatening immediate diffolution to the man, and injury to my houfe, with inevitable ruin to myself and family. Club. The enlightened medicine is to remove him hap-hazard at a venture, your countenance feems feems to indicate the harbinger of loop-hole for letting forth his wind. Hoft. As other phyficians, you misconceive the cause. It proceeds from an incurring, incloistered number of various voracious animals, too tedious, no time permitting to be dwelt upon. Club. How ftands his Eminence's purse? our family being materialifts pay great deference to the philofopher's ftone, being the chief principle and fundamental ground of our new philofophy. Hoft. I am in raptures to hear that the new philofophy of this enlightened age and hemiIphere takes its fource and is a refinement on Calvinifm. Club. Calvinifm confifts in chitter chatter, Hoft. You are really the fool who cries no God, an old fect called Sadducees, among the Jews, or materialist among the chriftians, which defeats the term of enlightened age or new philofophy, being nothing but an old condemned herefy, hateful to God, vain-glorying in every debauchery and bafe action. You may debauch a fool with your vagabond lives, but never a man of honour, who will weep at the pitiful littleness of your conceptions and luft, which induces you, like a man drowning, catching at a fhadow, to affift him in his wish. You have neither honour nor refolution to be honeft; you therefore wish to perfuade yourselves that you have no being fuperior to a beaft, and this, to get rid of the fting of confcience. Your origin began with Lucifer, nothing lefs would, content that patriarch or firft archetype, that original heretic, nothing lefs but to be God would limit his pride. From this caufe we may compute the fall of man; so that you are nonfuited, in every sense of the word, in your firft and prime thought. That the wisdom of this age had enlightened the northern hemifphere with this extraordinary phenomenon or New Day. Fiddle de dee. Club. What you charge our enlightened philofophy of this bright and enlightened age, whofe members are arrived in knowledge to the fource and origin or priftine or first conception or cause from whence man derived form and received his being, is a fneer, contrivance, artful, cunning, flight, or flight of a prefbyterian or vague Calviniftical affertion. They would be happy to allow them a spirit, the maggot of a weak, diftempered brain, which beguiles animals not properly formed. Our grand philofophy takes its origin or first principle from the texture, Purity and quantity of brains we are poffeffed or endowed with, according to weight and measure, in a due course of Logarithm progreffion. The brain, therefore, being the origin or principle from which iffues what the ancients termed the faculties of the foul, will, memory, and understanding, immortal fpiritual fubftance, not dependent on the f 89 the body, but gives life and animates the body or material part of man. By our enlightened, age and new philofophy, has detected, by the fuperiority of our understanding, this folly, error, weakness, and bafe ignorance of man from their origin, or first state, which they count or reckon to be five thousand seven hundred years before our enlightened and wife Luminary the Fifty-. eighth Century, This is a bright day, when the fun fhines at noon-day. O the meridian of man, the zenith of wisdom. Brain comforts terreftrial. Man refigns celeftial. Hoft. How haps it that this delirium has feized your intellects? I perceive we are one. If you will restore the fpirit, you will then add fevenfold to your comforts, fpiritualizing the works of the flesh. If the brain be the God of Life and Wifdom, and no other, to each creature that poffeffes Brains; if this be fo, how is it that a parrot, whofe head, according to the rules of propor tion, and quantum of this wife pafte, or thick mixture of folid and fluid matter, whofe head is nearly, when mafter has laid by his plumage, equal in weight and measure to his body, not tranfmitted to future generations, from father to fon, and fo on, at leaft, fome footsteps of the great feats and heroic paffages of their times, in imitation of man, who, according to the aforefaid rules laid down by our new philofophers, no way can be allowed rivals or competitors in weight or meafure, or quantum of Brains, in a due fcale of proportion, or itand |