see? or what wouldest thou understand to learn and to know? am, 2 Then said I, Who art thou? I a quoth he, Poemander, the minde of the great Lord, the most mighty and absolute Emperor: I know what thou wouldest have, and I am alwayes present with thee. 3 Then said I, I would learn the things that are, and understand the nature of them, and know God. How? said he. I answered, that I would gladly hear. Then said he, Have me again in thy minde, and whatsoever thou wouldest learn I will teach thee. 4 When he had thus said, he was changed in his Idea or Form, and straightway in the twinkling of an eye, all things were opened unto me: and I saw an infinite sight; all things were become light, both sweet and exceedingly pleasant, and I was wonderfully delighted in the beholding it. 5 But after a little while, there was a darknesse made in part, coming down obliquely, fearfull and hideous, which seeme unto me to be changed into a certain menst nature, unspeakably troubled, which yielded a smoke as from fire; and from whence proceeded a voice unutterable, and very mournfull, but inarticulate, insomuch that it seemed to have come from the light. 6 Then from that light a certain holy word joined itself unto nature, and out flew the pure and unmixed fire from the moyst nature upward on high; it was exceeding light, and sharp, and operative withall. And the air, which was also light, followed the spirit, and mounted up to fire (from the earth and the water), insomuch that it seemed to hang an depend upon it. 7 And the earth and the water stayed by themselves so mingled together, that the earth could not be seen for the water; but they were moved because of the spiritual word that was carried upon them. 8 Then said Poemander unto me, Dost thou understand the, vision, and what it meaneth? I shall know, said I. Then said he, I am that light, the minde, the God, who am before that mopst nature that appeared out of darknesse, and that bright and lightful word from the minde is the Son of God. 9. How is that? quoth I. Thus replyed he, Understand it: That which in thee seeth and heareth the word of the Lord, and the minde, the father, God, differ not one from the other and the union of these is life." The following extract will shew Hermes Trismegistus to have been as good a Poet, as he was a great Philosopher and Divine. "THE SECRET SONG. The Holy Speech. 64 O Son, do thou, standing in the open air, worship, looking to the North wind about the going down of the sun; and to the South, when the sun ariseth; and now keep silence, son. 65 Let all the nature of the world entertain the hearing of this hymn. 66 Be opened, O earth, and let all the treasure of the rain be opened. 67 You trees, tremble not, for I will sing, and praise the Lord of the Creation, and the All, and the One. 68 Be opened, you Heavens: ye winds stand still, and let the immortall circle" of God receive these words. 69 For I will sing, and praise him that created all things, that fixed the earth, and hung up the heavens, and commanded the sweet water to come out of the ocean, into all the world inhabited and not inhabited, to the use and nourishment of all things, or man. 70 That commanded the fire to shine for every action, both to Gods and men. 71 Let us, altogether, give him blessing, which rideth upon the heavens, the Creator of all nature. 72 This is he that is the eye of the minde, and will accept the praise of my powers. 73 O all ye powers that are in me, praise the One and the All. 74 Sing together with my will, all you powers that are in me. 75 O holy knowledge, being enlightened by thee, I magnify the intelligible light, and rejoice in the joy of the mind. 76 All my powers sing praise with me, and thou my continence, sing praise my righteousnesse by me; praise that which is righteous. 77 O communion which is in me, praise the All. 78 By me the truth sings, praise to the truth, the good praiseth the good. 79 O light, O life from us, unto you comes this praise and this thanksgiving. 80 I give thanks unto thee, O Father, the operation or act of my powers. 81 I give thanks unto thee, O God, the power of my operations. 32 By me thy word sings praise unto thee, receive by me this reasonable (or verball) sacrifice in words. 83 The powers that are in me cry these things; they praise the All, they fulfill thy will; thy will and counsell is from thee unto me, 84 O All, receive a reasoning sacrifice from all things. 85 O life save all that is in us, O light enlighten, O God the spirit; for the minde guideth (or feedeth) the word: O spirit bearing workman. 86 Thou 86 Thou art God, thy man cryeth these things unto thee through, by the fire, by the air, by the earth, by the water, by the spirit, by thy creatures. 87 From eternity I have found (meanes to) blesse and praise thee, and I have what I seek; for I rest in thy will. 90 By the hymn and song of praise my minde is enlightened; and gladly would I send from my understanding a thanksgiving unto God." Yours, &c. J. B. else Mr. URBAN, Uplifted, and, secure with beaked prow, Among the more important events that have taken place in the history of mankind, that of the Deluge seem's to be too mysterious for their belief: because they cannot reconcile it to their ideas that there was a sufficient quantity of water in the ocean below, or by any discharge of water from the atmosphere above, to overwhelm this earth to the tops of the highest mountains; they consider it in no better light than a fable. It is not for me to decide on the truth or fallacy of that conjecture, whether the combination of those two causes be insufficient or not, or whether the means employed to inundate this earth were supernatural. I think the wellknown facts I shall bring forward, will clearly evince that such an event must have occurred. Wherever this earth has been explored to any considerable depth, the remains of a former world are to be seen, as agreed upon by Philosophers and Naturalists, Passing over the variety of vegetable fossils, such as plants, &c. found in all parts of England, some peculiar to the East; I shall point out the most remarkable proofs where animals have turned into stone. Naturalists cannot be deceived as to their being real fossils; it is not merely the impression only of those animals and vegetables on the stone; the interior very often contains evident marks of the substance of the animal or vegetable. The petrified remains of crocodiles have been found on the coast of Dor setshire and Yorkshire. Alligators have been found in the neighbourhood of Bath, and near Whitby in Yorkshire. In nine different counties of England have the petrified reinains of Elephants been found. It is well known that these are animals not France, peculiar to this country. Germany, and Switzerland, likewise abound in these wonderful relicks. In the caverns of Germany and Hungary hundreds of cart-loads of bony substances are deposited; the inhabitants the advance of the waters of the Deof those countries suppose that, on luge, these animals had retreated thither for shelter. 66 The most re markable are the enormous stags' horns found in Ireland, which appeared to belong to an animal now extinct. The ingenious Mr. Parkinson, in his very learned and elaborate work, Organic Remains," (from whence I have selected some of these particulars) enumerates fourteen distinct species of animals found in Great Britain, that bear no resem-, blance to any animal now in existence. The tortoise, among many other cu rious rious fossils, has been found in the excavations on Highgate Hill. Mr. Cuvier has clearly ascertained that the quarries in the vicinity of Paris furnish five or six distinct species of the bones of birds. A very singular fossil is noticed in the "Beauties of England and Wales." It appears that on a rising ground, belonging to Chaple Farm, on the estate of Mr. Brooks, near Tiverton, in Devonshire, in a bed of stiff clay, the workmen, in order to sink an extensive pond, had descended ten feet from the surface; the strata appearing in a natural state, they came to a spongy matter; it appeared to be a thick cuticle of brown colour; bits of stones, and lumps of solid fat of the same colour, were found, Astonished at the discovery, a person of great experience and practice as a farrier in the neighbourhood was sent for, who caused the carcase to be cautiously worked round, and at last the complete body of a hog was found, reduced to the colour and substance of an Egyptian mummy; the flesh was six inches thick, and the hair upon the skin very long and elastic: as the workmen went on further, a considerable number of hogs of various sizes were found in different positions, in some places two or three together, in others singly at a short distance; this piggery continued to the depth of twelve feet. The oldest man in the parish had never heard that the ground had ever been broken; and indeed the several strata being entire, renders it impossible to conjecture from what causes this extraordinary phænomenon can be accounted for. The family of the Cruwys have a complete record of the most remarkable events which have happened in the parish for three centuries past, and not the least mention is made of any disorder which could occasion such a number of swine to be buried in such a situation. Near Reading, in Berkshire, for many succeeding generations, a continued body of oyster shells have been found to extend over five or six acres of ground, some in their natural state, and others petrified. In all the Alpine Rocks, in the Pyrenees, on the hills of France, England, and Flanders,even in most quarries from whence marble is dug, petrified shells and other marine substances are found. At Tou raine in France, one hundred miles from the sea, there is a plain about one hundred miles long, and as many broad, from whence the peasants of the country supply themselves with marl for manuring the land; they seldom dig deeper than twenty feet; the whole plain is composed of the same materials, which are shells of various kinds, without any earth between them. In several parts of Asia and Africa travellers have observed these shells in great abundance. Petrified sea fishes, and other marine productions, and bones of various ani mals peculiar to theSouthern climates, have been found in many parts of England. So many concurring circumstances, and the situation in which animal remains are found, prove without a doubt, that such a convulsion of the elements must have been. It was the opinion of Dr. Burnet, and a few other celebrated Naturalists, that the flood was only partial; the country about the Euphrates they suppose to have been the scene of the antediluvian inhabitants; that they were confined to that part, and that it was unnecessary the waters should extend further; the world being new, a small portion of the earth could only be inhabited; and on this principle they advance that an overflowing of the Euphrates and Tigris, with a vehement rain, might answer all the phænomena of the Deluge. But the Deluge was universal; God declared to Noah, Gen. vi. verse 17, that he was resolved to destroy every thing that had breath under heaven, or had life on the earth, by a flood of waters. Moses assures us the waters covered the whole earth, buried all the mountains, and were no less than fifteen cubits above the highest of them, every thing perishing therein, excepting Noah and those in the ark. If the Deluge had not been general, where is the necessity of spending so much time in the building of an ark, and preserving all sorts of animals therein to replenish, the world? In regions far distant from the Eu phrates and Tigris, in Italy, France, Switzerland, Germany, and England, there are frequently found in places many score leagues from any sea, and even in the tops of high mountains, whole trees sunk deep under ground; and the almostuniversal tra ditions ditions of this great event in most Mr. URBAN, Bath, March 17. countries of the world, fully confirm Enity of contributing to your VER pleased with the opportu the account recorded in holy writ. Dr.Halley ascribes theDeluge to the shock of a comet, or some other such transient body; and he is, if I mistake not, supported in that opinion by Mr. Whiston, in his New Theory of the Earth. Were this the case, it seems impossible that Noah could have escaped the general wreck; no account seems so much like the truth, none so rational, as the two sources of Moses, "That the fountains of the great deep were broken up, and the windows of heaven were opened." But of the many remarkable vestiges of a former world that have been discovered, the earth itself exhibits not a single trace of man; not one solitary instance of the petrified remains of the human species did I ever hear of; nor has Mr. Parkinson, whose researches have been directed that way, ever known an instance of it. Now these pretenders to Philosophy, ever anxious to degrade human nature, contend that the mind of man is similar to the mind of brutes, only a little more elevated in the same scale, and the advantages he has obtained are from the superiority of his understanding, from his uniting in society. One argument, I presume, will be sufficient to set aside that opinion. The perception man has of a Deity, the knowledge of death, and the hopes of another state of existence, are principles which mark the distinction, and exalt his nature far, very far, above that of the brute creation; principles which operate very forcibly in every quarter of the globe, whether in civilized or among savage nations; principles which are implanted in his nature, that no time can extinguish, no circumstances root out; and there being no mineralised remains of man found, leads us to suppose that even the material part of him, the composition of his body, so totally differs from that of brutes, as to admit of no change but to that earth from whence he originally sprung. Some of your intelligent Correspondents may perhaps account for the non-appearance of the relicks of man in some other way; or they will perhaps furnish you with something remarkable connected with the fossil world within their knowledge. Yours, &c. T. H. pages, I have inclosed you an account of three gentlemen being stopped and robbed by two highwaymen sixty-one years ago. The grand-daughter of Captain Southby, who is now living here, and has often heard her relation talk of it, put me in possession of it. Yours, &c. FIDELIS. The story which gave rise to the following letter from the highway, man Incognitus, was this: "Three gentlemen returning from India, namely Capt. Southby, Capt. Forbes, and Mr. Francis Fowke, hired post chaises to get to London with all possible speed. Captain Southby was the only person who had any thing of consequence to lose, and he had his whole fortune with him in Navy bills, which, if taken, might have kept him a long time out of his money, though it would have been of no service to the Captor. To avoid such an incon, venience, he begged Capt. Forbes and Francis Fowke to assist in defending his property, which was cheerfully agreed to. They had only two pair of pistols between them. Capt. Southby, having the largest properly, was allowed to take two. Mr. Francis Fowke, who accompanied him in an open chaise, took another, and Capt. Forbes, in a close post chaise, possess ed the fourth. Matters being thus arranged, they proceeded on their journey, meeting no impediment till they came to the bottom of Shooter's Hill about the dusk of the evening, when they were stopped by two highwaymen well mounted. An engage ment ensued. Capt. Southby having discharged his two pistols, and Mr. Francis Fowke his single pistol, the former called out for quarter, the highwaymen at this time having dis charged two pistols. The leading highwayman answered, and bid him beware of using treachery, which he had given some reason to suspect, for that it was not usual for people to travel with an odd pistol. This circumstance being fairly explained, Capt. Forbes, with a little reluctance, surrendered his pistol loaded. highwaymen, finding no booty, could not be persuaded they would have risked their lives for nothing, and concluded it was concealed. With this idea they carried off all their baggage, The 1 gage, and left the owners tied to trees in a wood close to the road, where they would have passed a miserable night had they not been released by Mr. Francis Fowke, whom the robbers bound so very loosely that he had not the least difficulty in disengaging himself, an indulgence which I think he owed to a very engaging and conciliating manner, which prepossesses every body in his favour; and the compliment they pay him in their letter seems to favour my supposition. On taking leave of the prisoners, the robbers assured them if, on examination, they found every thing to be as they had represented, they should not have cause to repent of their frankness. Mr. Francis Fowke has observed to me that one only of the highwaymen was brave, and he, poor fellow! was afterwards hanged. Serjeant Lee told me that he supped with him after condemnation, and on the night before his execution, when he behaved with a very modest and undaunted spirit. One cannot but lament that such a fellow was not employed in his Country's service." Copy of a letter from INCOGNITUS. "SIR-Pursuant to my promise to return the papers, you will find them in two different parcels, with the two seals and rings put into one of your wigs, and the picture, nigh the pathway from Marybone to Padding ton. Turn at the end of the first field, where you will see a close wooden bridge, and on the left hand, about thirty yards in the ditch, opposite to the eight line of dung in heaps, from which you will see, opposite, a little square terrace, which was a countinghouse to some brick-kilns formerly, -there you will find them. The delay has proceeded, I assure you, from a concern for your loss resulting from your courage and calmness, which are strong indications of a generous and good mind. There were several papers of different persons, which were of considerable value to them, for which you risked your life, as well as for your own; it seemed equitable that they should have paid a proportionable part with you, upon returning the whole things taken, which was intended without regard to the value of the effects, or the necessity of persons, and barely to the sum necessary to preserve reputation, which would have been very mode rate, but I could not devise any manner to accomplish this, without many inconveniencies, and without being known on an interview, or to such person as I should entrust, any of which circumstances I could not dispense with; for though, on information of character and humanity to others (for which I have greivously answered) you should pay me that great compliment of life, yet I must inform you it would be none to me, for I would not accept of life with infamy. The sound of Highwayman is as detestable to me as to any man; though, without moralizing on particulars, I cannot help thinking that you may see baser actions every day committed with impunity in violation of every social virtue; and he that spares the necessitous in his power is not unlikely to relieve them; and he that will not prey on those who by toil and industry make even considerable acquisition, whilst he can take from the superfluities of the opulent, though with greater danger, has a strong probability in his favour of being the more worthy person of the two; however, I must admit that example weighs much on the other hand. I shall only add, without any flattery, which cannot be presumed in this case, that your courage shall be no disadvantage to you, the effects of which I sensibly felt, though improper to be then intimated. It was my first expedition, and I have hopes to think it will be my last. Your effects, except some insignificant articles which are of no use to me, you may be assured, as soon as safety will admit, you shall receive without any gratuity. Our compliments to Capt. Fowke, I am, Sir, Your most humble servant, INCOGNITUS. Thursday, 19th September, 1751." |