Since the days of Charles the First, of blessed me. mory, the Puritans, or as they are styled in modern times, the Evangelists, those men who have pretended to a superior holiness of life, and knowledge of the things of the kingdom of God, have always been considered fair game for the satirist, and have accordingly been ridiculed by every one who had talent to lash the manners and follies of the age. Of those men whose ambitious enthusiasm or misanthropy caused them to rove about for the purpose of instituting new sects, it Ram. Mag. Voi. II.

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is not our intention now to speak. The ambition of leaving a name that might be remembered when distant ages had passed away, has been sufficient to stimulate many men to actions which reason would neither justify or repress. The desire of perpetuat

ing a name of being distinguished from

"That immortal fry,

"Of almost every body born to die."

is sufficient of itself to redeem them from some of the obloquy which must otherwise attach itself to their memories. But it is of your true field preacher, your Evangelical and Methodistical hypocrites, your conventicle canters, your humbug pious wretches, who would have us regard this world as a vale of tears, a wild howling wilderness, which this earthly tabernacle of flesh, this carnal man must soon quit for some other building not made with hands, eternal in the heavens; these are their cant phrases that we mean to speak of, and to pourtray in their true colours. It has been questioned, and with some show of reason, whether the moral condition of the people is now superior, with all the new lights that have burst upon us, to what it was prior to the Reformation, when they were debarred from the knowledge and perusal of the Scriptures, and reposed unlimited confidence in the words of their Priests. Sects now start up as thick as mushrooms; there are now ten thousand turnpike ways to heaven; where you have only to pay the toll, and you are sure of a place in the mansions of the blessed hereafter. The Saints have their advocates in parliament, and that prince of hypocrites W- is there a true personification of that abominable cant which has so long infested the world. The appearance of piety is all they seek for, to drawl long winded prayers through the nose, or teach a hardened wretch, about to mount the scaffold, to snuffle to some damnable tune, some mawkish hymn is a sure passport to heaven, which is always open for the repentant profligate.

Innumerable are the sectarious prophets that now

infest the nation; every village hath its expounder of the Bible. Tract Societies and Charitable Associations carry on an inextinguishable war against the Devil and all his works; and the profane songs and ballads of our forefathers are exchanged for the drowsy hymns of the Tabernacle, and the still more detestable productions of our soi-desant saints. They all preach as Mawworm in the Hypocrite did preach-ex-trumpery; and they fancy themselves the delegated messengers of God to awaken a slumbering world from its sinful lethargy. Whether Churchmen or Calvinists, Arminians or Antinomians, they are all of the same breed, pigs of the same sow; all spring from the "Whore of Babylon, that sitteth upon the seven hills, and filleth the world with her abominations." It is a libel upon the rationality of the human species to see multitudes deluded by such vain and idle words, and not only the illiterate and unreflecting, but the learned and profound have been entangled in the same net. Whiston, the celebrated astronomer, put all London into consternation by predicting to a precise day the dissolution of the globe by the approach of a comet, which he declared would consume the world by fire, as foretold by the Apostle, when he said" the elements should glow with fervent heat." Dukes, duchesses, and fair ladies and their paramours then sought refuge in the arms of religion; parsons were esteemed as they had before been despised; those who had boats embarked on them the most valuable of their property, and those who had not boats endeavoured to get births among the shipping. They considered not that if "this solid earth should melt, thaw, and resolve itself into a dew," they would have no harbour where they could refit; and that boiled fish, as the ocean would certainly bubble up during this general conflagration of Nature's works, would be all that they could eat. So much for the high vulgar. Brothers, the madman, was patronised by Brassy Hallhead, M. P. who we think must have had a very brassy head indeed ere he could lend himself to the propagation of such delusion. The most successful among the religious impostors seem univer

sally to be those who assume a divine power concentrated in their own persons, and who have the gift of prophecy, and to whose custos is committed the keys of the kingdom of Heaven. Johanna Southcott is a remarkable instance of this, the more absurd her tales, the more readily were they credited; and there exist to this day persons who still believe that Shiloh is to come, and that he will shortly appear.

What ludicrous notions they had of the Millennium: quartern loaves were to grow on apple-trees, and rumps of beef to be shot flying. All things were to be in common; toil and labour were to be at an end, and Johanna was to be queen under her son Shiloh. One of the most remarkable visionaries in modern times was Emanuel Swedenborg, the founder of the New Jerusalem, who made the wonderful discovery, that the Bible was not what it always pretended to be, and that we were to look at it in a new light, which had been revealed to him alone by God himself. He gave himself out as a new Messiah, published books of travels in Heaven, relating how he held long confabs with the holy angels, he gives us long and tedious descriptions of their natures, functions, and situations, with the same accuracy as his renowned brother, Baron Munchausen. He contends that resurrection is not what is generally supposed, but a reerection of the natural man ere it enters into glory, and the reader will find in this learnrd barons works very minute descriptions of the sexual differences of angels; how the Virgin Mary lay when she conceived by the Holy Ghost; how long Christ was in that uncomfortable habitation, to the edification of all Christian believers. He taught his followers to rely upon the inspirations of the holy spirit, whatever they might be, which advice was taken in the case of one Hugh Samson, who, conceiving that the holy spirit called. upon him to love one Ann Gleed, who also pretended to be subject to this spirit of love, and wishing her to conceive, but in another manner, perhaps, mentioned it to her six times, and the seventh time she consented, for fear of the judgment of the Lord if she resisted any