confessions differ in different places and induce mutual opposition, and the new partitions could never coalesce with sincerity, but so many new dissenters sprung up every day, that no man alive would undertake to number or count them. And as this new brood is exceeding fruitful, as every one believes he has as good a right to coin his own creed as his neighbour before him, it is probable that innumerable schismatics will yet arise.

"All this displeased me beyond measure, especially when I saw that these new leaders of new parties carried their vote rather by riotous clamour than by any solid argument, and so I turned me to the reading of such authors who live apart in divine communions, devoting their talent rather to heal than to aggravate our dissensions. "When I had given myself up to this study, I found that all insisted upon one point, viz. that as the ancient doctrine was originally well constituted, and has never sustained essential interruption, so the main desideratum is the removal of those impediments. I have described as well useless substitutes as fraudulent practices, which either tend to conceal the true doctrine altogether, or give it a false character.

"But that this may be effected so as to conciliate all parties, we think such a method is to be pursued, as accords with universal and not with particular interests.

"Now three modes of conciliation present themselves to our notice: 1. The authority of some eminent pope : 2. A universal council legitimately elected from the diverse nations: 3. The king's direction to his bishops to settle their claims with the catholic church, severally and respectively.

"Inaccomplishing this most desirable object, I conferred with many eminent men, partly theologians, partly politicians, as well those that adhere to the Roman see, as those who had departed from it; and I found them of the same opinion as the writers of the books I have mentioned.

"But as this object, no less fair and amicable than difficult and arduous, requires the assistance of many, not of the first alone, but also of the second and third order, so that reason may be corroborated by reason, and the united agreement of many worthies may defeat the contumacy of polemics and stimulate the obduracy of worldlings, I imagined, that, as much of my life had been spent on the writings of those who love peace better than contention, I might well collect for the service of posterity the fruits of those labours.

"And as I was aware that Casaubon, and other great men, had warmly recommended that book, which that most philosophic divine George Cassander wrote at the express command of the pious emperors Ferdinand and Maximilian, I deemed it more advisable to republish this treatise with corroborative arguments, than to produce an entirely new work.

"This labour has by no means displeased the scholars of France, whether they choose to entitle themselves catholics or reformers. I have also received favourable testimonies from other quarters; but as for the assemblies of Holland, I expected nothing propitious

from them, and I was not deceived. No sooner had my book appeared, but immediately a multitude of antagonists started against me, and, as is usual with the Dutch, with as much clamour and din as if Hannibal himself thundered at their gates.

"Among these, by no means the mildest, I will not say the rudest, inasmuch as he excelled the rest in real or imaginary dignity, came forward against me, Rivetus. To his animadversions, I replied by other animadversions. He returned me his Examen,' and I conclude the controversy with the present Votum.' I have endeavoured to compose this plea in a more orderly manner than my former letters on the subject, and have followed the arrangements of Cassander in every article. I now come to my prolegomena.

"How sincerely Rivetus loves me, may be collected from the fact of his having accused me to the foreign ambassadors of a grievous heresy, for no other reason than that I answered the letters of some worthy Socinians, and that he takes every thing I say in the most unfavourable possible light.

"For me, I would never deny the common offices of humanity even to a pagan if he were to write to me, and would behave as Basil, in a similar situation, behaved to his pagan master Libanius. But how the man is moved by the very name of peace, these writings evince, as well of the bitter invective of the very noble Theophilus Mileterius, and that article containing his adjudications, which he composed on six pious and érudite men, who were bold enough to oppose themselves to the rage of the dissensients in order to promote the cause of peace.

"As the Hollanders who were condemned in the Synod of Dort, and were afterwards banished from their land, they hold the same opinions as Melancthon, which had many defenders in those parts, and as the rulers confess, they made not the first secession, but their adversaries.

"The authority of the Roman bishop would not have seemed so formidable to Joseph Hall, as to induce him to reject every hope of reconciliation, if he had known how prompt is the method in France and Spain, by which papal encroachments are checked, and the rights of kings and bishops preserved from invasion; or if he had considered, however, that the king of Britain uses no more authority over ecclesiastical persons and property than the king of Sicily."

Such is the strain of argument in this treatise, Votum pro Pace: which is very similar to that of Erasmus on the same subject.

Certainly there was no man of his age that so immensely strengthened the cause of the syncretists as Grotius. He is, perhaps, the most brilliant star of the syncretic constellation-a constellation of the brightest intelligences that have ever glittered over Europe. Grotius forms a luminous centre of syncretism. He was preceded by Erasmus, Cassander, and Calixtus, and followed by Leibnitz, Wolff, and Le Clerc. The designs of these syncretists can never be too much extolled. Their motto was: "One God and Father of

all, who is above all, and through all, and in all; one Lord, one faith, one baptism."

We can imagine no moral spectacle more noble than that of the majestic mind of Grotius pursuing his heroic course under every discouragement of circumstance, and the calumny, abuse, and neglect of his jealous cotemporaries. He realises all the dignity of the "justum et tenacem propositi verum"-the severe sublimity of self-immolating virtue. He saw the perils that surrounded him, and braved them unflinching.

He expected (says his biographer) that his works, which were compiled solely with a view to promote union among Christians, would procure him many enemies; and he said, on this occasion, that for persons to endeavour to make mankind live in peace was commendable, that they might indeed expect a recompense from the blessed Peace-maker, but that they had great reason to apprehend the same fate with those who, attempting to part two combatants, receive blows from both; but if it should so happen, I shall comfort myself with the example of him who said, "If I please men, I am not the servant of Christ."

One of the very few laymen who understood Grotius thoroughly, by the finer sympathy of genius, was Milton. To Grotius, Milton's high and independent mind acknowledged the filial reverence he vouchsafed to no other contemporary. To the Christian philosophy of Grotius he looked with veneration; his political views, his learning, his poetry, were all the subjects of his early delight and emulation; and in the ADAMUS EXUL of Grotius we find the germ of Milton's Paradise Lost.

Two centuries ago, in an era which was as an antitype of the present for the gigantic efforts which the human mind put forth in its enthusiasm for universal truth, and its aspirations for purest liberty, and no less distinguished for impious atheism and revolutionary licentiousness, it pleased God to raise up this man, most profusely endowed with all the faculties deemed divinest in our nature, and prompt to exert them all in their truest possible offices.

The more we reflect on Grotius, the more shall we be inclined to view him in this light, as a heaven-prepared model of finest character for men of these latter times. In him were most exquisitely united the celestial spirit of devotion, with every attribute of scientific or sentimental excellence-the holiest genius of Christian philosophy, blended.with all that literature and poetry could offer of subordinate adornment.

Grotius's character has been much canvassed and much misunderstood; in fact, though simple in the elements of its greatness, it became complicate by the prodigious variety of its processes and relations. In theology he was an Athanasian, for he held, in the divine unity, a trinity of divine faculties, hypostases, and powers. He asserted that the divine Logos existed eternally in co-essential union with the Deity, and this independently of and prior to his assumption of the filial character and all the relations of sonship, and his procession with the Holy Spirit to create the worlds. His

religious views were those of Erasmus, Cassander, Calixtus, and the Syncretists. In philosophy he was a Platonist or Eclectic. In politics he was a Conservative, or constitutional reformer, though his sweeping and violent reforms of the dreadful abuses of his age have not seldom exposed him to the fate of being classed with the impious democrats his soul abhorred.

The transcendant superiority of Grotius' mind consisted in the sacred universality of his genius: that majestic and almost magical power, by which his unviolated conscience, ever solemnised by spiritual veneration, and glowing with sanctified enthusiasm, commanded all nature and art to render to revelation unceasing homage and obedience, can never be sufficiently admired.

It was fortunate for Grotius that he lived in the brightest age of England's history, in the days of her Christian philosophers,-the days of More, Cudworth, Rust, Glanvil, Ashmole, Fludd, and Selden. We mention these names particularly among many others of the same period, because they succeeded in reconciling the saving doctrines of our faith with those universal elements of divine philosophy, mythologic initiation, and intellectual freemasonry in general. We therefore rank these men somewhat higher in the great scale of philosophy than their august competitors in the popular and exoteric science, Bacon, Newton, Boyle, and Clarendon.

Such were the men that made the age of Grotius illustrious. He saw that the unity of truth was well nigh demolished, and that the power of truth was broken in the same ratio as its unity. In restoring the unity of truth his heroism was noble. He perceived at once that the link which was wanting to connect revelation with all human sciences and arts was the divine philosophy, so antique and occult, touching the metaphysical relations of things handed down in the initiations. To restore this indispensable link, he entered boldly on the whole mystery and history of cabalistic and mythological lore; he recalled the thrilling secrets of the traditional science of sciences; he showed how far its profound and recondite doctrines really assisted the mind in tracing the intelligible properties of things, and how far they were vain and preposterous. In doing this he lifted the veil that hangs over that branch of divine philosophy usually termed speculative freemasonry, and illustrated the majestic doctrines that lie hid beneath its venerable though fantastic formalities.

But, after all, the achievements for which Grotius was most popularly celebrated were those of universal literature and poetry. Here his surprising merits are more prominently conspicuous, and may be more easily delineated to the public notice. We shall soon produce some striking illustrations of them.

Four things did Grotius accomplish in literature, either of which should entitle him to immortality. In his treatise on The Truth of Christianity, he has made an invincible demonstration of our religion; in his Prayer for Peace he laid the broadest foundations of that truly catholic and apostolic policy which alone can make nations prosperous; in his Rights of Peace and War he established peace as the grandest desideratum of philanthropical statesmen, and reduced

N. S.-VOL. II.

UU

the horrors of war to the most mitigated aspect; finally, in his Adamus Exul, the proudest monument of his country's poetry, he formed the prototype and prepared the advent of Milton's Paradise Lost.

THE SECOND PART OF GÖTHE'S FAUST.

TRANSLATED INTO RHYTHMICAL PROSE BY LEOPOLD J. BERNAYS.

(Continued from page 200.)

(War tumult in the Orchestra, at last passing over into clear, military tunes.)

The Rival Emperor's tent, throne, rich furniture.

Havequick. Speedbooty.

Speedbooty. So then we are the first come here.

Havequick. No raven flies as swift as we.
Speedbooty. O what a treasure here is heaped!
Where to begin? where to leave off?
Havequick. So full is filled the space entire !
I know not whereon I shall seize.

Speedbooty. For me the tapestry would be right,
My couch is often very bad.

Havequick. Here hangs a mighty club of steel,
For such a thing I long have wished.
Speedbooty. This mantle red with golden hem,
Of such a thing I've often dreamed.

Havequick (taking the weapon.)

With this the business soon is done,
We strike him dead, and then pass on.
Thou hast already much packed up,
And yet have taken nothing right.
Come, leave your plunder in its place,
One of these chests, come, carry forth!
This is the host's intended pay,
And in its belly is pure gold.

This is indeed a murderous weight!

I cannot bear it, cannot lift.

Havequick. Duck thyself, quickly! Thou must bend thee!
Upon your back so strong I'll place it.

Speedbooty. O dear! O dear! 'tis over quite.
The weight will break my back in two.

(The chest falls and flies open).