If you infert this prayer, I know not but I may fend you, for another occafion, one used by a very great wit of the laft age, which has allufions to the errors of a very wild life, and 'I believe you will think is written with ⚫ an uncommon fpirit. The perfon whom I mean was an excellent writer, and the publication of this prayer of his may be, perhaps, fome kind of anti'dote against the infection in his other writings. But this fupplication of the Bishop has in it a more happy and untroubled fpirit; it is (if that is not faying fomething too fond) the worship of an Angel concerned for those who had fallen, but himself still in the ftate of glory and innocence. The book ends with an act of devotion to this • effect.

O my God, if the greater number of mankind do not discover thee in that glorious fhow of nature, which thou haft placed before our eyes, it is not because thou art far from every one of us; thou art prefent to us more than any one object which we touch with our hands; but our fenfes, and the paffions which they produce in us, turn

our attention from thee. Thy light 'fhines in the midst of darkness, but the darkness comprehends it not.

Thou, O Lord, doft every where difplay thy• felf. Thou fhineft in all thy works, but art not regarded by heedless and • unthinking man. The whole creation talks aloud of thee, and echoes with the repetitions of thy holy name. But fuch is our infenfibility, that we are • deaf to the great and univerfal voice of nature. Thou art every where about us, and within us; but we wander from ourselves, become ftrangers to our own fouls, and do not apprehend thy prefence. O thou, who art the eternal foundation of light and beauty, who art the ancient of days, without beginning and without end: O thou who art the life of all that truly live, those can never fail to find thee, who feek for thee within themfelves. But alas, the very gifts which thou bestoweft upon us, do 'fo employ our thoughts, that they hinder us from perceiving the hand which con< veys them to us. We live by thee, and yet we live without thinking of thee; but, O Lord, what is life in the ignorance of thee? A dead unactive piece

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of matter, a flower that withers, a river ' that glides away, a palace that haftens to its ruin, a picture made up of fading colours, a mafs of fhining ore, ftrike our 'imaginations, and make us fenfible of their • Existence. We regard them as objects capable of giving us pleasure, not confidering that thou convey eft through them all the pleasure which we imagine they give us. Such vain empty objects that are only the fhadows of Being, are proportioned to our low and groveling thoughts. That beauty which thou haft poured out on thy creation, is as a veil which hides thee from our eyes. As thou art a Being too pure and exalted to pass through our fenfes, thou art not regarded by men, who have debafed their nature, and have made themselves like the beafts that perish. So infatuated are they, that, notwithftanding they know what is wifdom and virtue, which have neither found, nor colour, nor fmell, nor tafte, nor figure, nor any other fenfible quality, they can 'doubt of thy Existence, because thou art not apprehended by the groffer organs • of sense. Wretches that we are! we confider fhadows as realities, and truth

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as a phantom. That which is nothing is all to us, and that which is all appears 'to us nothing. What do we fee in all • nature but thee, O my God! thou, and only thou, appearest in every thing. • When I confider thee, O Lord, I am • swallowed up and loft in contemplation of thee. Every thing befides thee, even my own Existence vanishes and difappears in the contemplation of thee. I am loft to myself, and fall into nothing, when I think on thee. The man who • does not fee thee, has beheld nothing; he who does not tafte thee, has a relifh of nothing. His Being is vain, and his life but a dream. Set up thyfelf,O Lord, fet up thyfelf that we may behold thee. 'As wax confumes before the fire, and as 'the smoke is driven away, fo let thine 'enemies vanifh out of thy prefence. How unhappy is that foul who, without the fenfe of thee, has no God, no hope, no comfort to fupport him? But 'how happy the man who searches, fighs, and thirsts after thee! but he only is fully happy on whom thou lifteft up the light of thy countenance, whofe tears thou haft wiped away, and who enjoys, in thy loving-kindness, the completion of all his de

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fires. How long, how long, O Lord, fhall I wait for that day, when I fhall poffefs, in thy prefence, fulness of joy and pleasures for evermore? Omy God, in this pleafing hope, my bones rejoice and cry out, Who is like unto thee! my heart melts away, and my foul faints within me, when I look upon thee who art the God of my life, and my portion to all eternity.

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