learned could be? If you will go into the world, you will see I was; for there you may hear thousands of able disputants, stoutly maintaining the cause of polytheism, who scarcely know how to read a word of any language. Yet these able divines do not stick to say, it is so and so in the Hebrew or the Greek. You may say perhaps of me and them, like master, like scholar. Marry, and so it was; and so much the better, I trow, for our cause. One thing I know, that I found it much easier to put different interpretations on the Hebrew words, which I did not, than on the Greek, which I did understand. However, I have done clever things in the Greek too. I did not suffer our own linguo to speak against ourselves, although as the language is vastly more known and fixed, than the Hebrew, so I found this work abundantly more difficult. But I was not such a bungler at the hocus pocus of words, as to permit those words I had myself invented, to mean any thing but what I pleased myself. Who has so good a right as I to take the meaning of a Greek author? or how dare any Greek author pretend to a meaning of his own, when I choose to have him mean somewhat else? Thus I encouraged myself, and brought all the Arians to think and act just as I did. You will be extremely pleased, by way of instance, to hear two specimens of their proficiency, the first relating to the Greek tongue alone, and the second relating both to that and the Hebrew.

As to the first, you may remember, that in all the bickerings between the Arians and orthodox of old, it was the constant custom of each party to draw up formulas of their faith, or creeds, as they called them, and invidiously to tender these for subscription to their opposites. The hatred they felt for our most zealous devotees was nothing to that they breathed against each other, on refusal. The Arians indeed found the way to put so many different senses on every word in the orthodox creeds, that as often as their worldly interest made a seeming compliance requisite, they could, with a safe conscience, subscribe the orthodox creeds, though conceived in terms extremely apt to stick in the throat of the swallower. However, down they went glibly enough, till at last the orthodox contrived a creed so wonderfully crabbed,

so ingeniously calculated to hamper the conscience of an Arian subscriber, and backed with such dreadful imprecations on all who did not believe its contents, that the Arians were fairly thrown out for many hundreds of years. But the last age had the honour to produce a perfect hero, one Clarke, for whom nothing was too hard.

He took this dreadful creed, which was penned in Greek, to task, and so managed the matter by a juggle of words, which I myself am amazed at, that it came out of his hands, what shall I tell you? why, neither more or less, than a good, sound, Arian creed.

The sight of his performance would be sufficient to convince you, there never lived so great a man.

Jupiter brags of his favourite Arius, and I own, not without reason; for all the men of his time were fools to him. But then he was a mere simpleton to my Clarke. O Clarke! Clarke! thou glory of all critics! if we get the world again to ourselves, it will be but just to give thee a temple and altar of thy own, for the immense services thou hast done to the cause of Polytheism.-The other specimen, which will afford thee infinite pleasure, is this:

The Jews and Christians, you know, had set up for the worship of one God only. Their Bible seemed to tie them to this by terms so exquisitely precise, and with denunciations so very terrible, that every man of them was ready, as you may remember, to be roasted alive, rather than worship any God but that one.

But behold! the Arians have fairly proved, they understood the true Hebrew and Greek meaning of neither the word God, nor the word worship. Nay, proved that the Christians must renounce their favourite Bible, or worship a great many other gods. The Christians may now see, if they are not blind, what sort of ninnies their ancient apologists, who wrote against Polytheism, must have been, and what became of all their martyrs, whom we carbonaded for adhering to the worship of one God. What say the Olympians to this? are we not in a fair way, think you?

As to the other question, how we may contrive to be worshipped under the names of the new Arian gods, it is easily resolved; and I hope, you will soon with satisfac

learned could be? If you will go into the world, you will see I was; for there you may hear thousands of able disputants, stoutly maintaining the cause of polytheism, who scarcely know how to read a word of any language. Yet these able divines do not stick to say, it is so and so in the Hebrew or the Greek. You may say perhaps of me and them, like master, like scholar. Marry, and so it was; and so much the better, I trow, for our cause. One thing I know, that I found it much easier to put different interpretations on the Hebrew words, which I did not, than on the Greek, which I did understand. However, I have done clever things in the Greek too. I did not suffer our own linguo to speak against ourselves, although as the language is vastly more known and fixed, than the Hebrew, so I found this work abundantly more difficult. But I was not such a bungler at the hocus pocus of words, as to permit those words I had myself invented, to mean any thing but what I pleased myself. Who has so good a right as I to take the meaning of a Greek author? or how dare any Greek author pretend to a meaning of his own, when I choose to have him mean somewhat else? Thus I encouraged myself, and brought all the Arians to think and act just as I did. You will be extremely pleased, by way of instance, to hear two specimens of their proficiency, the first relating to the Greek tongue alone, and the second relating both to that and the Hebrew.

As to the first, you may remember, that in all the bickerings between the Arians and orthodox of old, it was the constant custom of each party to draw up formulas of their faith, or creeds, as they called them, and invidiously to tender these for subscription to their opposites. The hatred they felt for our most zealous devotees was nothing to that they breathed against each other, on refusal. The Arians indeed found the way to put so many different senses on every word in the orthodox creeds, that as often as their worldly interest made a seeming compliance requisite, they could, with a safe conscience, subscribe the orthodox creeds, though conceived in terms extremely apt to stick in the throat of the swallower. However, down they went glibly enough, till at last the orthodox contrived a creed so wonderfully crabbed,

so ingeniously calculated to hamper the conscience of an Arian subscriber, and backed with such dreadful imprecations on all who did not believe its contents, that the Arians were fairly thrown out for many hundreds of years. But the last age had the honour to produce a perfect hero, one Clarke, for whom nothing was too hard.

He took this dreadful creed, which was penned in Greek, to task, and so managed the matter by a juggle of words, which I myself am amazed at, that it came out of his hands, what shall I tell you? why, neither more or less, than a good, sound, Arian creed.

The sight of his performance would be sufficient to convince you, there never lived so great a man.

Jupiter brags of his favourite Arius, and I own, not without reason; for all the men of his time were fools to him. But then he was a mere simpleton to my Clarke. O Clarke! Clarke! thou glory of all critics! if we get the world again to ourselves, it will be but just to give thee a temple and altar of thy own, for the immense services thou hast done to the cause of Polytheism.The other specimen, which will afford thee infinite pleasure, is this:

The Jews and Christians, you know, had set up for the worship of one God only. Their Bible seemed to tie them to this by terms so exquisitely precise, and with denunciations so very terrible, that every man of them was ready, as you may remember, to be roasted alive, rather than worship any God but that one.

But behold! the Arians have fairly proved, they understood the true Hebrew and Greek meaning of neither the word God, nor the word worship. Nay, proved that the Christians must renounce their favourite Bible, or worship a great many other gods. The Christians may now see, if they are not blind, what sort of ninnies their ancient apologists, who wrote against Polytheism, must have been, and what became of all their martyrs, whom we carbonaded for adhering to the worship of one God. What say the Olympians to this? are we not in a fair way, think you?

As to the other question, how we may contrive to be worshipped under the names of the new Arian gods, it is easily resolved; and I hope, you will soon with satisfac

tion see, it may be as easily effected. But I hold it imprudent to attempt the thing, till the Arians shall have introduced a greater number of divinities, for as yet they have found out but two or three, though they have promised us, as Jupiter hath observed, three hundred.

Venus. I did not expect to hear delays recommended by that god, from whom all the brisk and sprightly part of the world is denominated mercurial. Oh! how impatient I am to have my temples at Cnidos and Paphos rebuilt, and my sweet amorous rights restored!

Mom. Right female! I expected no less from your gust for parade and ambition, to say nothing of another more favourite passion. But I think you, Bacchus, and Apollo, have less pretence for impatience, than the rest of us.You, and your son there, are still in high vogue.-You have banquets made for you, ridottoes and assemblies celebrated in your honour, and hymns actually sung to you, with pristine warmth of heart, all over Europe. Bacchus hath hymns sung to him too, and orgies performed in the streets of every city and village, as often as night returns, and sometimes even in broad daylight. Apollo, also, and the nine Muses, are formally invoked in every garret.-Mercury likewise, hath still a good stroke of business among the dealers, and therefore hath no need to vote for precipitation, especially since he hath taken up the new trade of filching meanings from words, and putting others of less value in their place, like those merry thieves, who whip the handkerchief out of your pocket, and put a stone instead of it. But, my friends, if we shall be so lucky, as by the help of the Arians, to come in play again, it is my advice that we behave ourselves a little better than formerly, lest the Quakers, and other precisians make a party to kick us out a second time.-I would more especially recommend it to you to lay our friend Venus, and her blind by blow, under the severest rules, or otherwise we shall be presently wh-red out of all credit with the world. Be assured of it, if they get leave, they will turn us into rams, bulls, and he-goats, by the dozen; and then we may judge by the fate of our former divinities, what is likely to become of the new.

Venus. I desire, Mars, you may give that scurrilous jackarapes of a god, a good slap over the chaps.