) PREFACE. IANA's Temple (at Ephesus) being burnt that Night Alexander was born, One said, was no Wonder, for She was then a Gossiping Pella: Which Tully commends as a witty ceit, and Plutarch condemns as a witless Jest. o then can expect Hints of this Nature shou'd e the Manna) please every Palate? If they › to set Youth a Thinking, The End is answer'd. Go, little book, show to the fool his face, These characters being meerly intended to expose vice and folly; let none pretend to a key; nor seek for another's picture, lest he find night? 2. Son. Mr. so late last invited me to his club at the Noah's ark, where, in a low room, that stunk like a drunkard's morning breath, several sat round the fire, complaining of gouts, dropsies, consumptions, pleurisies, palsies, rheumatisms, catarrhs, &c. till more company coming in, cry'd, to the table, to the table, where one began his right hand man's good health, over the left thumb, which having gone round the next was begun, and so they drank on till each had pledg'd every man's health in the room. 3. Father. Many cups, many diseases. Too much. oil choaks the lamp. 4. Drinking healths according to St. Austin1 was invented by pagans and infidels, who in their sacrifices consecrated them to the honour, name, and memory of Beel-ze-bub. But 5. 6. 7. Supposing health-drinking only a well-wishing, custom having made not pledging a kind of affront, and wrong, to both toaster and toasted; and fear of offending carrying with it the force, tho' not the form, of a constraint. Health-drinking infringes king Ahasuerus's royal law, tends to excess, and is not expedient. 2 But what followed? for wine immoderately taken makes men think themselves wondrous wise. Son. Most of them became like Solomon's fool, full of words.3 8. Father. What was 't they said ? 9. Son. E'en what came uppermost; for as wine laid reason asleep, each gave the reins to his vanity and folly. For instance. 2 Esther 1. 8. 1 De Tem. Ser. 231. 3 Eccl. 10. 14. 10. ONE affecting to be thought a mighty antiquary declared himself an idolater of ages past, and told II. us, That the Egyptians were fam'd for sublime thoughts-Chaldeans for sciences-Greeks for eloquence-and Romans for polite stile. 12. That he almost adored Marcilius Ficinus, for collecting out of many mouldy and worm-eaten transcripts, the semi-divine labours of Plato-Copernicus, for rescuing from the jaws of oblivion, the almost extinct astrology of Samius AristarchusLucretius, for retrieving the lost physiology of |