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One low word spoils all the dignity and beauty of the following description of our Saviour's fufferings. Jefus wept : but when? Was it when he endured the contradiction of finners against himself? Was it when he was betrayed by one dif ciple, denied by another, and abandoned by all? Was it, &c. &c. &c. &c. His foul difdains the meannefs. He dropt not a tear. He uttered not a groan. He spoke not a word. Was it then when scourged, when buffeted, when crowned with thorns, when arrayed in a ludicrous robe, when fpit upon, when hoodwinked, when addreffed with the mock honours of royalty, or when ftruck by the very fervants with the palms of their hands?'

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In a discourse on the deceitfulness of fin' (for the beginning of which he is indebted, though he doth not acknowledge the obligation, to Yorick's fermon on Confcience), we are prefented with the following clufter of incompatible images. fofters a viper which eats into his bowels. He drinks of a cup, which though fweet as honey, like the prophet's roll, yet like the book devoured by St. John, is bitter in the belly, nay ftings as a ferpent, and bites as an adder.' Here vipers, ferpents, adders, honey, prophets, apoftles, books, rolls, bowels and bellies, "dance (as Junius obferves of a fimilar mixture of ftrange figures) through all the mazes of metaphorical confufion!"

Dr. Milne fometimes condefcends to foften the high tone of Ciceronian eloquence, and plays with pretty points and antithefes. Is it (he afks) fo difficult for a man to cross himself, as to take up the cross and follow the Saviour-through the rugged roads of adverfity, as through the "primrofe path" of affluence and fplendor? Take another example of the preacher's delectable manner of fporting with words. Tell me when he began to love you, and I will tell you to what age you are permitted to offend him. He loved you before you had an existence, and shall you not love him whilst you exift? It was in the flower of his years that the Saviour died for you: and in the flower of your years fhall you difdain to live for him? Old puritanical Dyer's Golden Chain"-to be worn about the necks of the babes in Chrift, is not ornamented with a prettier toy!

One would imagine that Dr. Milne had been converfant with the writings of Dr. Everard and the myftic preachers of the last century, by the propenfity which he difcovers of turning to allegory what is related as a fact. Hence he calls our Saviour the "invincible Sampson, who, if he had pleased, could have shivered the nails and the chains to atoms.'- By the fame licence of departing from the letter, he talks of flaugh-. tering, like Judith, our spiritual Holofernes-that mafter-vice, which, though but one in fpecies, produces, cherishes, and fortifies many more.'

REV. May, 1780.

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Dr. Milne's zeal against infidels and infidelity is fo great, that he could not avoid a fort of a back-hand ftroke at Mr. Hume, and his manner of quitting the world. "He will boaft to the laft moments (fays the Preacher) of a pretended strength of mind which fhall flatter his vanity; incline to feem fuperior to vulgar errors, to brave the authority of heaven, and view the uncertainty of an hereafter with a fixed and tranquil eye; leave to the fpectators the dreadful pleasure of a witticifm at the expence of his eternal falvation, and talk jocularly of Styx and Charon. (Vid. Serm. On the Deceitfulness of Sin, p. 216. comp. with Dr. Adam Smith's Letter to William Strahan, Efq; affixed to Mr. Hume's Life.)

We fhall produce one fpecimen more of the Preacher's zeal; and it will ferve as a farther fpecimen of his happy talent at antithefis. Would you take thofe for your models whofe names offer themselves with horror to remembrance, the Vaninis, the Spinofas, the Woolftons, the Voltaires? or the

Now, gentle Reader, doft thou not expect fome modern champion of the Chriftian church to figure in the contraft?-the Pafcals, the Boyles, the Newtons, the Lockes, the Lytteltons! -Thou art miftaken! Dr. Milne oppofes to the Spinofas, the Woolftons and the Voltaires- the Abrahams, the Jofephs, the Jobs, the Elijahs, the Daniels, the apoftolical men, who fhone as lights in the world. Maintain (fays he) if you can this parallel.It is not our bufinefs, nor the bufinefs of any one's but the Doctor's, to maintain fuch a parallel; and it will require more ingenuity than he is poffeffed of to maintain it with any grace.

Dr. Milne, and the partial friends who perfuaded him to commit his compofitions to the infpection of the public,' will certainly accufe us of great feverity and ill-nature in treating him with fuch freedom as we have in the preceding remarks. But when we think we have difcharged an honeft, though harsh and ungrateful duty; and when we know that we have done it without the flighteft perfonal prejudice against the Author, or even the most diftant knowledge of the man, any farther than he hath made himself known to us by his publications, we shall acquit ourselves to our own confciences, and confider every fplenetic reflection from partiality and disappointment as a thing of course. We confider Dr. Milne as a moft dangerous and corrupt model for our young divines-who are too eafily captivated by the charms of a falfe and fpecious eloquence, to the neglect, and perhaps the contempt, of those words of truth and Joberness, which aim more at the conviction of the judgment than at the inflammation of the paffions; and gain by a calm and lafting effect, what they mifs by fudden and violent emotions.

ART,

ART. IV. Principles of Elearicity, containing divers new Theorems and Experiments, together with an Analysis of the fuperior Advan tages of high and pointed Condu&ors, &c. By Charles Viscount Mahon, F. R. S. 4to. 10. 6d. Boards. Elmfly. 1779.

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HOUGH the ingenious and noble Author of this performance profeffes to establish in it the fundamental laws of Electricity; the prefent is not an elementary treatise of that fcience. The reader is accordingly supposed to be acquainted with the common experiments, and the general properties of electricity, which have been already eftablished by others.

The Author first treats of Electric Atmospheres; and endeavours to fhew that they are conftituted of the particles of air furrounding the electrified body. If, for inftance, the body be pofitively electrified, he maintains that it will depofit, upon all the particles of air that furround it, and come fucceffively in contact with it, a proportional part of its fuperabundant electri city fo that they will become likewife pofitively electrified, and form a pofitively electrified atmosphere. The fame reasoning is applied, mutatis mutandis, to negatively electrified bodies, and their negative atmospheres.

From this principle, and the obfervation that the denfity of an electrical atmosphere diminishes, in a certain ratio, as the diftance from the electrified body increases, as well as from other confiderations, the Author undertakes to affign the caufe, why an electrified body, to which a projecting point is affixed, parts with, or receives, electricity more readily than a fmooth cylindrical or globular body :-Because the fuperabundant electricity of the body, which we will fuppofe to be positively electrified, and which, in all cafes, tends to quit it, will, when a point is affixed to it, meet with lefs refiftance to its escape; as the point projects beyond the denfe part of the electrical atmosphere of the body, into the rarer and, confequently, more unrefifting part of that atmosphere. But the efcape of the electric matter from any part of a smooth cylindrical body, pofitively electrified, is prevented or impeded; because every part of its furface is in contact with the denfeft part of its own ftrongly refifting electric atmosphere. The furface too of the point being extremely fmall, the lefs will be the refiftance op

We wonder that the Author fhould take no notice of those ob. fervations of Dr. Franklin, that feem to militate against this doctrine; particularly his experiment, in which a large electrified cork ball, fixed to the end of a filk string, was whirled fwiftly round a hundred times in the air, like a fling; without fuftaining any fenfible lofs of electricity, after having paffed through 800 yards of air. Sce his Experiments and Obfervations on Elearicity, &c. Letter VI.

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posed to the escape of the fuperabundant electricity of the body, into that rare part of its electrical atmosphere into which the point projects.

Among other illuftrations of this principle the Author produces the cafe of a pointed wire, placed between two round or prominent metallic bodies, with its point on a level with their furfaces. In this fituation, when prefented to an electrified body, it acts no longer as a point, or only in a very small degree: because the denfe part of the electrical atmosphere of the two round bodies flows or is extended over it.

The Author's fucceeding experiments fhew that an infulated fmooth body, a cylindrical conductor for inftance, immerged within the electrical atmosphere, but beyond the striking distance, of another body, which we shall fuppofe to be charged positively, is, at one and the fame time, in different parts of it, in a ftate of three-fold electricity.' The end next to the charged body acquires negative electricity; and the farther end becomes pofitively electrified while a certain part of the body, fomewhere between its two extremities, is in a natural, unelectrified, or neutral state: fo that the two contrary electricities exactly counterbalance each other in that part. The Author on this occafion employs geometrical reasoning, as well as experiments, to determine the precife place of this un-electrified point, or rather line, in a cylinder or other given body; and to demonftrate that the density of electrical atmospheres is inverfely as the fquare of the distance from the electrified body.

We scarce need to add, that if the body be not infulated, or have a communication with the earth, the whole of it will be in a negative state: a certain portion of its natural quantity of electricity being driven into the common mais, by the preffure, repulfion, or other action, of the electric matter belonging to the charged prime conductor. The extenfive and fruitful principle, on which this and the preceding effects depend, has frequently been explained or referred to in the courfe of our Journal; particularly, and very lately, in our Review for December laft, page 408; where it is noticed for the purpofe of explaining the phenomena of the electrophorus. We take the more particular notice of it at prefent; as one of the Author's most remarkable obfervations on the fubject of thunderstorms, and from which he draws fome very striking, indeed formidable, conclufions, is founded upon it.

We allude to what the Author calls the electrical returning froke; by means of which, he alleges that, in a thunderstorm,

To avoid repetition, or circumlocution, we fhall, throughout the remainder of this Article, conftantly fuppofe the electrified body to be charged with pofitive electricity.

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the most fatal effects may be produced, even at a vast distance from the place where the lightning falls. This obfervation appears to be of fo much importance, that we shall endeavour to give as clear an idea of the experiments on which it is founded, as can be conveyed by us, without the use of plates: not confining ourselves to any particular experiment; but relating fuch material circumftances common to them all, as may best convey the Author's meaning in the fewest words.

We ought to premife that the Author ufed a very powerful machine, made by Mr. Nairne; the prime conductor of which (fix feet long, by one foot diameter) would generally, when the weather was favourable, ftrike into a brafs ball connected with the earth, to the distance of eighteen inches, or more. In the following account this brafs ball, which we fhall call A, is fuppofed to be conftantly placed at the striking diftance; fo that the prime conductor, the inftant that it becomes fully charged, explodes into it.

Another large conductor, which we fhall call the fecond conductor, is fufpended, in a perfectly infulated state, farther from the prime conductor than the flriking distance, but within its electrical atmosphere;-at the diftance of fix feet, for inftance. A perfon ftanding on an infulating ftool touches this fecond conductor very lightly with a finger of his right hand; while, with a finger of his left hand, he communicates with the earth, by touching very lightly a fecond brafs ball fixed at the top of a metallic ftand, on the floor, and which we shall call B.

While the prime conductor is receiving its electricity, fparks pafs (at least if the diftance between the two conductors is not too great) from the fecond conductor to the infulated perfon's right hand; while fimilar and fimultaneous fparks pass out from the finger of his left hand into the fecond metallic ball B, communicating with the earth. These fparks are part of the natural quantity of electric matter belonging to the second conductor, and to the infulated perfon; driven from them, into the earth, through the ball B, and its ftand, by the elaftic preffure or action of the electrical atmosphere of the prime conductor. The fecond conductor and the infulated perfon are hereby reduced to a negative ftate.

At length however the prime conductor, having acquired its full charge, fuddenly ftrikes into the ball, A, of the first metallic ftand, placed for that purpose at the striking distance of 17 or 18 inches. The explofion being made, and the prime conductor fuddenly robbed of its electric atmosphere, its preffure or action on the second conductor, and on the infulated perfon, as fuddenly ceases; and the latter inftantly feels a fmart returning ftroke, though he has no direct or vifible communication (except by the floor) either with the friking or ftruck body; and is placed at the dif

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