- 
3808.] 
[ 453 ] 
Extracts from the Port-folio of a Man of Letters, 
{Communications to this Article are always thankfully received. ] 
—e——- . 
/ GREGORIO PAULI. 
REGORIC PAULI, a native of 
Brescz, in Poland, was setied, in 
41555, as an Unitarian minister at Wola, 
and at Cracow from 1560 to 1566. 
Preaching there in his church on Trinity- 
Sunday, lightning struck the building; 
which accident his vanity interpreted as 
a miraculous intimation that he was to 
be the subverter of the blasphemous and 
impious doctrine of the Trinity. He 
wrote many tracts against it; and valued so 
highly the efficacy of his anti-trinitarian 
zeal, that he got a great picture painted, 
in which Luther was represented demo- 
lishing the roof of a temple, Calvin the 
walls, and he the foundation. ‘That tem- 
ple was the church of Rome. The idea 
of the epitaph of Socinus- was plainly 
borrowed from this caricature picture. 
Gregorio Pauli died in 1591: but neither 
his Yabula de Trinitate, nor his Turris 
Babel, nor his Antidotum, nor his Epistola 
monitoria, and its successors, nor his De 
Antichristi Deo* essentia personato, nor 
his Explicatio initii Evangelit Johannis, 
nor his Judicium de invocundo Jesu Chris- 
to, nor his Reply to Palwologus, nor his 
Vernacular Catechism, nor his Tractacus 
fle Regno Christi millenario, nor his In- 
terpretatio verborum Pauli, I. Cor, viii. 6, 
nor even his Anti-calvinist poetic satire, 
which begins, 
Maximus esroruni quot sunt, quotque ante 
fuerunt, 
Quot vel erunt, Calvine, tuus deprenditur 
error: 
have secured to his name the permanent 
gratitude of an admiring universe, or even 
a regular article in the biographic dic- 
tienaries. The Unitarians ought to com- 
pile a literary Onomasticon of their own: 
that such industrious efforts may at least 
be remembered, where they will be ap- 
proved. Let us hope he has laboured 
for eternity, if not for immortality. 
SENTIMENT OF DIDEROT. 
We ovght not, says Diderot, in his 
tenth Pensie philosophique, to imagine the 
Deity as too good or too severe, Justice 
isa mid-line between the excesses of cle- 
mency-and of cruelty; as purgatory is a 
medium between impunity aud everlast- 
ing punishment, 
PUN. 
The French word for puns is calem- 
bours: and do not all nations call "em 
poor? . 
1 
MYSTICISM. 
The exaggerations of mysticism some=, 
times caricature what they strive to co- 
lossalize. Thus Jeremy Taylor speaking 
of the Nativity, says: the Virgin Mary 
childed on her knees, that she might bring 
forth her maker in the act of adoring 
him. 
LOCKE, 
To honour the illustrious dead, is to 
motive analogous excellence among the 
living. A monument for Locke has re- 
cently been proposed, and the subscrip- 
tion will no doubt be liberally patronized 
among the Whigs and Unitarians, whose 
political and religious sentiments owe 
diffusion and authority to his writings. 
His are rare merits, who taught philoso- 
phy to. be pious, religion to be rational, 
and liberty not to fear a military king. 
SWIET, 
The writings of Swift are uniformly 
hostile to the cause of religious liberty: 
Not content with the actual privileges of 
the Bucerists, he gravely numbers it 
among our political absurdities, to have 
intrusted the right of voting for members 
of parliament to persons not of the es 
tablished persuasion. 
EPITAPHS. 
It would be an useful occupation for 
our poets to compose short and hitting 
epitaphs for the tombs of the celebrated 
dead. The epitaph is the most instruc- 
tive part of the memorial; it wanders 
every where ; while the monumental bust, 
or statue} the emblems which designate, 
and the relievos which record, the actions 
of the buried, are known only to those 
who go in pilgrimage to the grave. 
The most natural form of epitaphseems 
to be an address from the manes ‘of the 
deceased to the survivors. As inthis in- 
scription for the toinb of a wife who died 
young, and who is supposed to apostros 
phize her husband. 
Immatura peri; sed tu felicior, annos 
Vive tuos, conjux optime, vive meos. 
But the chief excellence of an epitaph 
consists in its being strikingly and exclu- 
sively applicable to the interred individue 
al; nor ought it to-be too long for rememe 
brance. Such was the line proposed for 
Alexander’s coflin, 
Sufficit huic tumulus cui non suffecerat orbisy 
and that for Franklin’s bust, , 
Eripuit fulmen celo, sceptrumque tyrannis, 
or 
