So Sextus, or Sextius, the Pythagorean, taught; “_immortales crede te manere in judicio honores et pœnas._” And Bishop Ken deemed it would be an addition to his happiness in Paradise, if he should know that his devotional poems were answering on earth the purpose for which he had piously composed them: —should the well-meant songs I leave behind With Jesus' lovers an acceptance find, 'Twill heighten even the joys of Heaven to know That in my verse the Saints hymn God below. The _consensus gentium universalis_, is with the Philosophers and the Bishop, against South and Burnet: it affords an argument which South would not have disregarded, and to which Burnet has, on another occasion, triumphantly appealed. All sacrifices to the dead, and all commemorations of them, have arisen from this opinion, and the Romish Church established upon it the most lucrative of all its deceitful practises. Indeed the belief in apparitions, could not prevail without it; and that belief, which was all but universal a century ago, is still, and ever will be held by the great majority of mankind. Call it a prejudice if you will: “what is an universal prejudice,” says Reginald Heber, “but the voice of human nature?”—And Shakespeare seems to express his own opinion when he writes, “They say miracles are past; and we have our philosophical persons, to make modern and familiar, things supernatural and causeless. Hence it is that we make trifles of terrors, ensconcing ourselves into seeming knowledge, when we should submit ourselves to an unknown fear.”