. It is as follows:--

'EPIGRAM, _occasioned by a religious dispute at Bath_.

'On Reason, Faith, and Mystery high,
Two wits harangue the table;
B----y believes he knows not why.
N---- swears 'tis all a fable.
Peace, coxcombs, peach, and both agree,
N----, kiss they empty brother:
Religion laughs at foes like thee,
And dreads a friend like t'other.'

BOSWELL. The disputants are supposed to have been Beau Nash and Bentley,
the son of the doctor, and the friend of Walpole. Croker. John Wesley in
his _Journal_, i. 186, tells how he once silences Nash.

[892] See ante, ii. 105.

[893] Waller, in his _Divine Poesie_, canto first, has the same thought
finely expressed:--

'The Church triumphant, and the Church below,
In songs of praise their present union show;
Their joys are full; our expectation long,
In life we differ, but we join in song;
Angels and we assisted by this art,
May sing together, though we dwell apart.'

BOSWELL.

[894] See Boswell's _Hebrides_, post, v. 45.

[895] In the original, _flee_.

[896] The sermon thus opens:--'That there are angels and spirits good
and bad; that at the head of these last there is ONE more considerable
and malignant than the rest, who, in the form, or under the name of a
_serpent_, was deeply concerned in the fall of man, and whose _head_, as
the prophetick language is, the son of man was one day to _bruise_; that
this evil spirit, though that prophecy be in part completed, has not yet
received his death's wound, but is still permitted, for ends
unsearchable to us, and in ways which we cannot particularly explain, to
have a certain degree of power in this world hostile to its virtue and
happiness, and sometimes exerted with too much success; all this is so
clear from Scripture, that no believer, unless he be first of all
_spoiled by philosophy and vain deceit [Colossians_, ii. 8], can
possibly entertain a doubt of it.'

Having treated of _possessions_, his Lordship says, 'As I have no
authority to affirm that there _are_ now any such, so neither may I
presume to say with confidence, that there are _not_ any.'

'But then with regard to the influence of evil spirits at this day upon
the SOULS of men, I shall take leave to be a great deal more
peremptory.--(Then, having stated the various proofs, he adds,) All
this, I say, is so manifest to every one who reads the Scr