Plinii Natural Hist. lib. 12, cap. 14.  “Alexandra Magno in pueritia sine parsimonia thura ingerenti aris, paedagogus Leonides dixerat, ut illo modo, cum devicisset thuriferas gentes, supplicaret.  At ille Arabia potitus; thure onustam navim misit ei, large exhortatus, ut Deos adoraret”.

i. e.  As Alexander the great, in the time of his minority, was heaping incense upon the altars, even to a degree of religious prodigality, his preceptor Leonidas told him, that he should prefer his supplications to the Gods after that free manner, when he had subdued the nations, whose produce was frankincense.  And he, as soon as he had made himself master of Arabia, sent him accordingly a ship laden with incense, and with it ample exhortations to adore the Gods.

One says, why should one think the intellectual world less peopled than the material?  Pliny, in his Natural History, lib. —–­ cap. — tells us that in Africa, do sometimes appear multitudes of aerial shapes, which suddenly vanish.  Mr. Richard Baxter in his Certainty of the Worlds of Spirits, (the last book he writ, not long before his death) hath a discourse of angels; and wonders they are so little taken notice of; he hath counted in Newman’s Concordance of the Bible, the word angel, in above three hundred places.

Hugo Grotius in his Annotations on Jonah, speaking of Niniveh, says, that history has divers examples, that after a great and hearty humiliation, God delivered cities, &c. from their calamities.  Some did observe in the late civil wars, that the Parliament, after a humiliation, did shortly obtain a victory.  And as a three-fold chord is not easily broken, so when a whole nation shall conjoin in fervent prayer and supplication, it shall produce wonderful effects.  William Laud, Arch-Bishop of Canterbury, in a sermon preached before the Parliament, about the beginning of the reign of King Charles I. affirms the power of prayer to be so great, that though there be a conjunction or opposition of Saturn or Mars, (as there was one of them then) it will overcome the malignity of it.  In the life of Vavasor Powel, is a memorable account of the effect of fervent prayer, after an exceeding drought:  and Mr. Baxter (in his book aforementioned) hath several instances of that kind, which see.

      **St. Michael and all Angels. 
      The Collect.

0 everlasting God, who hast ordered and constituted the services of men and angels, after a wonderful manner:  mercifully grant, that as thy holy angels always do thee service in Heaven:  so by thy appointment, they may succour and defend us, through Jesus Christ our Lord.  Amen.

CORPS-CANDLES IN WALES.

      **Part of a Letter to Mr. Baxter.

SIR

I am to give you the best satisfaction I can touching those fiery apparitions* (Corps Candles) which do as it were mark out the way for corpses to their {Greek text:  Koimeterion} and sometimes before the parties themselves fall sick, and sometimes in their sickness.  I could never hear in England of these, they are common in these three counties, viz.  Cardigan, Carmarthen, and Pembroke, and as I hear in some other parts of Wales.**