” At the same time, do I not see the mercy and patience of a good God to a sinful world ? The desolations of the. world, how wonderfully would they be, if every transgression met with its just reward!” It is no rare thing for the children of men to, die by a thunderbolt: a king has been so slain in the midst of his army. There was a punishment of old used upon criminals, by pouring hot lead into their mouths, and used in imitation of God’s destroying with lightning; whereby the inward parts are burnt without any visible touch upon the outward. This death by lightning, has been frequently inflicted. Their being asleep at the time has not preserved them though there be fancy in Plutarch that it would ; nor would a tent of seal skin have done it, though some great ones have repaired to such an amulet for their protection. My God, I adore thy sovereign grace, that such a sinner as I, have not yet been by lightning turned into dust and ashes before thee !” I take notice of one thing, that as guilt lying on the minds of men, makes them startle at a thunder clap ; so the miscarriages about which our hearts do first and most of all misgive us in a thunder storm, are those which most of all call for a thorough repentance. There are some writings which cannot read, except I hold them against the fire; by having my heart held up against the lightning, I may quickly read my own iniquity.”" Impious people are deaf to thunder !”Kerlicius, in his Tractaius de Fulmine, reckons up a considerable number of those, which might be called Faslicia Fulmina. Such will they be that made these impressions upon us.The air of our atmosphere in which we breathe, is a diaphanous, compressible, dilatable fluid; a body covering the earth and the sea, to a great height above the highest mountains.There seem to be three different sorts of corpuscles, whereof the air is composed. There are such as are carried up into the air from othef bodies, as vapours exhaled by heat. There may be also a more subtile kind mixed with our air emitted from the heavenly bodies, and from the magnetic steams of the globe on which we sojourn. But there may be a third sort of particles which may most properly merit the name of aerial, as being the distinguishing parts of the air, taken in the stricter sense of the term. Thesd particles have an elasticity resembling the spring of a watch. Elasticity is an essential property of the air, and it is thought no other fluid has any thing of it, only as it participates of air, or has air contained in the pores of it.