peculiar rites and circumstances of the Jewish Temple, From this source the Theology of the Persians received improvements in correct and influential notions of Deity especially, and was enriched with the history and doctrines of the Mosaic records. The affairs of the Greeks were so interwoven with those of the Persians, that the sages of Greece could not be ignorant of the opinions of Zertushta, known to them by the name of Zoroaster, and from this school some of their best notions were derived. Note C.-Page 19. crept into the Church of Christ itself. "The philosophy of the Greeks," he observes, led to unbelief, "because it was above measure refined and speculative, and used to be determined by metaphysical rather than by moral principles, and to stick to all consequences, how absurd soever, that were seen to arise from such principles." CHAPTER VI. Knowledge among the Heathen. The greatest corruptions of religion are to be traced The Necessity of Revelation;-State of Religious to superstition, and to that vain and bewildering habit of philosophizing which obtained among the ancients. Superstition was the besetting sin of the ignorant, vain speculation of the intelligent. Both sprung from the vicious state of the heart; the expression was different, but the effect the same. The evil probably arose in Egypt, and was largely improved upon by the philosophers of Greece and India. Systems, hypotheses, cosmogonies, &c. are all the work of philosophy; and the most subtle and bewildering errors, such as the eternity of matter, the metempsychosis, the absorption of the human soul at death, &c., have sprung from them. Ancient wisdom, both religious and moral, was contained in great principles, expressed in maxims, without affectation of systematic relation and arrangement, and without any deep research into reasons and causes. The moment philosophy attempted this, the weakness and waywardness of the human mind began to display themselves. Theories sprung up in succession; and confusion and contradiction at length produced skepticism in all, and in many matured it into total unbelief. The speculative habit affected at once the opinions of ancient Africa and Asia; and in India, the philosophy of Egypt and Greece remains to this day, ripened into its full bearing of deleterious fruit. The similarity of the Greek and modern Asiatic systems is indeed a very curious subject; for in the latter is exhibited at this day the philosophy of paganism, while in other places false religion is seen only or chiefly in its simple form of superstition. The coincidence of the Hindoo and Greek mythology has been traced by Sir W. Jones; and his opinions on this subject are strongly confirmed by the still more striking coincidence in the doctrines of the Hindoo and Grecian philosophical sects. "The period," says Mr. Ward View of the History of the Hindoos, &c.)," when the most eminent of the Hindoo philosophers flourished, is still involved in much obscurity; but the apparent agreement in many striking particulars between the Hindoo and the Greek systems of philosophy, not only suggests the idea of some union in their origin, but strongly pleads for their belonging to one age, notwithstanding the unfathomable antiquity claimed by the Hindoos; and after the reader shall have compared the two systems, the author is persuaded he will not consider the conjecture as improbable, that Pythagoras and others did really visit India, or that Goutumu and Pythagoras were contemporaries, or nearly so."-Vol. 4. "Many of the subjects discussed among the Hindoos were the very subjects which excited the disputes in the Greek academies, such as the eternity of matter, the first cause; God the soul of the world; the doctrine of atoms; creation; the nature of the gods; the doctrines of fate, transmigration, successive revolutions of worlds, absorption into the Divine Being, &c." Ibid. page 115. Mr. Ward enters at large into this coincidence in his Introductory Remarks to his fourth volume, to which the reader is referred. It shall only be observed, that those speculations and subtle arguments just mentioned, both in the Greek and Asiatic branches of pagan philosophy, gave birth to absolute Atheism. Several of the Greek philosophic sects, as is well known, were professedly Atheistic. Cudworth enumerates four forms assumed by this species of unbelief. The same principles which distinguished their sects may be traced in several of those of the Hindoos, and above all the Atheistical system of Budhoo branched off from the vain philosophy of the Brahminical schools, and has extended farther than Hindooism itself. The reason of all this is truly given by Bishop Warburton, as to the Greeks, and it is equally applicable to the Asiatic philosophy of the present day, which is so clearly one and the same, and also to many errors which have SEVERAL presumptive arguments have been offered in favour of the opinion, that Almighty God in his goodness has made an express revelation of his will to mankind. They have been drawn from the fact, that we are moral agents, and therefore under a law or rule of conduct-from the consideration that no law can be binding till made known, or at least rendered cognizable by those whom it is intended to govern-from the inability of the generality of men to collect any adequate information on moral and religious subjects by processes of induction-from the insufficiency of reason, even in the wisest, to make any satisfactory discovery of the first principles of religion and duty-from the want of all authority and influence in such discoveries, upon the majority of mankind, had a few minds of superior order and with more favourable opportunities been capable of making them-from the fact that no such discovery was ever made by the wisest of the ancient sages, inasmuch as the truths they held were in existence before their day, even in the earliest periods of the patriarchal ages-and from the fact, that whatever truths they collected from early tradition, or from the descendants of Abraham, mediately or immediately, they so corrupted under pretence of improving them,(9) as to destroy their harmony and moral influence, thereby greatly weakening the probability that moral truth was ever an object of the steady and sincere pursuit of men. To these presumptions in favour of an express revelation, written, preserved with care, and appointed to be preached and published under the authority of its Author, for the benefit of all, wise or unwise, we may add the powerful presumption which is afforded by the necessity of the case. This necessity of a revelation is to be collected, not only from what has been advanced, but from the state of moral and religious knowledge and practice, in those countries where the records which profess to contain the Mosaic and the Christian revelations have been or are still unknown. The necessity of immediate divine instruction was acknowledged by many of the wisest and most inquiring of the heathen, under the conviction of the entire inability of man unassisted by God to discover truth with certainty,-so greatly had the primitive traditional revelations been obscured by errors before the times of the most ancient of those sages among the heathen whose writings have in whole or in part been transmitted to us, and so little confidence had they in themselves to separate truth from error, or to say, "This is true and that false." And as the necessity of an express and authenticated revelation was acknowledged, so it was publicly exhibited, because on the very first principles of religion and morals, there was either entire ignorance, or no settled and consonant opinions, even among the wisest of mankind themselves.(1) (9) Plato, in his Epinominis, acknowledges that the Greeks learned many things from the barbarians, though he asserts that they improved what they thus borrowed, and made it better, especially in what related to the worship of the gods. Plat. Oper. p. 703, edit. Ficin. Lugd. 1590. (1) Plato, beginning his discourse of the gods and the generation of the world, cautions his disciples " not to expect any thing beyond a like conjecture concerning these things." Cicero, re ing to the same subject, says, "Latent ista omnia crassis occulta et circumfusa tenebris; all these things are involved in deep obscurity." The following passage from the same author may be recommended to the consideration of modern exalters of the power of unassisted reason. The treasures of Some proofs of this have already been adduced; but the importance of the subject requires that they should be enlarged. Though the belief of one Supreme Being has been found in many parts of the world, yet the notion of subordinate deities, the immediate dispensers of good and evil to men, and the objects of their fear and worship, has almost equally obtained; and this of necessity destroyed or greatly counteracted the moral influence of that just opinion. "The people generally among the Gentiles," says Dr. Tenison," did rise little higher than the objects of sense. They worshipped them each as supreme in their kind, or no otherwise unequal than the sun and the moon, or the other celestial bodies, by the adoration of which the ancient idolaters, as Job intimateth, denied (or excluded) the God that is above. Porphyry himself, one of the most plausible apologists for the religion of the Gentiles, doth own in some the most gross and blockish idolatry of mean objects. He tells us, that it is not a matter of which we should be amazed, if most ignorant men esteemed wood and stones divine statues; seeing they who are unlearned look upon monuments which have inscriptions upon them as ordinary stones, and regard books as so many bundles of paper."(2) The modern idolatry of Hindostan, which in principle differs nothing from that of the ancient world, affords a striking comment upon this point, and indeed is of great importance in enabling us to conceive justly of the true character and practical effects of idolatry in all ages. One Supreme Being is acknowledged by the Hindoos, but they never worship him, nor think that he concerns himself with human affairs at all. "The Hindoos believe in one God, so completely abstracted in his own essence however, that in this state he is emphatically the unknown, and is consequently neither the object of hope nor of fear, he is even destitute of intelligence, and remains in a state of profound repose."(3) "This being," says Moore,(4) " is called Brahm, one eternal mind, the self-existing, incomprehensible Spirit. To him, however, the Hindoos erect no altars. The objects of their adoration commence with the triad, Brahma, Vishnu, and Seva, which represent the almighty powers of creation, preservation, and destruction." The learned among the classic heathen, it is true, occasionally speak nobly concerning God and his attributes; but at the same time they were led by their | own imaginations and reasonings to conclusions, which neutralize the effect of their sublimer conceptions and often contradict them. The eternity of matter, for instance, was held by the Greek and Roman philosophers and by their preceptors in the Oriental schools, who thought it absolutely impossible that any thing should be produced from nothing, thus destroying the notion of creation in its proper sense, and of a Supreme Creator. This opinion, as Bishop Stillingfleet shows,(5) is contrary to the omnipotence and independence of God, and is a great abatement of those correct views which the words of the ancient philosophers would seem sometimes to express.(6) It had another injurious effect; it destroyed the interesting doctrine of Divine government as to those natural evils to which men are subject. These they traced to the unchangeable and eternal nature of matter, which even the Supreme God could not control. Thus Seneca says,(7) "that evil things happen to good men, quia non potest Artifex mutare materiam, because God the Artificer could not change matter; and that a magno Artifice multa formantur prava, many things were made ill by the great Artificer; not that he wanted art, but through the stubbornness of matter," in which they generally agree. This opinion of theirs was brought from the Oriental schools, where it had been long received; nor was it confined to Egypt and Chaldea. It was one of the dogmas which Confucius taught in China in the fifth century before Christ, that out of nothing that which is cannot be produced, and that material bodies must have existed from all eternity. From this notion it follows, that there is no calamity to which we are not liable, and that God himself is unable to protect us from it. Prayer is useless, and trust in him is absurd. The noble doctrine of the infliction of misery by a wise and gracious Being for our correction and improvement, so often dwelt upon in Scripture, could have no place in a system which admitted this tenet; God could neither be a refuge in trouble," nor a Father" correcting us for our profit, that we might be partakers of his holiness." they knew of God was therefore by such speculations rendered entirely unprofitable. What But a worse consequence resulted from this opinion. By some of them the necessary obliquity and perverseness of matter was regarded not only as the source of natural but also of moral evil; by which they either made sin necessary and irresistible, or found in this opinion much to palliate it. Others refer moral evil to a natural principle of evil, an evil God, "emulous of the good God," which Plutarch says,(8) is a tradition of great antiquity, derived (5) Origines Sacræ, 1. 3, c. 2. the philosophy of past ages were poured at his feet, and he had studied every branch of human wisdom with astonishing industry and acuteness, yet he observes, "Quod si tales nos natura genuisset, ut eam ipsam intu- When we meet with passages in the writings of eri, et perspicere, eademque optima duce cursum vitæ heathens which recommend moral virtues, and speak conficere possemus; haud erat sane quod quisquam in a fit and becoming manner of God, we are apt from rationem, ac doctrinam requireret. Nunc parvulos no- our more elevated knowledge of these subjects to atbis dedit igniculos, quos celeriter malis moribus, opi- tach more correct and precise ideas to the terms used, nionibusque depravati sic restinguimus, ut nusquam na- than the original writers themselves, and to give them turæ lumen appareat. If we had come into the world credit for better views than they entertained. It is in such circumstances, as that we could clearly and one proof, that though some of them speak, for instance, distinctly have discerned nature herself, and have been of God seeing and knowing all things, they did not able in the course of our lives to follow her true and conceive of the omniscience of God in the manner in uncorrupted directions, this alone might have been which that attribute is explained by those who have sufficient, and there would have been little need of learned what God is from his own words; that some teaching and instruction; but now nature has given of the pagan philosophers who lived after the Christian us only some small sparks of right reason, which we era complain that the Christians had introduced a very so quickly extinguish with corrupt opinions and evil troublesome and busy God, who did " in omnium mopractices, that the true light of nature nowhere ap-res, actus, omnium verba denique, et occultas cogitapears."-Tusc. Quæst. 3. tiones diligenter inquirere, diligently inquire into the The same author, Tusc. Quæst. 1, having reckoned manners, actions, words, and secret thoughts of all up the opinions of philosophers as to the soul's immor-men." Cicero too denies the foreknowledge of God, tality, concludes thus, "Harum sententiarum quæ vera and for the same reason which has been urged against est Deus aliquis viderit, quæ verisimillima est, magna it in modern times by some who, for the time at least, quæstio est. Which of these opinions is true, some God have closed their eyes upon the testimony of the Scripmust tell us; which is most like truth, is a great ques-tures on this point, and been willing in order to serve tion." Jamblicus, speaking of the principles of divine worship, saith, "It is manifest those things are to be done which are pleasing to God; but what they are, it is not easy to know, except a man were taught them by God himself, or by some person who had received them from God, or obtained the knowledge of them by some divine means."-Jamb. in Vit. Pythag. c. 28. (2) Discourse on Idolatry, p. 50. (3) Ward's Hindoo Mythology, vol. 2, p. 306. (4) Hindoo Pantheon, p. 132. a favourite theory, to go back to the obscurity of pa- (8) De Isid. et Osir.-Dr. Cudworth thinks that Plutarch has indulged in an overstrained assertion. but "from the divines, Ex Scoλoywv, and lawgivers to the poets and philosophers, whose first author cannot be found." But whether natural and moral evil be traced to an eternal and uncontrollable matter, or to an eternal and independent Anti-god, it is clear, that the notion of a Supreme Deity, as contained in the Scriptures, and as conceived of by modern Theists, who have borrowed their light from them, could have no existence in such systems; and that by making moral evil necessary, men were taught to consider it as a misfortune rather than a crime, and were thus in fact encouraged to commit it by regarding it as unavoidable. In like manner, though occasionally we find many excellent things said of the providence of God, all these were weakened or destroyed by other opinions. The Epicurean sect denied the doctrine, and laid it down as a maxim, "that what was blessed and immortal gave neither any trouble to itself nor to others;" a notion which exactly agrees with the system of the modern Hindoos. "According to the doctrine of Aristotle, God resides in the celestial sphere, and observes nothing and cares for nothing beyond himself. Residing in the first sphere, he possesses neither immensity nor omnipresence; far removed from the inferior parts of the universe, he is not even a spectator of what is passing among its inhabitants."(9) The Stoics contended for a providence, but in their creed it was counteracted by the doctrine of an absolute necessity, or fate, to which God and matter, or the universe, which consists, as they thought, of both, was immutably subject; and where they allow it, they confine the care of the gods to great affairs only. The Platonists and the followers of Pythagoras believed that all things happened κατα θειαν προνοιαν, according to Divine Providence; but this they overthrew by joining fortune with God. God, fortune, and opportunity," says Plato," govern all the affairs of men."(1) To them also there were "lords many and gods many:" and wherever polytheism is admitted, it is as destructive of the doctrine of providence as fate, though by a different process. The fatalist makes all things fixed and certain, and thus excludes government; the polytheist gives up the government of the world to innumerable opposing and contrary wills, and thus makes every thing uncertain. If the favour of one deity be propitiated, the wrath of another, equally or more powerful, may be provoked; or the gods may quarrel among themselves. Such is the only providence which can be discovered in the Iliad of Homer and the Eneid of Virgil, poems which unquestionably imbody the popular belief of the times in which they were written. The same confused and contradictory management of the affairs of men we see in all modern idolatrous systems, only that with length of duration they appear to have become more oppressive and distracting. Where so many deities are essentially malignant and cruel to men; where demons are supposed to have power to afflict and to destroy at pleasure; and where aspects of the stars, and the screams of birds, and other ominous circumstances are thought to have an irresistible influence upon the fortunes of life and the occurrences of every day; and especially where, to crown the whole, there is an utter ignorance of one supreme controlling infinite Mind, or his existence is denied; or he who is capable of exercising such a superintendence as might render him the object of hope, is supposed to be totally unconcerned with human affairs; there can be no ground of firm trust, no settled hope, no permanent consolation. Timidity and gloom tenant every bosom, and in many instances render life a burden.(2) the confidence with which the philosopher speaks is at least a proof of the great extent of this opinion. (9) Enfield's History of Philosophy, lib. 2, cap. 9. (1) De Leg. lib. 4. (2) The testimony of missionaries, who see the actual effects of paganism in the different countries where they labour, is particularly valuable. On the point mentioned in the text, the Wesleyan missionaries thus speak of the state of the Cingalese :-"We feel ourselves incapable of giving you a full view of the deplorable state of a people, who believe that all things are governed by chance; who find malignant gods or devils in every planet, whose influence over mankind they consider to be exceeding great, and the agents who inflict all the evil that men suffer in the world. Another great principle of religion is the doctrine of a future state of rewards and punishments; and though in some form it is recognised in pagan systems, and the traditions of the primitive ages may be traced to their extravagant perversions and fables; its evidence was either greatly diminished, or it was mixed up with notions entirely subversive of the moral effect which it was originally intended to produce. Of the ancient Chaldean philosophy, not much is known. In its best state it contained many of the principles of the patriarchal religion; but at length, as we find from Scripture, it degenerated into the doctrine of judicial astrology, which is so nearly allied to fatalism, as to subvert the idea of the present life being a state of probation, and the future a state of just and gracious rewards and punishments. Ancient writers differ as to the opinions of the learned of Egypt on the human soul. Diodorus Siculus says, they believed in its immortality and the future existence of the just among the gods. Herodotus ascribes to them the doctrine of transmigration. Both may be reconciled. The former doctrine was the most ancient, the latter was induced by that progress of error which we observe among all nations. Another subtle notion grew up with it, which infected the philosophy of Greece, and spreading throughout Asia, has done more to destroy the moral effect of a belief in the future existence of man than any other. This was, "that God is the soul of the world," from which all human spirits came and to which they will return, some immediately, and others through long courses of transmigration. The doctrine of ancient revelation of which this was a subtle and fatal perversion is obvious. The Scripture account is, that the human soul was from God by creation; the refinement of pagan philosophy, that it is from him by emanation, or separation of essence, and still remains a separate portion of God, seeking its return to him. With respect to the future, revelation always taught, that the souls of the just return to God at death, not to lose their individuality, but to be united to him in holy and delightful communion; the philosophic perversion was, that the parts so separated from God, and connected for a time with matter, would be reunited to the great source by refusion, as a drop of water to the ocean.(3) Thus philosophy refined upon the doctrine of immortality, until it converted it into annihilation itself, for so it is in the most absolute sense as to distinct consciousness and personality. The prevalence of this notion under different modifications is indeed very remarkable. Bishop Warburton proves, that this opinion was held not merely by the Atheistical and skeptical sects among the Greeks, but by what he calls the Philosophic Quaternion of dogmatic Theists, the four renowned Schools, the PYTHAGORIC, the PLATONIC, the PERIPA TETIC, and the Sroic; and on this ground argues, that though they taught the doctrine of future rewards and punishments to the populace, as a means of securing their obedience to the laws, they themselves did not believe what they propagated; and in this he was doubtless correct. With future reward and punishment, in the proper and commonly received sense in all ages, this notion was entirely incompatible. He observes, "And that the reader may not suspect these kind of phrases, that the soul is part of God, discerpted from him, of his nature, which perpetually occur in the writings of the ancients, to be only highly figurative expressions, and not to be measured by the severe standard of metaphysical propriety, he is desired to take notice of one consequence drawn from this principle, and universally held by antiquity, which was this, that the soul was eternal à parte ante, as well as a parte post, which the Latins well express by the word sempiter A people so circumstanced need no addition to their miseries, but are objects towards which Christian pity will extend itself, as far as the voice of their case can reach. They are literally, through fear of death, or malignaut demons, all their lifetime subject to bondage." (3)" Interim tamen vix ulli fuere (quæ humanæ mentis caligo, atque imbecillitas est), qui non inciderint in errorem illum de refusione in Animam mundi. Nimirum, sicut existimârunt singulorum animas particulas esse animæ mundanæ quarum quælibet suo corpore, ut aqua vase, effluere, ac animæ mundi, e qua deducta fuerit, iterum uniri."-GASSENDI Animadv, in Lib. 10, Diog. Laertii, p. 550. 66 nus. But when the ancients are said to hold the pre to creep in again, and the same process is to go on for and post existence of the soul, and therefore to attribute ever."(5) This, too, is the Brahminical notion: "The a proper eternity to it, we must not suppose that they Hindoos are taught to believe, that at the end of every understood it to be eternal in its distinct and peculiar Calpa (creation or formation) all things are absorbed in existence; but that it was discerpted from the sub- the Deity, and at a stated time the creative power will stance of God in time and would in time be rejoined again be called into action."(6) And though the sysand resolved into it again; which they explain by a tem of the Budhists denies a creator, it holds the same bottle's being filled with sea water, that swimming species of revolution. They are of opinion that the there a while, on the bottle's breaking, flowed in again, universe is eternal, at least they neither know it had a and mingled with the common mass. They only dif- beginning or will have an end; that it is homogeneous fered about the time of this reunion and resolution- and composed of an infinite number of similar worlds, the greater part holding it to be at death; but the Py-each of which is a likeness of the other, and each of thagoreans, not till after many transmigrations. The which is in a constant state of alteration,--not stationPlatonists went between these two opinions, and re-ary for a moment,-at the instant of greatest perfection joined pure and unpolluted souls, immediately on death, beginning to decline, and at the moment of greatest to the universal Spirit. But those which had con- chaotic ruin beginning to regenerate. They compare tracted much defilement, were sent into a succession such changes to a wheel in motion perpetually going of other bodies to purge and purify them before they round."(7) returned to their parent substance." But other instances of darkness and error among Some learned men have denied the consequence even civilized heathens respecting the human soul and a which Warburton wished to establish from these pre-future state, are not wanting; for it is a fact which mises, and consider the resorption of these sages as ought never to be lost sight of in these inquiries, that figurative, and consequently compatible with distinct among pagans opinions on these subjects have never consciousness and individuality. The researches, how-been either certain or rational; and that error once reever, since that time made into the corresponding phi-ceived has in no instance been exchanged for truth; but losophy of the Hindoos, bear this acute and learned man has gone on multiplying itself, and assuming an infinite out to the full length of his conclusion. "God, as variety of forms. The doctrine of Aristotle and the Peseparated from matter, the Hindoos contemplate as a ripatetics gives no countenance to the opinion of the being reposing in his own happiness, destitute of ideas; soul's immortality, or even of its existence after death. as infinite placidity; as an unruffled sea of bliss; as Democritus and his followers taught, that the soul is being perfectly abstracted and void of consciousness. material and mortal; Heraclitus, that when the soul They therefore deem it the height of perfection to be is purified from moist vapours, it returns into the soul like this being. The person whose very nature, say of the universe; if not, it perishes: Epicurus and his they, is absorbed in divine meditation; whose life is followers, that "when death is, we are not." The like a sweet sleep, unconscious and undisturbed; who leading men among the Romans, when philosophy was does not even desire God, and who is changed into the introduced among them, followed the various Greek image of the ever blessed, obtains absorption into sects. We have seen the uncertainty of Cicero (8) Brumhu."(4) And that this doctrine of absorption is Pliny declares, that "non magis a morte sensus ullus taken literally is proved, not merely by the terms in aut anime aut corpori quam ante natalem, the soul which it is expressed, though these are sufficiently un- and body have no more sense after death, than before equivocal but by its being opposed by some of the we were born.(9) Cæsar," that beyond death, there is followers of Vishnoo, and by a few also of their philo- neque curæ neque gaudio locum, neither place for care sophers. Mr. Ward quotes Jumudugnee, as an excep- or joy."(1) Seneca in his 102d Epistle speaks of a divine tion to the common opinion. He says, "the idea of part within us, which joins us to the Gods; and tells losing a distinct existence by absorption, as a drop is Lucilius, "that the day which he fears as his last æterni lost in the ocean, is abhorrent. It is pleasant to feed natalis est, is the birth-day of eternity;" but then he on sweetmeats, but no one wishes to be the sweet- says, "he was willing to hope it might be so, on the meat itself." So satisfactorily is this point made out account of some great men, rem gratissimam promitagainst the "wisdom of this world ;"--by it the world tentium magis quam probantium, who promised what neither knew God nor man. they could not prove ;" and on other occasions he speaks (5) Ep. 9. (6) Moore's Hindoo Pantheon. (7) Dr. Davey's Account of Ceylon. Another notion equally extensive and equally destructive of the original doctrines of the immortality of the human soul, and a state of future rewards and punishments, which sprung up in the Egyptian schools, and was from thence transmitted into Greece, India, (8) From the philosophical works of Cicero it may and throughout all Asia, was that of a periodical de- be difficult to collect his own opinions, as he chiefly struction and renovation of all things. "They con-occupies himself in explaining those of others; but in ceived," says Diodorus Siculus, "that the universe un- his Epistles to his friends, when, as Warburton obdergoes a periodical conflagration, after which all things serves, we see the man divested of the politician and were to be restored to their primitive form, to pass the sophist, he professes his disbelief of a future state again through a similar succession of changes." The in the frankest manner. Thus in Lib. 6, Epist. 3, to primitive tenet, of which this was a corruption, is also Torquatus, written in order to console him in the unevident; and it affords another singular instance of the fortunate state of the affairs of their party, he observes: subtlety and mischief of that spirit of error which ope- "Sed hæc consolatio levis est; illa gravior, qua te uti rated with so much activity in early times, that the spero; ego certe utor. Nec enim dum ero, angar ulla doctrine of the destruction of the world, and the con- re, cum omni vacem culpa; et si non ero, sensu omsequent termination of the probationary state of the hu-nino carebo. But there is another and a far higher conman race preparatory to the general judgment, an solation which I hope is your support, as it certainly is awful and most salutary revelation, should have been mine. For so long as I shall preserve my innocence, so wrought into philosophic theory, and so surrounded I will never while I exist be anxiously disturbed at with poetic embellishment, as to engage the intellect any event that may happen; and if I shall cease to exand to attract the imagination, only the more effectually ist, all sensibility must cease with me." to destroy the great moral of a doctrine which was not denied, and covertly to induce an entire unbelief in the eternal future existence of man. Similar expressions are found in his letters to Toranius, to Lucius Mescinius, and others, which those who wish to prove him a believer in the soul's immortality As the Stoics held that all inferior divinities and hu- endeavour to account for by supposing that he accomman souls were portions separated from the soul of the modated his sentiments to the principles of his friends. world, and would return into the first celestial fire, so A singular solution, and one which scarcely can be sethey supposed, that at the same time the whole visible riously adopted, since in the above-cited passage he world would be consumed in one general conflagration. so strongly expresses what is his own opinion, and "Then," says Seneca, "after an interval the world hopes that his friend takes refuge in the same consowill be entirely renewed, every animal will be repro-lation. It may be allowed that Cicero alternated beduced, and a race of men free from guilt will repeople the earth. Degeneracy and corruption are, however, (4) Ward's View of the Hindoos, 8vo. vol. 2, p. 177, 178. tween unbelief and doubt; but never I think between (9) Nat. Hist. lib. 7, cap. 55.. "Felix qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas; Nor was the skepticism and unbelief of the wise and great long kept from the vulgar, among whom they wished to maintain the old superstitions as instruments by which they might be controlled. Cicero complains, that the common people in his day mostly followed the doctrine of Epicurus. The out plainly, and says, that death makes us incapable of verting to some of the precepts of the Second Table, good or evil. The poets, it is true, spoke of a future which imbodied the morals of the patriarchal ages, state of rewards and punishments; they had the joys under a new sanction. Of the obligation of these, all of Elysium and the tortures of Tartarus; but both phi-heathen nations have been sensible; and yet, in all, the losophers and poets regarded them as vulgar fables. rule was perverted in theory, and violated in practice. Virgil does not hide this, and numerous quotations of MURDER has, in all ages, and among all civilized and the same import might be given both from him and most savage heathen nations also, been regarded as an others of their poets. atrocious crime; and yet the rule was so far accommodated to the violent and ferocious habits of men, as to fill every heathen land with blood-guiltiness. slight regard paid to the life of man in all heathen countries cannot have escaped the notice of reflecting minds. They knew the rule; but the act under its grosser and more deliberate forms only was thought to violate it. Among the Romans, men were murdered in their very pastimes, by being made to fight with wild beasts and with each other; and though this was sometimes condemned as a "spectaculum crudele et inhumanum," yet the passion for blood increased, and no war ever caused so great a slaughter as did the gladiatorial combats. They were at first confined to the funerals of great persons. The first show of this kind exhibited in Rome by the Bruti on the death of their Since, then, these erroneous and mischievous views father, consisted of three couples, but afterward the concerning God, providence, and a future state, or number greatly increased. Julius Cæsar presented 300 the total denial of all of them, are found to have re-pairs of gladiators; and the emperor Trajan 10,000 of sulted from the rejection or loss of the primitive tra- them for the entertainment of the people. Sometimes ditions; and farther as it is clear that such errors are these horrid exhibitions, in which, as Seneca says, totally subversive of the fundamental principles of "Homo, sacra res, homo jam per lusum et jocum occimorals and religion, and afford inducement to the com- ditur," when the practice had attained its height, demission of every species of crime without remorse or prived Europe of 20,000 lives in one month.(2) fear of punishment; the necessity of a republication of these great doctrines in an explicit and authentic manner, and of institutions for teaching and enforcing them upon all ranks of men, is evident; and whatever proof may be adduced for the authentication of the Christian revelation, it can never be pretended, that a revelation to restore these great principles was not called for by the actual condition of man; and, in proportion to the necessity of the case, is the strength of the presumption that one has been mercifully afforded. If the necessity of a revelation may be argued from the confused, contradictory, and false notions of heathen nations as to the principal doctrines of religion; no less forcibly may the argument be pursued from the state of their morals both in knowledge and in practice. This argument is simple and obvious. If the nature, extent, and obligation of moral rules had become involved in great misapprehension and obscurity; if what they knew of right and wrong wanted an enforcement and an authority which it could not receive from their respective systems; and if, for want of efficient counteracting religious principles, the general practice had become irretrievably vicious;-a direct interposition of the Divine Being was required for the republication of moral rules, and for their stronger enforce ment. This is farther illustrated by the treatment of slaves, which composed so large a portion of the population of ancient states.(3) They knew and acknowledged the evil of murder, and had laws for its punishment; but to this despised class of human beings they did not extend the rule; nor was killing them accounted murder, any more than the killing of a beast. The master had absolute power of life, or death, or torture; and their lives were therefore sacrificed in the most wanton manner.(4) By various sophistries suggested by their vices, their selfishness, and their cruelty, the destruction of children also, under certain circumstances, ceased to be regarded as a crime. In many heathen nations it was allowed to destroy the fœtus in the womb; to strangle, or drown, or expose infants, especially if sickly or deformed; and that which in Christian states is considered as the most atrocious of crimes, was, by the most celebrated of ancient pagan nations, esteemed a wise and political expedient to rid the state of useless or troublesome members, and was even enjoined by some of their most celebrated sages and legislators. The same practice continues to this day in a most affecting extent, not only among uncivilized pagans, but among the Hindoos and the Chinese. This practice of perverting and narrowing the extent of the holy law of God which had been transmitted to (2) Though Cicero, Seneca, and others, condemned these barbarities, it was in so incidental and indifferent a manner, as to produce no effect. They were abolished soon after the establishment of Christianity, and this affords an illustration of the admission of Rousseau himself. "La Philosophie ne peut faire aucun bien, que la Religion ne le fasse encore mieux et la Religion en fait beaucoup que la philosophie ne sauroit faire." (3) 'n the 110th Olympiad, there were at Athens only 21,000 citizens and 40,000 slaves. It was common for a private citizen of Rome to have 10 or 20,000.-TAYLOR's Civil Law. The notions of all civilized heathens on moral subjects, like their knowledge of the first principles of religion, mingled as they were with their superstitions, prove that both were derived from a common source. There was a substantial agreement among them in many questions of right and wrong; but the boundaries which they themselves acknowledged were not kept (4) The youth of Sparta made it their pastime freup, and the rule was gradually lowered to the practice, quently to lie in ambush by night for the slaves, and sally though not in all cases so as entirely to efface the ori-out with daggers upon every Helot who came near them, ginal communication. This is an important consideration, inasmuch as it indicates the transmission of both religion and morals from the patriarchal system, and that both the primitive doctrines and their corresponding morals received early sanctions, the force of which was felt through succeeding ages. It shows, too, that even the heathen have always been under a moral government. The laws of God have never been quite obliterated, though their practice has ever been below their knowledge, and though the law itself was greatly and wilfully corrupted through the influence of their vicious inclinations. This subject may perhaps be best illustrated by ad and murder him in cold blood. The EPHORI, as soon as they entered upon their office, declared war against them in form, that there might be an appearance of destroying them legally. It was the custom for Vedius Pollio, when his slaves had committed a fault, sometimes a very trifling one, to order them to be thrown into his fish-ponds, to feed his lampreys. It was the constant custom, as we learn them Tacitus, Annal. xiv. 43, when a master was murdered in his own house, to put all the slaves to death indiscriminately. For a just and affecting account of the condition of slaves in ancient states, see PORTEUS's Beneficial Effects of Christianity. |