166 I shall not exist, I shall be deprived of all sense.' "Nec enim dum ero, angar ulla re, cum omni caream culpâ ; et si non ero, sensu omni carebo." He makes no use, at any time, of the doctrine of the immortality of the soul for moral purposes, either for supporting men under their troubles, or for stimulating them to the practice of virtue; and the notion of future punishments is absolutely rejected and derided by him. In his notorious oration for Aulus Cluentius, he speaks of the punishments of the wicked as silly fables, and adds, "if these things are false, as all men understand them "to be, what has death taken from him" (that, is from Oppianicus, a man whom Cicero himself represents as a monster of wickedness, guilty of the most atrocious murders, &c.) "but a sense of pain." After perusing this you will not be surprised at being told, that Cicero often commends and justifies suicide; and warmly pleads for fornication, as having nothing blameable in it, and as a thing universally allowed and practised. I might next proceed to speak of PLINY, who openly argues against a future state; (t) of PLUTARCH, who treats the fear of future punishment as vain and childish, and wrote his book of Isis and Osiris as an apology for the pagan polytheism; of CATO of Utica, who has been held up as "a perfect model of virtue," but who lent his wife to Hortensius, was an habitual drunkard, (u) and taught and practised self-murder; and of SENECA, who pleads for suicide, justifies Cato's drunkenness, asserts that no man in his reason fears (t) Hist. Nat. lib. vii. cap. 55. VOL. I. (u) Seneca, De Tranquillitate Animi, cap. ult. D the gods, and contemns future punishments as vain terrors invented by the poets; but a detailed account of their sentiments and opinions would, in all the main points, be so strictly similar to what I have related of the other wise men of antiquity, that I omit it rather than render this letter tautologous and tiresome. (v) Before I terminate the present discussion, however, I cannot avoid remarking that several of the heathen philosophers, instead of being puffed up with vain ideas of the powers of their own understanding, when directed to religious and moral inquiries (as most modern Deists are), frequently acknowledged their own impotency and blindness. Thus Tully exclaims, Utinam tam facilè vera invenire possim, quàm falsa convincere!" "O, that I could discover truth with the same ease that I can detect error!" and, in another place, aware of the little that human creatures can do of themselves, he says expressly, Nemo vir magnus 6 66 66 6 (v) For a very masterly view of the opinions of the Greek and Roman heathens, for the first four centuries after the Christian æra; a most able sketch of their mythological and moral notions, their cruelty and profligacy, as opposed to the everlasting promises of the Gospel, and the meekness and purity of its primitive followers, the reader my consult Dr. Ireland's Lectures, or, 66 Paganism and Christianity compared." Tertullian, in his Apol. cap. 46, terminates a fine contrast between the sentiments and conduct of the philosophers and of the early Christians, by asking "Where now is the similitude between a philosopher and a "Christian ?-between a disciple of Greece, and of heaven ?-a trader "in fame, and a saver of souls ?-between a man of words, and a man of "deeds?—a builder of virtue, and a destroyer of it?- —a dresser up of "lies, and a restorer of truth?-between a plunderer, and a guardian of "this sacred deposit ?" See also Lactantius, lib. 2, de Origine Erroris, § 3, on the character of Cicero. "No man 'sine aliquo afflatu divino unquam fuit.' "the Divinity that stirr'd within him;" I pretend not to determine,) concludes, (a) that we cannot know of ourselves what petition will be pleasing to God, or what worship to pay him; but that it is necessary a lawgiver should be sent from heaven to instruct us; and such a one he did expect: and " 0,” says he, "how greatly do I desire to see that man, " and who he is!" Nay, he goes farther, and affirms (y) that this lawgiver must be more than man: for, since every nature is governed by another nature that is superior to it, as birds and beasts by man, he infers that this lawgiver, who was to teach man what man could not know by his own nature, must be of a nature superior to man, that is, of a divine nature. But farther still, as Rousseau remarked, in his celebrated letter to the archbishop of Paris, "when Plato described his imaginary good man, loaded with all the shame of 66 66 guilt, yet meriting the highest rewards of virtue, he "describes exactly the character of Jesus Christ; the "resemblance was so striking that all the fathers per"ceived it." He gives, indeed, as lively a picture of the person, qualifications, life and death, of this divine man, as if he had been acquainted with the 53d chapter of Isaiah: for he says (x)" that this just 66 (y) De Legibus, lib. 4. (x) Alcibiad. ii. de Precat. ! 66 person must be poor, and void of all recommendations but that of virtue alone; that a wicked world would not bear his instructions and reproof; and "therefore within three or four years after he began "to preach, he should be persecuted, imprisoned, "scourged, and at last put to death." I have now, my dear Friend, presented you with a summary of the most striking opinions of the ancient Legislators, Poets, and Philosophers, with regard to Superior Beings, to human conduct, and a future state; if it be asked what is the tendency of the sentiments of any one philosopher, or of the aggregate of them, to elevate the conceptions in respect of Deity, to purify the affections, to humanise the heart, to amend the conduct; the reply is lamentably obvious-nothing. What principle in theology, or what rule in morals, has any one of them, or have all of them, indubitably established? How many of the doctrines of what is now called Natural Religion did any of them hold? The four great propositions which the moderns almost universally concede to Natural Religion, as integral parts of it, are "1st. That there is one God. 66 2dly. That God is nothing of those things which we "see. 3dly. That God takes care of all things below, "and governs all the world. 4thly. That he alone is "the great Creator of all things out of himself." Now they are incontrovertible facts, which cannot be too deeply engraven upon the mind, that none of the greatest and wisest men among the Greeks and Romans held all these propositions, and that very few held any of them firmly; that before the Christian æra no people in the world believed these propositions but the Jews; and that they did not discover them, but received them by divine Revelation, in the basis of the first four precepts of the decalogue. Let also the idolizers of the powers of reason in the development of religious truths have it equally impressed upon their minds, that none of the heathen philosophers attempted a solution of the question, "How shall a sinner appear before the God "whose laws he has broken ?" and that none of them made even a remote approximation to that simple, comprehensive and admirable rule of moral conduct," Do "unto others as you would they should do unto you;" and then, I trust, they will be constrained to acknow ledge that the Apostle of the Gentiles was not indulging a flight of enthusiasm, but was simply impelled by the force of truth, when he broke out into the triumphant exclamation-" Where is the wise? where is "the scribe? where is the disputer of this world? "Hath not God made foolish the wisdom of this "world? For after that in the wisdom of God the "world by wisdom knew not God, it pleased God, by "the foolishness of preaching, to save them that be"lieve!" (a) I remain, Yours truly, P.S. You will, perhaps, be surprised that I have not in this letter taken any notice of Zoroaster, of (a) 1 Corinthians, i. 20, 21. |