Cicero, who was no great friend to Epicurus' philosophy, frequently represents his followers as very numerous at Rome, and his philosophy as having made a great progress there, and very popular.* This gives one no advantageous idea of the religion and manners of that age. His principles continued to prevail under the emperors; and his followers were very zealous to propagate their opinions, for which they are ridiculed by Epictetus; because, as he observes, if their principles were generally believed, it would endanger their own peace and safety, as well as that of the public. Lucian informs us, that in his time the emperor, by whom he probably means Marcus Antoninus, allowed large salaries to the masters of the Epicurean school, as well as to those of the Stoics, Platonists, and Peripatetics. +

It appears, however, that the Epicureans did not every where, and at all times, meet with the good reception Laërtius mentions. They were expelled out of several cities, because of the disorders they occasioned. Plutarch speaks of the ψηφίσματα βλάσφημα πόλεων, the reproachful decrees made by divers cities against them. We learn from Ælian, that the Romans expelled Alcæus and Philippus, who were Epicureans, out of the city, because they taught the young men to indulge strange and flagitious pleasures. And that the republic of Messenia in Arcadia passed this censure upon the Epicureans, that they were the pest of the youth, and that they stained the government by their effeminacy and atheism. They enjoined them to depart their borders by sunset; and when they were gone, ordered the priests to purify the temples, and magistrates, and the whole city. The republic of Lyctos, in the Isle of Crete, drove them out of the city, and

* De Finib. lib. i. cap. 7. lib. ii. cap. 25. De Offic. lib. iii. cap. ult.

+ Lucian. in Eunuch. Oper. tom. I. p. 841. edit. Amst.

In his treatise, Non posse suaviter vivi, &c. Oper. tom. II. p. 1100. D. edit. Xyl.

§ Elian. var. Hist. lib. ix. cap. 12.

issued out a severe decree against them, in which they called them the contrivers of the feminine and ungenerous philosophy, and the declared enemies of the gods; and that if any of them should presume to return, he should be put to death in a manner which was very ignominious, as well as painful.*

Suide in voce Επικουρος.

CHAP. VII.

The sentiments of those who are accounted the best of the Pagan moral philosophers considered. They held in general, that the law is right reason. But reason alone, without a superior authority, does not lay an obliging force upon men. The wisest heathens taught, that the original of law was from God, and that from him it derived its authority. As to the question, how this law comes to be known to us, they sometimes represent it as naturally known to all men. But the principal way of knowing it is resolved by them into the mind and reason of wise men, or in other words, into the doctrines and instructions of the philosophers. The uncertainty of this rule of morals shown. They talked highly of virtue in general, but differed about matters of great importance relating to the law of nature; some instances of which are mentioned.

LET us now proceed to consider the sentiments of those who are generally accounted the ablest and best of the Pagan philosophers and moralists. Such were Socrates, Plato, and those of the old academy, Aristotle and the Peripatetics, and above all the Stoics, who professed to carry the doctrine of morals to the highest perfection.

It was a general maxim among the philosophers, and which frequently occurs in their writings, that the law is right reason. So Plato, Cicero, Seneca, Plutarch, and others. But properly speaking, right reason is not a law. Reason, as such, only counsels, advises, and remonstrates, but does not command: nor doth it lay persons under an obligation or restraint of law, but by the interposition of a superior authority. Mr. Selden has argued this matter very well, in his first book, De Jure Nat. et Gent. in the seventh and eighth chapters. He shows, that antecedently to men's being formed into society, no man can be so obliged by the reason of another man, who is only supposed to be naturally his equal, nor by his own reason, as not to have it in his power to change or alter it. For whence can a disparity of obligation arise, where all men are supposed to be equal, and sui juris, or their own masters? Or, if we suppose them to be united

into bodies politic, or civil societies, and that in consequence of this the authority of princes and of the laws has been established, yet except there were some superior right and authority, by which they should be all bound to stand to their compacts, and yield obedience to their princes, what natural obligation could arise which should bind them so strongly, that they could not recede from those compacts or agreements when they should think it for their advantage to do so? They that were naturally equal cannot by any subsequent agreement or compact become so far unequal, as absolutely to divest themselves of a power or liberty to renounce those compacts and agreements, and to resume their natural rights, if there were no power or authority, superior both to the individuals of the society and to the whole, to bind the observation of their conventions upon them, and to oblige them to keep their faith once given, and punish their violation of it. The obligation therefore of law must properly arise from the command and authority of the Supreme Being; since none but God hath a proper authority over all mankind. Mr. Selden hath produced many testimonies to show, that the wisest heathens were sensible of this, and that they derived the original of law, and its obliging force, from God or the gods.* Plato frequently intimates, that no mortal has a proper power of making laws, and that to Him alone it originally and properly belongs. Cicero, in his books of laws, expresseth himself fully and strongly on this head: he represents it not only as his own opinion, but that of the wisest men, that law is not originally of human institution, nor enacted by the decree and authority of the people; but is an eternal thing, and proceedeth from the sovereign Wisdom which governeth the universe, commanding or forbidding with the highest reason.

And in the famous passage quoted by Lac

* Seld. de Jure Nat. et Gent. lib. i. cap. 8. p. 94. et seq. edit. Lips. This is also largely shown by the learned and ingenious author of "The knowledge of "divine things by revelation only, not by reason or nature."

+ "Hanc igitur video sapientissimorum fuisse sententiam, legem neque homi

tantius from Cicero's third book, De Republicâ, speaking of that universal law obligatory on all mankind, which he represents as the same in all nations, and which cannot be dispensed with or abrogated in the whole or in any part of it, nor can we be absolved from it by the authority of senate or people, he adds, that " God, the common master and lord of "all, is the inventor, the propounder, and the enactor of "this law." And before him, Socrates, speaking of certain unwritten laws, as he calls them, which are observed in every place or region after the same manner, says, that these laws were not made by men, since they could not all meet together for that purpose, nor are all of one language, but that the gods appointed those laws to men.+

Other testimonies might be added to show, that the best and greatest philosophers held God to be the only universal legislator, to whom it belongeth to give laws obligatory upon all mankind. But then the question naturally arose, how these divine laws came to be known to men.

Cicero, in the remarkable passage before referred to, quoted by Lactantius, represents the universal law he speaks of, and of which he supposes God to be the supreme Author, as naturally known to all men: that we are not to seek any other interpreter of it but itself; and he intimates that every man carries the interpretation of it in his own breast. This scheme has been already considered; and I shall not here re

"num ingeniis excogitatam, nec scitum aliquod esse populorum, sed æternum "quiddam, quod universum mundum regeret imperandi prohibendique sapientiâ : "ita principem illam legem et ultimam mentem esse dicebant omnia ratione aut "cogentis aut vetantis Dei. Quamobrem lex vera atque princeps ad jubendum, "et vetandum, ratio est recta summi Jovis." De Leg. lib. ii. cap. 4.

Namque erit communis quasi magister et imperator omnium Deus: ille "legis hujus inventor, disceptator, lator."

† Εγω μὲν θεοὺς οἶμαι τοὺς νόμους τούτους τοῖς ἀνθρώποις θεῖναι. Xen. Memorab. lib. iv. cap. 4. sect. 19, 20.

"Est quidem vera lex recta ratio, naturæ congruens, diffusa in omnes, con" stans, sempiterna, quæ vocat ad officium jubendo, vetando à fraude deterreat; neque est quærendus explanator, aut interpres ejus alius." Cic. de Republ. lib. iii. Fragment. apud Lactant.