fuperftition, idolatry, and error, mere human philofophy was too feeble to make any powerful and fuccefsful oppofition; and the wisdom of the ancients, that had introduced their gods and ceremonies of worship, would not fail to be generally looked on as an effectual confutation of every thing, that after-wisdom could pretend to urge for the amendment or removal of them.

Befides, very eminent § republicks had been founded, and large empires had been erected, continued, and rifen to great heights of profperity; victories had been won, triumphs had been obtained, and arts and fciences had flourished, under the fuppofed protection of the gods of the nations; the neglect of their ceremonies was thought to have been punished with the most dreadful calamities, and the due performance of them rewarded with many fignal advantages of a publick and private nature, and visible proofs of their interpofition and prefence; and what could human wisdom and philofophy oppose, to what would be called fenfible experience, and arguments from facts? or how could it be expected that princes and nations should relinquish deities, or abrogate rites, to which they imagined they owed their establishment, grandeur, and profperity?

And had nations and governments been at any time inclined to admit of any reformation in their religious fyftem, where could they have

§ Minut. Fel. §. 6. ‡ Id. §. 7.

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have applied? and to which of the different fchools of philofophy, to which of their celebrated wife men and difputers, could they have had recourfe, upon fo important an affair? Though there were many sects of philofophers, all of them differing in effentials from each other, and all of them profeffing to be teachers of wisdom, yet it doth not appear, that amidst all the fchemes they formed, they had ever thought of, or fixed upon any regular, rational, and confiftent plan of religion for themselves, or the publick. If in any of the remains of antiquity, any fuch thing as this was likely to be found, it must have appeared in Plato, or Cicero, or fome of the moral writers amongst the ancients. But nothing of this nature is to be seen in any of them; and though they fhould have agreed as to the particulars that needed alteration, they would have been entirely at a loss what better things to have fettled in the room of them. Some would have been for making an entire ridance of all the gods, and the ceremonies of worship that were performed in honour of them; who as openly, as they could with fafety, denied their very existence, their agency and providence, and afcribed the formation of this world to the jumble of atoms, the caprice of chance, or the neceffary laws of an irrefiftible fatality. Amongst thofe, who profeffed to own any Deity, it was far from being agreed amongst them what he

57. &c. Minut. Fel. c. 8. p. 71, 72.

was,

was, or how to reprefent and describe him. The wisdom of Epicurus, retaining the name of the gods, would have at once discharged the world from all the religious fuperftitions that had enflaved it, by introducing fuch as were too happy in themselves to defire any mortal worship, too indolent to concern themfelves in the exercife of providence, and too indulgent and luxurious in their own nectar and ambrofia, to refent the freeft gratifications of fenfual pleasure in mankind †. And as to any thing that was to come hereafter, this hero would have fhewn them the way intirely to get rid of every apprehenfion about it; and as for Erebus § and Tartarus, and Acheron, and the punishments of a future ftate, how to have trampled them intirely under their feet. The wisdom of others led them to imagine, that the whole mundane fyftem was God. - Jupiter eft quodcunque vides, it was abfolutely perfect, neceffary, eternal, incorruptible, and incapable every single atom of it of being annihilated. Others, with greater wisdom, conceived of God as a mind or fpirit; but fuch a one as was only the foul to animate the whole material fyftem, as its proper body, and maintain the perpetual life and verdure of it. If fome, as perhaps the generality of the philofophers did, who believed in any Deity, held the monarchy of one God, prefiding over all things, yet they feem univerfally to have allowed a large number of inferior

that

Lucret. 1. 3. per tot. § Virgil. Georg. 1. 2. v. 490..

1

inferior deities, fharingwith him in real divinity, worthy of the fame divine adoration, and admitted into the high prerogatives of providence and government; and though their fentiments of Deity were much better than those of the poets and the vulgar, yet they profeffed to acknowledge the fame gods, and worshiped them under the fame names, in the fame temples, and with the fame facrifices and rites, as others did. This was true even of the celebrated Socrates himself, who is, I apprehend, falfely faid to have died a martyr for the one God. For Xenophon, § who was his contemporary, his friend, and admirer, expreflly affures us, that Socrates regulated his religion by the laws of the city, advised others to do the fame, and cenfured all who did not, as impertinent, and vain perfons; and that, in his apology before his judges, he openly declared his belief in the gods of his country, and abfolutely denied the charge of introducing new ones, or ftrange methods of worshiping the old ones. Yea, Socrates himself affirms, that he neither facrificed to, nor fwore by, nor called on any new Demons, or other gods, instead of Jupiter, Juno, and other deities with them ||. And though some of the philofophers thought with the utmost contempt of the ceremonies and fuperftitions, that were practifed in honour of the vulgar deities, fometimes ridiculed them, and at other times

§ Memor. Socr. p. 708. B. et p. 722. C. Edit. Leuncl. Xen. Socr. Apul. pro Socr. p. 705. E.

times reafoned against them; yet they all taught another thing by their practice, falling in with all the fuperftitions of the age and country in which they lived, and even pleading and writing in defence or excufe of the worship of images, plants, rivers, mountains, fountains, fire, beafts, fowls, fishes, and other the like contemptible objects ||; as a fort of memorials of the gods, and the more effectually to keep up a fenfe of them in the minds. of men; and recommending it in their writings, and even thofe, in which they treated the religion of their country with great freedom, as an inftance of wisdom to adhere to the rites of their forefathers, to retain their gods, and admit of no innovations in worfhip. Proofs in abundance of this are easy to be produced from the remains of Plato, Xenophon, Cicero, Julian, Porphyry, and others of the most celebrated philofophers; who not only fcandaloufly complied with those corruptions, which in their minds they condemned, but employed their art and learning in juftification and defence of them: A conduct this that must effectually deftroy the force of all their best reafonings in favour of truth, and render them abfolutely incapable, with all their philofophy and wifdom, had it been much better than it was, of becoming the reformers and faviours of mankind. EspecialC

Max. Tyr. Differt. 8. §. 10. 1. Plat. De leg. 1. 10. p.910. 2. Xenoph. Memor. Soc. p. 893. B. 1.2. §.72.

ly,

De repub. 1. 4. p. 427. B. 3. Cicer. De Divinat