*

sion of a state of a glorious immortality, would be willing to exchange the one for the other? and yet we often renounce the latter, out of mere contempt; for what lust tempts us to blaspheme, if not, perhaps, even the desire of offending? While the priest was initiating Antisthenes the philosopher in the mysteries of Orpheus, and telling him, that they who devoted themselves to that religion, were to receive eternal and perfect happiness after their death; the philosopher said to him, "If thou be"lievest it, why dost not thou thyself die?" Diogenes, more bluntly, according to his manner, though not so much to our present purpose, saidt to the priest, who made the like speech to him, that he should enter into his order, if he would be happy in the other world? Wouldst thou make me believe, that "two such great men as Agesilaus and Epaminondas "will be miserable; and that thyself, who art but a "calf, and canst do no good, shalt be happy, be"cause thou art a priest ?" If we received these great promises of everlasting happiness, with the same deference as we do a philosophical lecture, we should not be so horribly afraid of death:

Non jam se moriens dissolvi conquereretur,

Sed magis ire foras, vestemque relinquere ut anguis
Gauderet, prælonga senex aut corru cervus.‡
We should not on a death-bed grieve to be
Dissolv'd, but rather launch out cheerfully
From our old hut, and with the snake be glad
To cast off the corrupted slough we had;
Or with th' old stag rejoice to be now clear
From the large horns too pond'rous grown to bear.

"and

"I am willing to be dissolved," we should say, "to be with Jesus Christ."§ The force of Plato's arguments for the immortality of the soul actually made some of his disciples dispatch themselves, that

Diog. Laert. in the Life of Antisthenes, lib. vi. sect. 4,
Idem, in the Life of Diogenes the Cynic. lib. vi. sect. 39,
Lucret. lib. iii. ver. 612, &c.

St. Paul's Ep. to the Philippians, chap. i. ver. 23.

they might the sooner enjoy the hopes he gave them.

ation of the

tian reli

All this very plainly demonstrates, that we only The foundreceive our religion after our own fashion, and by our profession own hands, and no otherwise than as other religions of the Chris are received. Whether we happen to be in countries. where it is in practice; whether we have a veneration for the antiquity of it, or for the authority of the professors of it; whether we fear the menaces, which it fulminates against unbelievers, or are encouraged by its promises: these things ought to be considered only as auxiliaries to our faith, for they are obligations altogether human. Another country,, other evidences, the like promises and threatenings,. might, by the same rule, imprint a belief quite contrary. We are Christians by the same title as we are either Perigordins, or Germans: and what Plato. says, that there are few men so obstinate in atheism, but a pressing danger will reduce them to an acknowledgment of the divine power, does not relate to a true Christian: it is for mortal and human religions to be received by human recommendation., What kind of faith must that be which is planted and. established in us by pusillanimity and cowardice? a pleasant faith, that only believes in its object, for want of the courage not to believe it! Can a vicious passion, such as inconstancy and astonishment, produce any thing regular in our minds? The atheists, says Plato, are confident, upon the strength of their own judgment, that what is advanced about hell and future torments is a fiction; but when an opportunity presents itself for their making the experiment, at the time that old age or sickness brings them to the confines of death, the terror of it possesses them with a new belief, from a horror of their future state. And, by reason they are terrified by such impressions, Plato, in his laws, forbids all such threatening doctrines, and all persuasive arguments, that any evil can come to man from the gods, unless it be for his great good when it happens to him, and

for a medicinal effect. They say of Bion, that, being infected with Theodorus's atheistical principles, he had, for a long time, held religious men in derision, but that, when death stared him in the face, he became superstitious to an extreme degree, as if the gods* were to be managed just as Bion pleased. From Plato, and these examples, we conclude that Lomwe are reduced to the belief of a God, either by reason, or by force. Atheism being a proposition not only unnatural and monstrous, but difficult, and very hard to be digested by the mind of man, be he ever so haughty and dissolute; there are instances enough of men, who, out of the vanity and pride of broaching uncommon opinions, and of being reformers of the world, outwardly affect the profession of such opinions, who, if they are fools enough, have not the power to plant them in their own consciences nevertheless, if you plunge a dagger into their breasts, they will not fail to lift up their hands towards heaven; and when the fear, or the distemper, has abated and suppressed this licentious heat of a fickle humour, they will immediately recover, and suffer themselves, very discreetly, to be reconciled to the public creeds and forms. A doctrine seriously digested is one thing, and these superficial impressions another, which, springing from the depravity of an unsettled mind, float rashly and at random in the fancy. Miserable, hair-brained wretches, who would, if it was possible, fain be worse than they are!

us firmly to
God.

Whatought The errors of paganism, and the ignorance of our to attach sacred truths, led Plato, that great genius, but great only with human grandeur, into another error, next a-kin to it, that "Children and old people were "most susceptible of religion;" as if it sprung and derived its credit from our weakness: the knot that

*This reflection, which is so just and natural, is by Diogenes Laertius himself, who having no great fund of his own, it would have been cruel to rob him of this. See his Life of Bion, sect. 55,

ought to bind the judgment and the will; that ought to restrain the soul, and fasten it to the creator, must be a knot that derives its foldings and strength, not from our considerations, our arguments and passions, but from a divine and supernatural constraint, having but one form, one face, and one lustre, which is the authority of God and his divine grace. Now, the heart and soul being governed and commanded by faith, it is reasonable that it should draw in the assistance of all our other faculties, as far as they are able to contribute to its service.

Being

works.

Neither is it to be imagined, that this whole ma- The divine chine has not some marks imprinted on it by the known by hand of its almighty Architect; and that there is not, his visible in the things of this world, some image that bears a sort of resemblance to the workman who has built and formed them. In these sublime works he has left the stamp of his divinity, and it is only owing to our weakness that we cannot discern it. It is what he himself tells us, that he manifests his invisible operations to us by those that are visible. Sebonde applied himself to this worthy study, and demonstrates to us, that there is not any piece in the world that derogates from its Maker. It would be a wrong to the divine goodness, if the universe did not concur in our belief. The heavens, the earth, the elements, our bodies, our souls, all things unite in this, if we can but find out the way to make it of use to us: they instruct us, if we are capable of learning: for this world is a very sacred temple, into which man is introduced to contemplate statues, not made with mortal hands, but such as the divine purpose has made the objects of sense, the sun, the stars, the water, and the earth, to represent them to our understanding." "The invisible things of God," says St. Paul, from the creation of the world, are clearly

seen, being understood by the things that are "made, even his eternal power and godhead :”*

* Epistle to the Romans, chap. i. ver. 20.

Atque adeò faciem cœli non invidet orbi
Ipse Deus, vultusque suos, corpusque recludit
Semper volvendo seque ipsum inculcat et offert,
Ut bene cognosci possit, doceatque videndo
Qualis eat, doceatque suas attendere leges.
And God himself envies not men the grace
Of seeing and admiring heaven's face;
But, rolling it about, he still anew
Presents its varied splendor to our view;
And on our minds himself inculcates so,
That we th' almighty Mover well may know
Instructing us, by seeing him the cause
Of all, to reverence and obey his laws.

As to our human reason and arguments, they are but as lumpish barren matter: the grace of God is the form; it is this which gives the fashion and value to it. As the virtuous deeds of Socrates and Cato remain vain and fruitless, for not having had the love and obedience due to the true Creator of all things for their end and object, and for their not having known God; so is it with our imagination and reason: they have a kind of body, but it is an inform mass, with.out fashion, and without light, if faith and God's grace -be not added to it. Sebonde's arguments, being illustrated by faith, are thereby rendered firm and solid: they are capable of serving as directions, and of being the principal guides to a learner, to put him into the way of this knowledge: they, in some measure, .form him to, and render him capable of, the grace of God, by means of which he afterwards completes and perfects himself in our belief. I know a person of authority, bred up to letters, who confessed to me, that he was reclaimed from the errors of infidelity by Sebonde's arguments: and should they be stripped of this ornament, and of the assistance and sanction of faith, and be looked upon as mere human fancies, to contend with those who are precipitated into the dreadful and horrible darkness of irreligion,

*Manil. lib. iv. at the latter end.