that their effect, had they been communicated beyond the walls of the schools, could only be to bewilder, if, indeed, they would have any effect whatever. They, therefore, despised the people as incapable of understanding their speculations, or of profiting by them. "Philosophy," to use the language of one of the most eminent of their number, "is content with a few judges; it designedly shuns the multitude, and is by them suspected and disliked ; so that if any man should set himself to vilify all philosophy, he might do it with the approbation and applause of the people *.”

Philosophers, accordingly, so framed the vehicle in which their instructions were conveyed, and in general so wrapped the doctrines of divine things in fables, that they proved of no use in enlightening the people. With the exception of Socrates, who adopted a more familiar strain, their professed aim was, not the religious and moral improvement of mankind, but the exercise and display of their own genius, and the gratification and applause of a few learned men. In truth, scarcely one of them had any thing to communicate on religion which would have been at all profitable to the people. One of the most numerous sects maintained the absolute impossibility of coming to the knowledge of the truth in any case, and employed all the force of their ingenuity and eloquence to invalidate the proof of the being of God. Others, while they allowed that there are different degrees of probability in evidence, contended that we cannot certainly know or understand any thing, and that, therefore, we should keep our minds in a state of scepticism concerning all things.

* Tuscul. Quæst., lib. i. cap. k

Even the Stoics, whose pretensions to certainty were highest, and who in some things come nearest to the truth, acknowledged, that the natures of things are so covered from us, that all things seem uncertain and incomprehensible.

In confirmation of these remarks, it may be observed, that scepticism and atheism, in Greece and Rome, kept pace with the progress of philosophy, and that the world was somewhat advanced, before speculative men began to controvert or deny the existence and agency of God. Aristotle mentions, that all the philosophers before his time asserted that the world was made by a Supreme Being; and consequently that they believed in the existence of an intelligent Creator and Governor of all things. Yet, after his time, we know that the most thorough scepticism in regard to this fundamental doctrine of all religion was entertained by men of science and letters. From prudential considerations, they attempted to conceal from the multitude the real nature and tendency of their atheistical schemes, by pretending a regard for the gods and for their worship; but the covering was so transparent, that the imposition could not have succeeded, had not the people been immersed in inconceivable ignorance.

When the Romans imported the philosophy of Greece, they, at the same time, imported the scepticism and atheism that attended it. Intent upon conquest and military glory in the earlier periods of their history, they remained unacquainted with science till near the decline of the consular government. While their greatest men employed their powers, not in speculation, but in studying the arts of war, they probably

never questioned the divine origin of their worship, and considered themselves bound to yield a conscientious obedience to the civil and religious institutions of their country. During the first hundred and seventy years of the Commonwealth, they strictly observed the law of Numa, which forbade them to make any image or statue of the divine Being in the form of man or beast, and taught them that it is impious to represent things divine by what is perishable, and that we can have no conception of God but by the understanding*. But in proportion as they became a literary people by their intercourse with the Greeks, were their idol deities indefinitely multiplied, and their learned men atheistical in their opinions, and immoral in their practice. "Professing themselves to be wise they became fools," and were instrumental by their tenets and by their example" in changing the glory of the uncorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and four-footed beasts, and creeping things."

But it will be said, that there were philosophers both in Greece and Rome of juster views, and a purer character,-who entertained the sublimest sentiments concerning the being, attributes, and providence of God. It can be shewn, however, that they, in place of enlightening and improving the people, gave the sanction of their example, and their names, in confirmation of the established idolatry;-and so mingled truth and error together, as to become the efficient supporters and advocates of idol worship. The most enlightened of them, not excepting even

* Plutarch in Numa.

Socrates, spoke of the Divinity, and that to their disciples, when we should expect the greatest accuracy, in the plural form:-they represented the gods as the creators, preservers, and benefactors of mankind,—as seeing and hearing all things, and as being everywhere present:-and thus, I think, clearly prove, that they understood the Divine nature to be peculiar and appropriate, not to one god only, but to many gods, who in common possessed it, and to whom the titles and the characters of the Divinity belong.

Their views of the Divinity, besides, were such as could not fail to encourage, if not apparently to justify, the people in giving religious worship to a multitude of gods. Without alluding to all their erroneous opinions on this subject, there was one, which, more than any other, seemed to make idolatry a duty, and furnished the most plausible arguments in its favour,— namely, that the soul of the world is God. This opinion was very general among the Heathen philosophers, and was the chief ground of the polytheism of the whole Pagan world; concluding, as they did, that because God was all things, and all things God, he ought to be worshipped in all the parts and objects of nature. The Stoics, in particular, were most strenuous supporters of this tenet,-maintaining that the mind which governs the world passeth through every part of it, as the soul doth in us; or, as the poet has expressed it,

All are but parts of one stupendous whole,
Whose hody nature is, and God the soul;

That chang'd through all, and yet in all the same,
Great in the earth as in the ethereal flame;

Warms in the sun, refreshes in the breeze,
Glows in the stars, and blossoms in the trees;
Lives through all life, extends through all extent,
Spreads undivided, operates unspent

In conformity with this doctrine, we find some of the Stoics, after proving the existence and providence of God, from the beauty and order of the works that are made, gravely maintaining that the world is an animal,

-reasonable, wise, and happy, and therefore is God. On this principle, whatever parts of the universe they chose to deify, were parts of God, and therefore entitled to religious worship. They themselves also, and their fellow-creatures, were parts of the divinity, a notion which tended to produce that pride and selfsufficiency for which the Stoics were so highly distinguished. On this absurd, but, to minds darkened and vain in their imaginations most plausible, ground, did the wisest and the best philosophers of antiquity advocate the system of polytheism and idol worshipa system which is so totally at variance with what we deem the light of nature, which was composed of rites, foolish, indecent, and cruel, and which sanctioned the grossest licentiousness and immorality. Need we

wonder that an apostle should think it necessary to caution the disciples of christianity to beware lest any man should spoil them through philosophy and vain deceit ?

The history of the ancient world does not furnish us with a single example of a philosopher who at

* I am far from wishing to bring against the poet the charge of Spinosism and Pantheism. I have quoted his lines, because they are suscepti. ble of furnishing an illustration of the doctrine of the Anima Mundi to those who are unacquainted with it. See Note B.