had philosophized themselves out of it, it was the universal belief of every pagan country. But this hope they held by no certain tenure; and therefore it would rise and sink with their animal spirits. As man is a rational, he is, by consequence, an accountable creature; and as that account is not taken in this life, there must be another state in which it will be required, and in which rewards and punishments must follow the course of human actions. In this life, the worst of men are often the most prosperous, and the most exemplary characters often drink deeply of the cup of woe. Even Natural Religion therefore teaches, that a future tribunal is necessary to justify the ways of God to all his creatures. But Paganism, by keeping out of view the doctrine of the Unity of the Divine Nature, and the holiness of God's moral character; and by calling evil good, and good evil, prodigiously weakened the force of this argument. The poets connected their fables with the idea of a state of rewards and punishments in a future life, and this idea, on account of its usefulness to society, was cherished by all the ancient legislators. Many of the philosophers have written, with great force, on this most important subject, and none of them with greater felicity of thought and expression than Cicero, whose mind often appears to have been warmed and elevated with sublime conceptions on this head. But almost all of them, on other occasions, discover that their minds were in a state of conflict between hope and fear; between faith and doubt. Bishop Warburton has, indeed, brought strong evidence to prove, that they generally held an opinion, which, though it necessarily implied the Immortality of the Soul, was utterly incompatible with its existing in a state of retribution. "They held," says that learned prelate,

"the soul to be part of God, and resolvable into Him."* Socrates, however, as he justly observes, who restricted his studies to moral subjects, was an exception; and appears, from his apology, to have firmly believed in a future state of rewards and punishments. Cæsar's speech in the Roman senate, upon the punishment proper to be inflicted upon Catiline and his accomplices, which is recorded by Sallust, (and in which he speaks of death as the end of human existence, and no punishment,) with the feeble reply of Cato and Cicero, sufficiently shows that at that time the doctrine of a future retribution, how popular soever it might be, was not generally believed by men of learning: otherwise Cæsar would not have dared, in such an assembly, to attack a principle so necessary to the existence of society.

"Look," says Bishop Porteus, "into the writings of the ancient philosophers respecting a future retribution, and (with few, or no exceptions) you see nothing but embarrassment, confusion, inconsistence, and contradiction. In one page you will find them expatiating, with apparent satisfaction, on the arguments then commonly produced for the immortality of the soul, and a state of recompense hereafter; answering the several objections to them with great acuteness; illustrating them with wonderful ingenuity and art; adorning them with all the charms of their eloquence; declaring their entire assent to them; and protesting that nothing should ever wrest from them this delightful persuasion, the very joy and comfort of their souls. In another page, the scene is totally changed: they unsay almost every thing they had

• Divine Legation, Book 11. Sect. 3d and 4th.

said before. They doubt, they fluctuate, they despond, they disbelieve. They laugh at the popular notions of future punishments and rewards, but they substitute nothing more rational or satisfactory in their room. Nay, what is still more extraordinary, although they all acknowledged, that the belief of a future life, and of a future recompense, was an universal principle of nature, that it was what all mankind, with one voice, concurred and agreed in, yet, notwithstanding this, many of them seem even to have taken pains to stifle the voice of nature within them; and to have considered it as a victory of the greatest importance, to subdue and extinguish those notices of a future judgment, which, in despite of themselves, they found springing up within their own breasts."+

I shall only further, on the state of religion among the ancient Pagans, add a quotation from a celebrated writer, a layman of powerful intellect, and who was once a Deist, but was recovered to the cause of Christianity, by a careful examination both of its external and internal evidences. "To say the truth, before the appearance of Christianity there existed nothing like religion on the face of the earth; the Jewish only excepted: all other religions were immersed in the grossest idolatry, which had little or no connexion with morality, except to corrupt it by the infamous example of their imaginary deities; they all worshipped a multiplicity of gods and demons, whose favour they courted by impious, obscene, and ridiculous ceremonies, and whose anger they endeavoured to appease, by the most abominable cruelties. In the politest ages of the politest nations in the world, at a

• Tuscul. Quart. L. 1, C. 2.

+ Sermon on St. Matthew, xxv, 46.

time when Greece and Rome had carried the arts of oratory, poetry, history, architecture, and sculpture, to the highest perfection, and made no inconsiderable advances in those of the mathematics, and in natural and even moral philosophy, in religious knowledge they had made none at all; a strong presumption, that the noblest efforts of the mind of man, unassisted by revelation were unequal to the task. Some few indeed of their philosophers were wise enough to reject these general absurdities, and dared to attempt a loftier flight. Plato introduced Plato introduced many sublime ideas of nature, and its first cause, and of the immor. tality of the soul, which being above his own and all human discovery, he probably acquired from the books of Moses, or the conversation of some Jewish Rabbies, whom he might have met with in Egypt, where he resided and studied for several years. From him Aristotle, and from both, Cicero and some few others drew most amazing stores of philosophical science, and carried their researches into divine truths as far as human genius alone could penetrate. But these were bright constellations, which appeared singly in several centuries, and even these with all their knowledge were very deficient in true theology. From the visible works of the creation, they traced the being and principal attributes of the Creator; but the relation which his being and attributes bear to man, they little understood: of piety and devotion they had scarcely any sense, nor could they form any mode of worship worthy of the purity and perfection of the Divine Nature. They occasionally bestowed many elegant encomiums on the native beauty and excellence of virtue : but they founded it not on the commands of God; nor connected it with a holy life, nor proposed the happiness of heaven, as its reward, or its object. They sometimes

talked of virtue carrying men to heaven, and placing them among the gods; but by this virtue they meant only the invention of arts, or the feats of arms: for with them heaven was open only to legislators, and conquerors, the civilizers, or destroyers of mankind. This then was the summit of religion in the most polished nations in the world, and even this was confined to a few philosophers, prodigies of genius and literature, who were little attended to, and less understood, by the generality of mankind in their own countries; whilst all the rest were involved in one common cloud of ignorance and superstition."*

If we inquire into the present state of religion, in those countries on which the Sun of Righteousness has not arisen with healing under his wings, we shall find that whatever progress science and the fine arts may have made, during the last eighteen hundred years, Religion has been stationary, and has not made a single advance to emancipate herself from the chains of superstition, and the most absurd idolatry. From the past history of the world, there is the utmost reason to conclude, that were it to exist for five or six thousand years longer, and to be marked by as many revolutions in government, by as many æras in the history of science, and by as many revivals of literature, as have already taken place since the creation, were it not to be visited, directly or indirectly, by the rays of Gospel light, it would still continue to be the region and shadow of spiritual death. Of the innumerable literati, philosophers, poets, orators, legislators, and heroes who have adorned the different walks of life, the history of

• View of the Internal Evidence of the Christian Religion, by Soame Jenyns, Esq. p. p. 35, 36, 37, 38.