power. Now had he been educated in the doctrines of revelation, and his mind enlightened by the superior principles of Christianity, (though he might by no means have remained an inactive or tame observer of the conduct of a man, whỏ threatened the subversion of the liberties of his country, and would, perhaps, have readily risked his life in such a defence of those liberties as the laws allowed and justified,) he would never have engaged in the dark conspiracy on which he so readily entered; he would have considered, that a man is not justified in doing evil that good may come of it, and that he is not permitted to take the sword of justice in this foul and underhand manner into his own hands; especially against his friend, patron, and benefactor, and a person who had given him his life and liberty, both which he had forfeited at the battle of Pharsalia. Indeed, Cæsar not only gave him that life which he had forfeited by joining the party of Pompey, (who had murdered his father,) but Cæsar's affection and partiality towards him was such, that Plutarch says gave particular orders to his officers, after the abovementioned battle, that if they met with Brutus, by no means to kill him; and if he would not surrender himself, to let him escape. Though, from the erroneous principles of Pagan philosophy, Brutus thought he acted right, in reality he acted very wrong; and his wrong con

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duct was the cause of his enduring a great deal of misery whilst he lived, of his suffering a violent death, and his making this false exclamation prior to it; "O virtue, virtue, I have worshipped thee 66 as a sovereign good; but I find thou art only "an empty name." This misery whilst he lived, his violent death, and the bitter exclamation he made at his decease, were all owing to his real ig. norance of the nature of true virtue, and would have been avoided, had he been better instructed. Cato's self-murder is another instance of mistaken virtue.

In the same erroneous manner was virtue considered by Stilpo, the celebrated Megarean philosopher. When the city in which this man lived was destroyed, with his wife and children, and he alone escaped from the fire, being asked, whether he had lost any thing? he replied, All my trea sures are still with me; justice, virtue, prudence, temperance, and this inviolable principle, not to esteem any thing as my proper good which can be ravished from me. Nothing, I think, can better evince the superiority of the doctrines of Jesus Christ over those of philosophy, than the different conduct prescribed by each under such a heavy calamity as the one above mentioned. This philosopher, whom Diogenes Laertius places at the head of the Stoics, considered the stifling and overcoming the natural feelings of tenderness,

love, and affection, as the height of virtue; and the indulgence of those amiable feelings which imply goodness of heart, and whose existence in the human mind makes it, in some degree, resemble the divine, he considered beneath the dignity of philosophy. Now the Christian religion does not require the extinction of the affections, it only enjoins their due and reasonable regulation; it requires us to rejoice with those that rejoice, and to weep with those that weep, and to be kindly affectioned one to another; in short, it every where encourages a tender, benevolent, sympathetic attention equally to the happiness and to the misery of our fellow-creatures; and, instead of the vain and unnatural effort made by this man to suppress all feeling of grief for the loss of his wife and children, and to glory, as it were, in his savage apathy, it dictates to us in so distressing a situation to relieve our agony by humbly opening our heart, and submitting our grief to that merciful and gracious God, who does not despise a broken and a contrite heart, imploring him to pity and relieve our anguish by the effusion and operation of his grace and holy Spirit. Reason likewise suggests, that we should endeavour to assuage it by communicating our affliction to some feeling. friend; for, as Lord Bacon observes in his Essay on Friendship, it is very unwise to let the heart prey on itself; and that one of the principal fruits

of friendship is the ease and discharge of that painful fulness which the soul feels under affliction by imparting it. He further observes, that "whosoever, in the frame of his nature and affec“tions, is unfit for friendship, he taketh it from "the beast, and not from humanity." Such a man as Stilpo may, if he pleases, call himself a philosopher; but if the principles of his philosophy are such as to annihilate every tender, friendly, and generous feeling, it shews, however highly the word philosophy may sound in theory, what a poor system it is when reduced to practice; and that a set of precepts more congenial to the frame of human nature than it could communicate was absolutely wanting, that mankind should possess that portion of temporal as well as eternal happiness, which a gracious God in his goodness and mercy intended it should enjoy. But the happiness of the most literate heathens was eminently defective in this respect, that it was wholly centered in this life; for, excepting Socrates, Plato, Cicero, and a very few others*, we have every reason to be of opinion they had no serious persuasion of a future state. Sallust tells us, that in an oration which Julius Cæsar made to the Roman Senate, he affirms, that no man of a liberal edu

* Bishop Warburton, in his Divine Legation, assigns many solid reasons to induce a belief, that Socrates alone had any firm and constant faith in a future state.

cation believed in it. Now by what charm, I should be glad to know, if our Saviour had been only the son of a carpenter, could he have inculcated so general a belief in a future state, that as formerly, and before his doctrines were divulged, scarcely any literate man believed in it, since their promulgation, no man hardly is to be found, li terate or illiterate, who does not believe in it. Let any man consider, with heartfelt thankfulness con sider, what a treasure of happiness his mind is possessed of in consequence of the blessed doctrines of Revelation! When the ship is tossed, dreadfully tossed, what a charming reflection it is to think the anchor is safe, and the harbour secure! When the affairs of this life are in all respects cross and perverse, when the body is ill, the mind oppressed, and the spirits dejected, what consolation, what inexpressible happiness to man, to be able to cheer his soul with the consideration, that, if he believes in and practises the doctrines of the Gospel, and will endeavour, as well as he can, to love, honour, and obey his Maker, in a few years, through the goodness of God and the merits of his Redeemer, he will be admitted to a participation of those pleasures which are at God's right hand for evermore; that he will be permitted to see the God who created him, the Son who redeemed him, and the Holy Ghost who sanctified him; that he will be permitted to see the Lord