to the most abominable vices. The gods whom they worshipped were represented by them as guilty of the same enormities. Their temples were brothels; their pictures invitations to sin; their sacred groves were places of prostitution; and their sacrifices a horrid mixture of superstition and cruelty. Lord Hailes has with great justice remarked that "the profligacy of the heathens in the apostolical age was more enormous than some people know, or at least are inclined to confess."

After adverting to the opinions and practices of the heathen philosophers respecting religion and moral conduct, it is needless, in estimating their qualifications as instructors and reclaimers of mankind, to examine those parts of their speculations which are consistent with reason and virtue. To recommend and enforce virtue they wanted sanctions of sufficient authority, and were ignorant of right motives. In respect to the rewards of a future state, their opinions were various and contradictory; and all idea of future punishments was discarded by them. Cicero affirms that it was universally held by the philosophers that God could neither be angry nor hurt any one. He admits the consequence of this universal principle, that it quite overthrew the notion of divine punishments; and says in regard to an oath, that a perjured man need not fear the wrath of Heaven. He accordingly speaks of the punishments of the wicked as silly fables, and on a particular occasion says, "if these things be false, as all men understand them to be, what has death taken from him [a man whom he represents as a monster of wickedness, guilty of the most atrocious murders, &c.] but a sense of pain ?" Plutarch treats the fear of future punishment as vain and childish. Seneca asserts that no man in his reason fears the gods, and contemns future punishments

as vain terrors invented by the poets.

In this manner

did these philosophers, by their impious speculations, discard the fear of God; and as to the idea of the love of God, they were utter strangers to it.

Their motives to the practice of virtue were absurd and illegitimate. One followed it for the love of fame and reputation; another, for the intrinsic beauty of its nature; a third, for the benefit of its effects; a fourth, for that the laws of his country required it; a fifth, for he knew not why. But none practised it on its true principle, conformity to the will of God, from whence glory to him naturally proceeds. They were also as much mistaken in man's ability. They pretended, that they had the whole exercise of virtue in their power, by the mere force and rectitude of their own nature, without any aid or assistance from the Deity. The stoics, a sect which, of all others, most cultivated the science and practice of morality, were so far from seeking the assistance of Heaven, that, with an unparalleled extravagance, they placed their wise man in a rank superior to their gods, as having in him something of higher strength and fortitude; for that he persevered in virtue amidst a thousand difficulties and discouragements, whereas the virtue of the gods had no temptations to shake it. In a word, such utter strangers were they in general, both to the nature of God and man, that Cicero, delivering the sentiments of ancient wisdom on this matter, expresses himself to this effect: "All the commodities of life are the gift of Heaven, but virtue no man ever yet thought came from God. For who ever returned him thanks that he was good and honest? And why should he? For virtue is of right our own praise, and that in which man reasonably glories. This, in short, is the opinion of all the world, that the goods of fortune

are to be asked of Heaven, but that wisdom is to be had only from ourselves."

"The ancient epic poets," says Dr Johnson in his life of Milton, "wanting the light of Revelation, were very unskilful teachers of virtue; their principal characters may be great, but they are not amiable. The reader may rise from their works with a greater degree of active or passive fortitude, and sometimes of prudence, but he will be able to carry away few precepts of justice, and none of mercy."

The heathen philosophy comprised only idle and fruitless truths, with which the people had no concern; or abstract and obscure speculations, with which they had no acquaintance. What principle in theology, or what rule of morals, has any one of the ancient poets or philosophers, or have all of them indubitably established? How many of these four essential doctrines respecting God did any of the philosophers holdthat there is one God-that God is no part of these things which we see-that God takes care of all things below, and governs the world—that he alone is the Great Creator of all things out of himself? Before the Christian era, no people in the world, excepting the Jews, believed these truths. None of the greatest and wisest among the Greeks and Romans held all of them, and very few of them held any of them firmly. The philosophers were a set of men who, on the first appearance of Christianity, most violently opposed it by all the arts of sophistry and injustice. And when by the force of its evidence they were driven to profess it, they immediately began to debase and corrupt both its doctrines and precepts. Tertullian affirms, that from their profane and vain babbling, every heresy took its birth. Whenever they

or their philosophy are spoken of in Scripture, it is in terms of the strongest disapprobation. The Apostle Paul, after adverting to their unprincipled conduct in keeping back from the people what they knew of God, declares that they were without excuse, and that, professing themselves to be wise, they had become fools. In the first chapter of his Epistle to the Romans, he has given that appalling description of their depravity and guilt, which the truth of history, and their own statements, so awfully verify.

But, even though these philosophers had understood the proper motives to virtue, and had been able, by proper sanctions, to enforce the practice of it, they wanted the inclination. They proceeded on a systematic exclusion of the body of the people from all the means of moral and religious instruction. Instead of attempting to enlighten the multitude, all the influence which they derived from their knowledge was employed to rivet on their minds the authority of the most degrading superstitions. The vulgar and unlearned, they contended, had no right to truth. All of them, without distinction, held it as a fixed maxim, that no alteration was to be made in the established faith or worship. This was the express doctrine of Pythagoras, Socrates, Plato, Cicero, Epictetus, Seneca, and all the other great names of antiquity. Philosophers, statesmen, magistrates, and every one distinguished either by his office or his station, worshipped the gods in common with the people, according to the established mode. "The philosophers," says Gibbon, " diligently practised the ceremonies of their fathers; devoutly frequented the temples of the gods; and sometimes condescending to act a part on the theatre of supersti

tion, they concealed the sentiments of an Atheist under the sacerdotal robes." Their want of integrity, and of any settled good principle, is strikingly manifest in this temporizing conduct. Convinced of the folly and falsehood of the vulgar superstitions, they not only conformed to them themselves, but taught their disciples to do the same; thus making hypocrisy and dissimulation, in a matter of the last importance, an essential part of their instructions, confirmed by their example, and perpetuating the most stupid idolatry in close connexion with the most abominable vices.

"These ideas of the philosophers of Europe," ›observes Dr Robertson, in his Disquisitions on India, "were precisely the same which the Brahmins had adopted in India, and according to which they regulated their conduct with respect to the great body of the people. Wherever the dominion of false religion is completely established, the body of the people gain nothing by the greatest improvements in knowledge. Their philosophers conceal from them, with the utmost solicitude, the truths which they have discovered, and labour to support that fabric of superstition which it was their duty to have overturned."

What has been already advanced, is sufficient to prove the utter unfitness of the heathen philosophers in respect of character, of knowledge, and of inclination, to reclaim mankind from vice, and to bring them back to the worship and service of God and the practice of virtue. But on this subject one point, and that the most essential of all, still remains to be brought forward; they were altogether ignorant of the great doctrine concerning the pardon of sin, and of the way of man's acceptance with God. These important questions were never made the subject of their consideration.