Those who were invested with a sacred character, and who delivered the pretended sense of the Oracles, talked much of the gods, but said little of goodness; while the philosophers who, though they were professors of wisdom, were, not generally to the vulgar, teachers of morals, seldom gave the Deity a place in their ethics. Between these conflicting instructors the people stood little chance of acquiring any justnotions of moral rectitude. They were indeed under a necessity of attending the worship of the temples, they believed that the neglect of this duty would offend the gods; but in their attendance they were neither taught that purity of heart, nor that practical virtue, which might have been supposed likely to please them. The philosophers, if they were disposed to give the people some rules of duty, were overmatched by the priests, who knew they should gratify them more by omitting what they so little relished. As to the people themselves, they did not desire

B.6

desire to be better than the priests wished to make them. They found processions pleasanter than prayers, ceremonies cheaper than duties, and sacrifices easier than self-denials, with the additional recommendation, that the one made amends for the want of the other. *

When a violent plague raged in Rome, the method they took for appeasing the deities, and putting a stop to the distemper, was the establishment of a theatre and the introduction of plays. The plague, however, having no dramatic taste, con tinued to rage. But neither the piety nor ingenuity of the suppliants was exhausted. A nail driven into the Temple of Jupiter was found to be a more promising expedient. But the gods being as hard as the metal of which the expiation was made, were no more moved by the nail, than the plague had been by

See Locke on the Reasonableness of Christianity.

the

the theatrical exhibition; though the event was thought of sufficient importance for the creation of a Dictator!What progress had reason, to say nothing of religion, made in the first metropolis in the world, when a nail or a play was thought a rational expedient for pacifying the gods and stopping the pestilence. Nor does reason, mere human reason, seem to have grown wiser in her age. During the late attempt to establish heathenism in a neighbouring country, does it not look as if the thirty theatres which were opened every night in its capital in the early part of the Revolution had been intended, in imitation of the Romans, whose religion, titles, and offices the French affected to adopt, as a nightly expiation to the Goddess of Reason for the cruelties and carnage of the day?

Whatever conjectural notions some of the wise might entertain of a future state,

state, the people at large could only acquire the vague and comfortless ideas of it, which might be picked up from the poets. This indefinite belief, immersed in fable, and degraded by the grossest superstition, added as little to the piety as to the happiness of mankind. The intimations of their Tartarus, and their Elysian fields, were so connected with fictions, as to convey to the mind no other impression, but that they were fictions themselves. Such uncertain glimmerings of such a futurity could afford neither warning nor encouragement, neither cheerful hope nor salutary fear. They might amuse the mind, but never could influence the conduct. They might gratify the imagination, but could not communicate" a hope full of immortality." They neither animated the pious, nor succoured the tempted, nor supported the afflicted, nor cheered the dying.

The study of their mythology could

carry

carry with it nothing but corruption. It neither intended to bring glory to God, nor peace and good will, much less salvation, to men. It was invented to embellish the fabulous periods of their history, to flatter illustrious families, by celebrating the human exploits of their deified progenitors; and thus to give an additional and national interest to their bewitching fables. What a system did those countries uphold, when the more probable way to make the people virtuous, was to keep them ignorant of religion! when the best way to teach them their duty to man, was to keep their deities out of sight!

It is, indeed, but justice to acknowledge, that most of the different schools of philosophy held some one great truth. Aristotle maintained the existence of a First Cause; Cicero, in opposition to the disciples of Epicurus, acknowledged a superintending Providence. Many of