*

Deity. Even many of those philosophers, who must have emancipated themselves from these mythologies, yet could not rise to this great truth, but chose rather to believe the world to have been eternal, and never made at all. Aristotle is noted for entertaining this misconception, and the preferred opinion even of the Grecian philosophers, who admitted a Deity, was to give at least a co-eternity to matter.‡ Relics of the sacred communication of the creation were, however, retained, though in a clouded state, in some parts of the world. The Tyrrhenians were an instance of this.§ The Persian Magi, likewise; though involving what was true with much that was absurd. The individual who stands most prominent to us for right ideas on this great subject was that Athenian, who, as he is portrayed in his more four elements, was the beginning of things. So Manetho and Hecateus taught. Diog. Laert. i. s. 10.

"There was a time in which darkness and water were all that existed. In these were monstrous animals of double natures; men with two wings, and others with four, and two faces. They had one body, but two faces; one male, the other female. Some human forms had legs and horns of goats; others were half horse and half men. Bulls with human heads, and dogs with fourfold bodies, &c. &c., of all which there were likenesses in the Temple of Belus."-Syncell. Chron. p. 28. Euseb. Chron. p. 5. the Armenian Transl.

In his work de Cœlo, Aristotle maintains the eternity of the world, meaning by that the whole mundane system, and denies that there was any body beyond it, or any space, vacuity, or time.-L. i. c. 10. He asserts that it never was and never could be generated, and was incorruptible, and could not be dissolved.-C. 11, 12. It is obvious that these opinions excluded all ideas of an intelligent creation, or of a Maker's power over it. He re-asserts both its past and future eternity.-L. ii. c. 1. This opinion, which seems to have been rather adopted than invented by him, descended to Pliny, who, using some of Aristotle's phrases, calls the world, "eternum; neque genitum; neque interiturum unquam." --Nat. Hist. 1. ii. e. 1.

The theory contended for by Plato was a coalition between an eternity and a fabrication. He admitted matter to be eternal, but in his Timæus argued that the world had an artificer, who made it to be a vast living animal; "a whole animal, in the highest degree perfect from perfect parts" (p. 460); "but without legs and feet."-"On all these accounts he rendered the universe a blessed God."-p. 462. He says, "it is necessary to call the world an animal, endued with intellect, and generated through the providence of Deity."-Plato Tim. Taylor's Transl. p. 458 This is not an intellectual creation of the world, nor a beginning of t. So his translator and disciple intimates, for he says, "When the world is said by Plato to be generated, this term does not imply any temporal commencement of its existence."-Introd. p. 401.

Sacred Hist. vol. i. p. 30.

Ib.

So the Chaldean oracles, quoted by Proclus, speak of a Maker (Hons) framing the world.-Procl. in Timeo, p. 154.

natural shape by Xenophon, had wiser opinions than any of his contemporaries, and deserved the oracular encomium which he is stated to have received-I mean Socrates.* In his conversation with Aristodemus, he urges him to believe the existence of the Deity, on our own great principles of visible skill, orderly arrangement, manifest purposes, and provisions and adaptations of the due means for the intended ends. These are but slightly touched, and on the most obvious points, and without that fulness of demonstration with which modern science can elucidate them; but this, and his subsequent discourse on the goodness of the Deity with Euthydemus, are sufficient to place Socrates high above his contemporaries, and not less above his successors.† For though Plato makes him discourse of a Demiurgus and an artificer, yet it is with so many metaphysical subtleties, so much verbal logic, and such strange additions, that the simple truth is lost from the mental eye, and nothing follows from it. Plato's sentiments, as he chose to express them, were put on the points dangerous at that time, so variously, that

**When Chæremon, at the temple of Delphos, asked if there was in the world any one wiser than Socrates, the Pythian priestess gave that answer which Suidas and the scholiast on Aristophanes have preserved:

"Sophocles is wise, yet Euripides is wiser:
But Socrates is the wisest of all men."

Suid. Voc. Zwpos, v. ii. p. 780.

Plato makes Socrates recite the incident in his Apology, and reason upon it, to the conclusion that he was the wisest, only because he knew his ignorance, and disclaimed having the wisdom which was imputed to him.-Plat. Apol. Soc.

† Xenoph. ATоu. 1. i. c. 4. and 1. iii. c. 3. But he reminds Euthydemus, that when the Delphian oracle was consulted how they should acceptably worship the gods, it answered, "According to the law of your country."-L. iv. c. 3. Thus still recommending the practice of paganism.

A perusal of the Timæus and Parmenides will show how Plato chooses to reason on this great subject. He seems to have some vague ideas of an eternal pattern, by which his Maker formed it. "It is to be considered according to what paradigm, extending himself, he fabricated the world. But if this world is beautiful, and its artifices good, it is evident that he looked towards an eternal exemplar in its fabrication. It is perfectly evident that he regarded an eternal paradigm."-Plato Tim. p. 456. This exemplar is not represented as originating from the Deity; but, like matter, as co-eternal with him. Cicero, in his treatise De Universitate, seems to abridge or translate this part of the Timæus, though without alluding to it. "Si probus ejus artifex, profecto speciem æternitatis imitari maluit; non igitur dubium, quin æternitatem maluerit exsequi." Most of what remains of this little work is taken from Plato.

it was difficult to collect his real meaning from them.* But it is due to him to remark, that he dared not express what he knew. It was, indeed, the highest crime at Athens at that time to do so. Their laws and polity, and domestic habits, were all founded on paganism, as well as their religion. It was on such a charge that Socrates perished. Yet Plato had ideas which he has expressed, that are inconsistent with that rational creation which the Scriptures reveal to us. He makes the fixed stars divine animals, and the earth the first generated Deity, and inculcates a belief in the accounts of the ancients, manifestly alluding to those which Hesiod put into his hexameter verses. Whether he believed or not in all he wrote, still it went to the world as from his pen, and partook of the influence which his works obtained.||

* Cicero remarks, in the first book of his Academics, that in Plato's works many things are said on both sides of his questions. Every thing is doubted, and nothing ever affirmed. This must always be the case in whatever relates to the Deity, without the regulating aid of revelation.

↑ He mentions in his Timæus, that to discover the Artificer and Father of the universe is indeed difficult, and, when found, it is impossible to reveal him through the ministry of discourse to all men.-P. 456. Cicero has inserted this sentiment in his Universitate.

Xenophon gives us the accusation of Melitus, that Socrates did not acknowledge the gods, whom the republic worshipped, and introduced new ones.-ATо. p. 1.-Plato has preserved a part of the dialogue on the trial.

"Soc. I am myself persuaded that there are gods; I am not at all an atheist.

"Mel. I assert that you do not acknowlege the gods.

"Soc. You are a strange man, Melitus, to say this. Do I not believe as other men do, that the sun and moon are gods?

"Mel. By Jupiter, O judges! he declares that the sun is a stone, and the moon an earth!

"Soc. These were the opinions of Anaxagoras; but have I taught youth so can you think I believe no God?

"Mel. In none. By all that is sacred, not in one."-Plato, Aжоλ. 9. They were obviously here alluding to different things; Melitus to the established divinities; Socrates to his purer theism; and yet his last words were, as stated by Plato, "O Crito! we owe a cock to Esculapius. Render this, and do not forget it."-" This shall be done," answered Crito; "do you wish any thing else?" But the dying sage spoke no more.-Plat. Phed. c. 49.

"Such of the stars as were inerratic were generated, which are divine animals. But He fabricated the earth, the common nourisher of our existence, which is the guardian and artificer of night and day, and is the first and most ancient of the gods, which are generated within the heavens."-Plat. Tim. 472.

Thus, "it is necessary in this case to believe in ancient men, who,

What was rational in the ideas of Socrates on this grand subject, did not descend, in their truth and simplicity, to the schools and philosophers who were formed from him; but was so spoiled and nullified by the heterogeneous matter which was mingled with it, that it made no impression on the general mind. From the same cause the Pythagoreans, who had also many valuable notions or fragments of the true system of the universe, made no beneficial use of them, and advanced no farther. The Romans followed the Greeks, but only to favour or to adopt opposing speculations. Their most enlightened portion on the subject of Deity was the Stoics, who had many noble ideas, but defeated their proper effect by joining with them Plato's suggestion, that the earth was a living animal, and a god, which exposed them to the Epicurean's sarcastic question, How their deity liked to have his back cut by the plough, or torn by their harrows; to be burnt in the torrid zone, and frozen into ice in the arctic regions.* Cicero, who at times could reason admirably on the intelligent construction of the world, and was the most informed of all his countrymen, yet was so paralyzed in his own judgment by the chaos of the opinions he found started on this topic, that, in his most elaborate work upon it, he contents himself first with stating one series of opinions, and then the contrary, and closes his theme by ingeniously argu

being the progeny of the gods, as they themselves assert, must have a clear knowledge of their parents. It is impossible therefore not to believe in the children of the gods, though they should speak without probable or necessary arguments It is proper that, complying with the

law, we should assent to their tradition."

He then states from them "the generation of these gods." Ocean and Tethys were the progeny of heaven and earth. From hence Phorcys, Saturn and Rhea, and such as subsist with these, were produced: Jupiter and Juno, and all such as are called their brethren, descended from Saturn and Rhea, &c. When they were all generated, the Artificer of the universe thus addressed them: "gods of gods! of whom I am the demiurgus and father," &c. &c.-P. 472. Such a medley was Plato's most serious tuition.

* Velleius taunts Balbus with those sarcasms in the Natura Deorum. It is a pity that so great a man as Kepler should revive so absurd a notion. Yet in 1619, in his mature years, he published his Harmonics, in which work "he expounds his notions of astrology; and while he strongly condemns the absurdities of the vulgar belief, attempts to substitute a system of celestial influences, in which he seriously represents the earth as an enormous living animal, the tides being its act of respiration, and its vital sympathies being excited by the configurations of the planets."-Powell's Hist. Nat. Phil. p. 154.

ing against all, and apparently recommending a neutralizing uncertainty and indecision.* Thus, until Christianity spread, it never became a settled opinion at all in the world that the earth was the planned and deliberate creation of an intelligent God. Nor does any one seem to have conceived it to have been so, in that clear and full meaning, sublimity and certainty, with which the Hebrew writers inculcate the momentous truth. Take up the Timæus, or any other work of Plato, which treats on God and nature, or what fragments of antiquity remain about them, and compare these with the passages in the Genesis and Deuteronomy of Moses; with those in the book of Job, which is peculiarly splendid in many parts on this subject; with others in some of the Psalms of David, in the majestic and unequalled Isaiah, and in several of the other Jewish prophets; and I think you will feel, with me, that Christianity, by diffusing the Jewish Scriptures, or sacred writings, and by its own as sacred additions, imparted a new intellect to mankind on all that concerns divine philosophy. A sun of mind then rose on our world which has never set. Its beams consumed the popular paganism, and spread a purifying light over those who chose not to forsake their ancient favourite.+ It has rescued the civilized world from those phantoms which once degraded it; and now, in friendly association with the science, taste, and virtues which are peculiarly congenial with it, and which it has always fostered, we may hope that both superstition and atheism are generally banished or are departing from us for ever; and that, as they are both noxious to society, and very

* Cicero's first book of the Natura Deorum details, in the person of Velleius, the Epicurean attacks on all the theories of deity which the ancient philosophers had devised as well as on the popular one. The second book contains the argument of Balbus, the stoic, in defence of his opinions, spoiling what were really good and wise, by the absurd tenet that the world was an animated being, the incorporated divinity.

The last book exhibits Cotta as the academic, reviewing at times with much derision the arguments of both, but criticising them as inconclusive; "not," he adds, "that I mean to take the divinity away, but to show how obscure and difficult the subject is ;" and all that Cicero himself adds, as his final sentence, is, "The argument of Balbus seems to me to be ad veritatis similitudinem propensior"-rather more probable. †This effect may be traced in the valuable writings of Epictetus and Marcus Antoninus, and at times in those of Seneca. The same influence roused the later Platonists of the Alexandrian school, and even Porphyry and Julian, to make many improvements, both in the theory and practice of the pagan worship, which they endeavoured to uphold.