Our author treats final causes with wise, contemplating nature, admit an incontempt, because the argument is hack-telligent and supreme power. It is pernied; but this much-contemned argu-haps impossible for human reason, desment is that of Cicero and of Newton. titute of divine assistance, to go a step This alone might somewhat lessen the further. confidence of Atheists in themselves. The number is not small of the sages who, observing the course of the stars, and the prodigious art that pervades the structure of animals and vegetables, have acknowledged a powerful hand working these continual wonders. The author asserts that matter, blind and without choice, produces intelligent animals. Produce, without intelligence, beings with intelligence! Is this conceivable? Is this system founded on the smallest verisimilitude? An opinion so contradictory requires proofs no less astonishing than itself. The author gives us none; he never proves anything; but he affirms all that he advances. What chaos! what confusion! and what temerity! Spinosa at least acknowledged an intelligence acting in this great whole, which constituted nature in this there was philosophy. But in the new system, I am under the necessity of saying that there is none. Matter has extent, solidity, gravity, divisibility. I have all these as well as this stone: but was a stone ever known to feel and think. If I am extended, solid, divisible, I owe it to matter. But I have sensations and thoughts-to what do I owe them? Not to water, not to mire-most likely to something more powerful than myself. Solely to the combination of the elements, you will say. Then prove it to me. Show me plainly that my intelligence cannot have been given to me by an intelligent cause. To this are you reduced. Our author successively combats the God of the schoolmen-a God composed of discordant qualities—a God to whom, Our author asks where this being resides; and, from the impossibility that any one, without being infinite, should tell where he resides, he concludes that he does not exist. This is not philosophical; for we are not, because we cannot tell where the cause of an effect is, to conclude that there is no cause. you had never seen a gunner, and you saw the effects of a battery of cannon, you would not say, it acts entirely by itself. It Shall it, then, only be necessary for you to say there is no God, in order to be believed on your words. Finally, his great objection is, the woes and crimes of mankind—an objection alike ancient and philosophical; an objection common, but fatal and terrible, and to which we find no answer but in the hope of a better life. Yet what is this hope? We can have no certainty in it but from reason. But I will venture to say, that when it is proved to us that a vast edifice, constructed with the greatest art, is built by an architect, whoever he may be, we ought to believe in that architect, even though the edifice should be stained with our blood, polluted by our crimes, and should crush us in its fall. I enquire not whether the architect is a good one, whether I ought to be satisfied with his building, whether I should quit it rather than stay in it, nor whether those who are lodged in it for a few days, like myself, are content: I only enquire if it be true that there is an architect, or if this house, containing so many fine apartments and so many wretched garrets, built itself. SECTION V. as to those of Homer, is attributed the The Necessity of believing in a Supreme passions of inen-a God capricious, fickle, unreasonable, absurd: but he cannot cannot combat the God of the wise The Being. The great, the interesting object, as it brew books, which we find constantly disclosing the opinion entertained by the Jews, that the gods of their enemies existed, but that they were inferior to the God of the Jews. Meanwhile, in the great states where the progress of society allowed to individuals the enjoyment of speculative leisure, there were priests, magi, and philosophers. Some of these perfected their reason so far as to acknowledge in secret one only and universal God. So, although the ancient Egyptians adored Osiri, Osiris, or rather Usireth (which signifies this land is mine); though they also adored other superior beings, yet they admitted one Supreme, one only principal God, whom they called Knef, whose symbol was a sphere placed on the frontispiece of the temple. After this model, the Greeks had their Zeus, their Jupiter, the master of the other gods, who were but what the angels are with the Babylonians and the Hebrews, and the saints with the Christians of the Roman communion. It is a more thorny question than it has been considered, and one by no means profoundly examined,-whether several gods, equal in power, can exist at the same time? My reason alone proves to me a Being who has arranged the matter of this world; but my reason is unable to prove to me that he made this matter,--that he brought it out of nothing. All the sages of antiquity, without exception, believed matter to be eternal, and subsisting by itself. All then that I can do, without the aid of superior light, is to believe that the God of this world is also eternal, and subsisting by himself. God and matter exist by the nature of things. May not other Gods exist, as well as other worlds? Whole nations, and very enlightened schools, have clearly admitted two gods in this world-one the source of good, the other the source of evil. They admitted an eternal war between two equal powers. Assuredly, nature can more easily suffer the existence of several independent beings in the immensity of space, than that of limited and powerless gods in this world, of whom one can do no good, and the other no harm. If God and matter exist from all eter(nity, as antiquity believed, here then are two necessary beings; now, if there be two necessary beings, there may be thirty. These doubts alone, which are the germ of an infinity of reflections, serve at least to convince us of the feebleness of our understanding. We must, with Cicero, We have no adequate idea of the Di-confess our ignorance of the nature of the vinity; we creep on from conjecture to Divinity; we shall never know any more !conjecture, from likelihood to probability. of it than he did. We have very few certainties. There is In vain do the schools tell us, that God something; therefore there is something is infinite negatively and not privatelyeternal; for nothing is produced from" formaliter et non materialiter," that he nothing. Here is a certain truth on which the mind reposes. Every work which shows us means and an end, announces a workman: then this universe, composed of springs, of means, each of which has its end, discovers a most mighty, a most intelligent workman. Here is a probability approaching the greatest certainty. But is this Supreme Artificer infinite? Is he everywhere? Is he in one place? How are we, with our feeble intelligence and limited knowledge, to answer this question? › is the first act, the middle, and the lastthat he is everywhere without being in any place: a hundred pages of commentaries on definitions like these cannot give us the smallest light. We have no steps { whereby to arrive at such knowledge. We feel that we are under the hand of an invisible being; this is all: we cannot advance one step farther. It is mad temerity to seek to divine what this being is--whether he is extended or not, whe ther he is in one place or not, how he exists, or how he operates. SECTION II. I am ever apprehensive of being mistaken; but all monuments give me sufficient evidence that the polished nations of antiquity acknowledged a supreme God. There is not a book, not a medal, not a bas-relief, not an inscription, in which Juno, Minerva, Neptune, Mars, or any of the other deities, is spoken of as a forming being, the sovereign of all nature. On the contrary, the most ancient profane books that we have-Hesiod and Homer-represent their Zeus as the only thunderer, the only master of gods and men he even punishes the other gods; he ties Juno with a chain, and drives Apollo out of heaven. The ancient religion of the Brahmins -the first that admitted celestial creatures-the first which spoke of their rebellion---explains itself in sublime manner concerning the unity and power of God; as we have seen in the article{ ANGEL. was never given by the Romans to any but "Jupiter, hominum sator atque deorum." This great truth, which we have elsewhere pointed out, cannot be too often repeated. This adoration of a Supreme God, from Romulus down to the total destruction of the empire and of its religion, is confirmed. In spite of all the follies of the people, who venerated secondary and ridiculous gods, and in spite of the Epicureans, who in reality acknowledged none, it is verified that, in all times, the magistrates and the wise adored one sovereign God. From the great number of testimonies left us to this truth, I will select first that of Maximus of Tyre, who flourished under the Antonines---those models of true piety, since they were models of humanity. These are his words, in his discourse entitled Of God, according to Plato. The reader who would instruct himself is requested to weigh them well :-- The Chinese, ancient as they are, come "Men have been so weak as to give after the Indians. They have acknow- to God a human figure, because they had ledged one only god from time imme-seen nothing superior to man; but it is morial; they have no subordinate gods, ridiculous to imagine, with Homer, that no mediating demons or genii between Jupiter or the Supreme Divinity has god and man; no oracles, no abstract black eyebrows and golden hair, which dogmas, no theological disputes among he cannot shake without making the heathe lettered; their emperor was always vens tremble. the first pontiff; their religion was always august and simple; thus it is, that this vast empire, though twice subjugated, has constantly preserved its integrity, has made its conquerors receive its laws, and notwithstanding the crimes and miseries inseparable from the human race, is still the most flourishing state upon earth. The magi of Chaldea, the Sabeans, acknowledged but one Supreme God, whom they adored in the stars, which are his work. The Persians adored him in the sun. The sphere placed on the frontispiece of the temple of Memphis, was the emblem of one only and perfect God, called Knef by the Egyptians. The title of Deus Optimus Maximus "When men are questioned concerning the nature of the Divinity, their answers are all different. Yet, notwithstanding this prodigious variety of opinions, you will find one and the same feeling throughout the earth, viz., that there is but one God who is the father of all," &c. After this formal avowal, after the immortal discourses of Cicero, of Antonine, of Epictetus, what becomes of the declamations which so many ignorant pedants are still repeating? What avail those eternal reproachings of base polytheism and puerile idolatry, but to convince us that the reproachers have not the slightest acquaintance with sterling antiquity? They have taken the reve ries of Homer for the doctrines of the wise. Is it necessary to have stronger or more expressive testimony? You will find it in the letter from Maximus of Madaura to St. Augustin; both were philosophers and orators; at least, they prided themselves on being so: they wrote to each other freely; they were even friends as much as a man of the old religion and one of the new could be friends. Read Maximus of Madaura's letter, and the Bishop of Hippo's answer. Letter from Maximus of Madaura. "Now, that there is a Sovereign God, who is without beginning, and who, without having begotten anything like unto himself, is nevertheless the father and the former of all things, what man can be gross and stupid enough to doubt ? He it is of whom, under different names, we adore the eternal power extending through every part of the world---thus honouring separately by different sorts of worship, what may be called his several members, we adore him entirely. May those subordinate gods preserve you, under whose names, and by whom all we mortals upon earth adore the common father of gods and men, by different sorts of worship, it is true, but all according in their very variety, and all tending to the same end." ..... By whom was this letter written? By a Numidian---one of the country of the Algerines! doubtless he who is acknowledged by the whole world, and concerning whom, as some of the ancients have said, the ignorant agree with the learned. Now, will you say, that he whose strength, if not his cruelty, is represented by an inanimate man, is a portion of that God? I could easily push you hard on this subject; for you will clearly see how much might be said upon it: but I refrain, lest you should say that I employ against you the weapons of rhetoric rather than those of virtue." We know not what was signified by these two statues, of which no vestige is left us; but not all the statues with which Rome was filled---not the Pantheon and all the temples consecrated to the inferior gods, nor even those to the twelve greater gods prevented Deus Optimus Maximus---"God, most good, most great" ---from being acknowledged throughout the empire. The misfortune of the Romans, then, was their ignorance of the Mosaic law, and afterwards of the law of the disciples of our Saviour Jesus Christ---their want of the faith---their mixing with the worship of a supreme God, the worship of Mars, of Venus, of Minerva, of Apollo, who did not exist, and their preserving that religion until the time of the Theodosii. Happily, the Goths, the Huns, the Vandals, the Heruli, the Lombards, the Franks, who destroyed that empire, submitted to the truth, and enjoyed a blessing denied to Scipio, to Cato, to Metellus, to Emilius, to Cicero, to Varro, to Virgil, and to Horace. None of these great men knew Jesus Christ, whom they could not know; yet they did not worship the devil, as so many pedants are every day repeating--How should they worship the devil, of whom they had never heard? pronounced these words, in his Oration for Flaccus :-- "It is unworthy of the majesty of the empire to adore one only God---Majestatem imperii non decuit ut unus tantum Deus colatur." It is then quite false that Cicero, or any other Roman, ever said that it did not become the majesty of the empire to acknowledge a supreme God. Their Jupiter, the Zeus of the Greeks, the Jehovah of the Phenicians, was always considered as the master of the secondary gods. This great truth cannot be too forcibly inculcated. Did the Romans take their Gods from the Had not the Romans served gods for whom they were not indebted to the Greeks? It will, perhaps, hardly be believed, that there is not a word of this in the oration for Flaccus, nor in any of Cicero's works. Flaccus, who had exercised the prætorship in Asia Minor, is charged with exercising some vexations. He was secretly persecuted by the Jews, who then inundated Rome; for, by their money, they had obtained privileges in Rome at the very time when Pompey, For instance, they could not be guilty after Crassus, had taken Jerusalem, and of plagiarism in adoring Coelum, while hanged their petty king, Alexander, son the Greeks adored Ouranon; or in adof Aristobolus. Flaccus had forbidden dressing themselves to Saturnus and Telthe conveying of gold and silver specielus, while the Greeks addressed themto Jerusalem, because the money came į selves to Ge and Chronos. back altered, and commerce was thereby injured; and he had seized the gold which was clandestinely carried. This gold, said Cicero, is still in the treasury. Flaccus has acted as disinterestedly as Pompey. Cicero, then, with his wonted irony, pronounces these words :-" Each country has its religion: we have ours. While Jerusalem was yet free, while the Jews were yet at peace, even then they held in abhorrence the splendour of this empire, the dignity of the Roman name, the institutions of our ancestors. Now that nation has shown more than ever, by the strength of its arms, what it ought to think of the Roman empire. It has shown us, by its valour, how dear it is to the immortal gods: it has proved it to us, by its being vanquished, expatriated, and tributary.". ---"Stantibus{ Hierosolymis, pacatisque Judais, tamen istorum religio sacrorum, à splendore hujus imperii, gravitate nominis nostri,{ majorum institutis, abhorrebat: nunc verò hoc magis quid illa gens, quid de imperio nostro sentiret, ostendit armis: quam cara diis immortalibus esset, docuit, quòd est victa, quod elocata, quod servata." They called Ceres, her whom the Greeks named Deo and Demiter. Their Neptune was Poseidon, their Venus was Aphrodite; their Juno was called, in Greek, Era; their Proserpine, Core; and their favourites, Mars and Bellona, were Ares and Enio. In none of these instances do the names resemble. { Did the inventive spirits of Rome and of Greece assemble? or did the one take from the other the thing, while they disguised the name? It is very natural that the Romans, without consulting the Greeks, should make to themselves gods of the heavens, of time; beings presiding over war, over generation, over harvests, without going to Greece to ask for gods, as they afterwards went there to ask for laws. When you find a name that resembles nothing else, it is but fair to believe it a } native of that particular country. But is not Jupiter, the master of all the gods, a word belonging to every nation, from the Euphrates to the Tiber. Among the first Romans, it was Jor, Jovis; among the Greeks, Zeus; among the Phenicians, the Syrians, and the Egyptians, Jehovah. |