BOOK and memory above all others. So that mankind are as I. so many gods among inferior creatures. If a man had Xenoph. the body of an ox, and the mind of man together, he could not do what he would; nor if brutes had hands, and wanted minds, could they do much with them. But you, said he to Aristodemus, have both; and can you think there is no care of Providence about you? Can you think, said he, that the gods (as he speaks) should plant in men's minds an opinion that they are able both to reward and punish, if it were not so? and that mankind should be always deceived in this matter, and not be sensible of it? Do not you see, saith Socrates, that the most ancient and wisest cities, and nations, and ages, have always shewed the greatest regard to religion? This is a very remarkable testimony of Socrates concerning the sense of former ages about the foundations of religion; and that the atheistical temper some were then fallen into was a late innovation, and in probability occasioned by that smattering in philosophy which was crept in among the Greeks, from the principles of Anaximander and Democritus. But Socrates assures us, the best and wisest ages had a very different sense of these matters. And this Xenophon tells us he had from Socrates's own mouth; and that he heard this discourse between them. And what now is to be said to such a testimony as this, concerning the sense of mankind about religion? Have we any reason to mistrust such a testimony as that of Socrates, who was so much valued for his integrity, and lost his life because he could not flatter nor dissemble? For any one that will carefully examine the circumstances of his trial will find, the true reason of his prosecution was, that he had disobliged so many sorts of people by his plain dealing. For, as he told his judges, his way was, when he heard any Socr. I. man had a great opinion for his own wisdom and skill CHAP. above other men, to talk with him, on purpose to see Platon. whether there were any sufficient ground for such an Apolog. opinion: which was one of the most disobliging courses in the world, considering how fond men are apt to be of themselves, and to think themselves wiser than others, at least in that which they most pretend to. By which means he disobliged the politicians, who hate any man that would pretend to find them out; the sophists, whom on all occasions he exposed, and in the most public manner: and the men of wit and the poets were enraged against him, because he slighted their way, as tending only to entertain the fancy, and not to make men wiser; and in their happiest strains there was only a natural enthusiasm; and although they said many fine things, yet they were not one jot the wiser men. The artificers he found had many pretty knacks; but, because of their skill in such little things, they presumed wonderfully at Athens upon their understandings, and would never bear long any great men among them, when things went by majority of votes: as Socrates found, when sentence came to be passed; for although he had many good friends, yet, when it came to the numbering of votes, he was cast by a great majority. But as the people of Athens were so opinionated of themselves, that they could not bear any man whose reputation lessened theirs; so when they had done such things which made them ill spoken of abroad, then they were for redeeming their own honour, either by recalling them from banishment, if living; or, if dead, by punishing the instruments made use of in the prosecution. So it happened in the case of Socrates: when they found his death brought an odium upon the city, one of his accusers was put to death, another banished; and Plutarch saith, some of Plutarch.de vid. BOOK the rest were so weary of their lives, that they put an I. end to them by hanging themselves. And, to shew Odio et In- their great esteem of him, they caused a statue, made by Lysippus, to be set up in a public place in the city, as a perpetual monument of his wisdom, and their own folly. And his carriage at his death was with so much courage, and constancy, and evenness of mind, that they were all satisfied as to his integrity, and freedom from any ill design. What reason can there be then to suspect his testimony in this point of religion, when there was not the least constraint or bias upon him; and this attested by so unexceptionable a witness as Xenophon; a person of great honour and judgment; and whose writings are such as could hardly be counterfeited by any since him, by reason of their unaffected sweetness; for which the ancient critics so much admired Cicero de him; even Cicero, as well as Dionysius Halicarnasseus and Quintilian? Orat. l. ii. ad Pomp. Cicero ad. From Socrates I go on to Plato, who, in Cicero's Quint. X. opinion, (and he was a very good judge,) was princeps Quint. 1. i. ingenii et doctrinæ, the top of ancient wit and learning; and to the same purpose Quintilian, whom Valla esteemed above all other critics. But I need not go about to set up the reputation of Plato. He was descended from Solon by his mother, and by his father from Codrus; he was nearly related to Critias, the first of the thirty tyrants, and head of the atheistical club at Athens; and therefore it will be worth our while to find out his true sense and opinion about these matters. To which I shall confine my discourse concerning him. And in his tenth book of Laws he gives an account of three opinions then in vogue among the looser sort of people at Athens. One was, that there was no God at all; the second, that though there was a God, yet there was no Providence; the third, that if both were allowed yet that God would accept of gifts and sacrifices, as a CHAP. compensation for their faults. As to the atheistical hypothesis, it is observable, what character he gives of the persons who were for it, that they were the looser and more dissolute sort of men among them; and especially in the heat of their youth. And that he never knew any man who continued in it from his youth to his old age; and he calls it the plague of young men. The hypothesis, as he lays it down, is much the same with Anaximander's, viz. that nature and chance produced all things out of a strange chaos, wherein were all sorts of qualities, jumbled and confounded together, and at last, by mixture, came to that we call the world. But that religion, and the differences of just and unjust, depended upon human laws and contrivances, for the better government of mankind. This is the substance of their hypothesis, which Plato, in a long discourse, sets himself to refute, by shewing that these things could not come together by mere nature and chance; but were, according to right reason, the product of a superior Mind. And whatever they pretended, as to skill in natural causes, this opinion did proceed from great ignorance about them, and that their reasonings were both impious and incoherent: that their fundamental mistake lay in supposing such motion and mixtures in matter, before any principle to begin or to direct it. For the first motion must be from that which hath a power to move itself, as well as other things; and therefore there must be a mind antecedent to matter, in order to the production of things. This is the force of his reasoning. Then he shews how unreasonable it is to suppose a God without Providence, because it must argue either weakness or neglect; which were both inconsistent with the Divine perfec I. BOOK I. Epinom. p. 1013. ed. Ficin. 1. xvii. c. 34. tions: and so he proves was the last opinion, and that it tended to overthrow the practice of virtue. In his Epinomis (which I see no reason to mistrust) he undertakes to prove religion to be the truest wisdom of mankind; the first principle whereof is, that there is an Eternal Mind before all matter; and then saith, that there is no greater virtue belonging to mankind than piety, or a due regard to the Divine Being. So far was he from looking on religion as an imposture, or trick put upon mankind in order to their better govern ment. But Aristotle may be more suspected for this, who wanted no wit, but is generally thought to have been of no religion; and he was by no means fond of Plato's notions, especially those he took from the Pythagoric school but yet I hope to shew, that in the main foundation of all, as to the being of God, and the happiness of mankind, he agreed with him at last: I do not mean Cal. Rhod. at his death, according to the story in Cælius Rhodiginus, that then he said, Causa causarum miserere mei; and which Suarez quotes Laertius for; but there is nothing like it in him; and Cælius had it out of a trifling book de Pomo: but I go upon the principles delivered by him in his best considered books. In his Arist. Polit. Politics, indeed, he recommends religion to a prince, ed. Par. in order to his esteem among the people, that they may look on him as under the particular care of Providence. Now this Aristotle is charged to have utterly denied himself; and Atticus the Platonist in Eusebius makes him worse than Epicurus, because he put his gods quite out of the world, which Aristotle did not; but, said he, he overthrew all religion by denying ProviLactant. de dence. And Lactantius is very sharp upon him, and c. 19. ed. makes him a contemner of God and religion: but to do him right, he saith at other times, That he placed 1. v. c. II. Euseb. 1. xv. c. 5. Ira Dei, Oxon. |